Since I wrote last, I’ve been dealing with undiagnosed infections due to poor postpartum healthcare; I mentioned my flu last time here which was the first of many things caused by a fungal infection I picked up in the hospital. I had no idea though and had horrible infections (I had a yeast infection + a few rounds of mastitis + a visible impetigo staph infection on my breast for two weeks) in my left breast even with perfect feeding care on my own part. Everything has been really hard to get properly treated and diagnosed because my Doctors kept saying I had “first mom-itis.” I’ve lost a lot of weight, I feel like I have been hit by a truck the last two weeks, and I’m still on steroids and antibiotics.
I feel so fortunate that I haven’t had postpartum mental health issues beyond the anxiety this situation has caused. However, the anxiety issues have been a lot. We’ve had a lot of miracles since my OBGYN caught everything at my 6 week appointment that my pediatric office kept ignoring over and over. The undiagnosed yeast infection caused me to have mastitis more times than I know. I have never been in more pain in my life. I’m grateful my baby’s growth and development has been right on track because we supplemented with formula at night.
Maybe I’ll write more about this in the future, but I honestly just want to focus on all of the blessings I have moving forward… like how our kid is seriously sleep trained at night before 2 months old with no “crying it out” methods involved. We’re really happy to be in our new home in Virginia! I’ve been getting outside for walks around the trails in our neighborhoods on warmer days. I’m still freezing all of the time because I’m still getting better, but my favorite day was taking Evie to go meet Devin’s coworkers for lunch.
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So, let’s get to some of that fun stuff 🙂 .
We’ve been making fun of ourselves because we took baby to Home Depot for her first public debut [which in retrospect, seems like such an Atlanta thing to do 🤣]. All of our door knobs are mismatched and we figured this would be an easy update since it looked so nice when we listed our last home. Folks, update your homes before you move and enjoy all of the goodies!
Of course, since we all had such a great time at Home Depot and it was so successful, we decided to go to Walmart. I should mention that going to Walmart was movie worthy bad… it resulted in us running out of the store after paying and then having to wash a lot of items as soon as we came home; I told Evie I related to her experience because of the havoc all of these antibiotics have been wreaking on my body and I hoped she would forgive us. 🤣
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The next morning, we woke up and took baby to church for the first time! My only regret was that in the chaos of us desperately wanting a nap, we didn’t get a photo with Devin and the baby. Good news though: since I’m the person who takes photos in our family, there are more of him anyway so I think he’ll forgive me 😉.
We’ve learned how amazing our church community here is with me being sick and after a move. We’ve had meals and meals brought to our door by people who haven’t even had the opportunity to meet us. Because Devin just got off of paternity leave right before I was really sick, I’ve had a few people come over and babysit Evie so I can sleep. Someone came over one day so I could dump my doctor anxiety on my counselor from Georgia and it honestly made all the difference in the world for me!
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Our house has been on a little bit of a stand still for obvious reasons with unpacking 🙂 . We decided to box up some stuff again, like decor, because we’ve needed the head space for other things and we have been living in a box kingdom. Because I got rid of anything that wasn’t essential while Devin was job hunting, our house is basically Marie Kondo’ed. Is that a verb? I made it a verb. Thankfully, I started getting rid of stuff long before the job search was on our radar.
All in all, I’m going to be slowing down a tad while I completely get better and just enjoy all of the time with sweet baby since I missed a week being on pain killers. Being a Mom is really the best and we’re lucky that our first baby has such a great disposition; a woman completely lost her composure in one of my Doctor’s offices and literally began asking me if they could just touch or smell her because they couldn’t believe what a little doll she was 🤣. The whole situation gave me big Iliza Shlesinger comedy sketch vibes. You can see Shlesinger’s comedy sketch baby leg picture competition here; we watch her on VidAngel, which is a family friendly video editing service so I’m not sure if all of her stuff is family friendly.
We have a lot of family coming in town and then we can start getting the rest of our lives a little more put together. In the meantime, I’m going to be snuggling that baby of mine.
RELATED // 100 words of the year ebook
With all of the situations we’ve had already this year though, it seems that I chose an excellent word for myself this year: courage.
It takes courage to advocate and stand up for yourself.
It takes courage to ask for help (I keep learning this over and over, right?).
It takes courage to explore different perceptions and paradigms of thought.
It takes courage to be a new Mama that knows something is impacting baby and ignore professionals.
It takes courage to be happy in hard times.
It takes courage to let yourself completely start over!