Recovery

I am a pretty healthy person. Before giving birth to Hannah, the longest I had ever been in a hospital was about the hour you spend each year (or two years) for your annual check up. So this C-section has been my first major or minor surgery ever (besides having my wisdom teeth out).

Anyhow, it has been quite the experience. I had no idea that the recovery was such a process. With Hannah I was out of the hospital in 2 days and going for walks within a couple days after that. With the C-section, I couldn't even get out of bed by myself the first night I was home. It is such a weird experience not being able to do things on your own. Lucky for me, I had tons of loving family in town that didn't mind waiting on me. Everyone was totally willing to get things for me and give up the nicest chair for me, etc..which was great.

There have been 2 really difficult parts to this recovery. The first is not being able/allowed to pick up Hannah. It's really sad not being able to play with your daughter. That was really hard on me the first week. Lucky for me I had tons of family around to keep her entertained and active. I can't imagine what she would have felt like if I had come home from the hospital with a new baby and then I "refused" to play with her. As I get better, I can carry her short distances when necessary and I can sit on the floor with her. However, I am still alittle afraid that she will randomly hit or kick my belly on accident...it's been known to happen.

The second difficult part, as mentioned earlier, is not being able to do things by myself. But even harder is to ask for help. Even with such a loving family around, it's still difficult to ask people to help pull you up, or to carry your daughter to bed for you. My tendency is to try to do it by myself. This is not always the best thing. I have had to learn to just relax and enjoy the fact that people want to help me out and do things for me. There is such grace involved in accepting help.

I think this is what old people must feel like. At one point, you were totally self-sufficient, and now you're not. I think one of the keys to aging well is learning to accept help with things that you used to be able to do on your own; realizing that there are people out there that are more than willing to help with everyday things as long as you let them do so. Lucky for me, I am coming out of my dependent stage and am slowly able to do things on my own. Hopefully I can practice accepting help with grace so that as I get older it won't be so hard.

Anyhow, not all recovery has been bad. I can now see my toes...and they are back to their normal size again. I can also tie my own shoes. Also, I weighted myself the other day (dangerous, I know), but I have lost 30lbs...granted about 11 of that is Peter-weight, but still. My goal is to loose another 30 so I am back to my pre-Hannah-pregnancy weight. Hopefully I can get there before I get pregnant again. We'll see...