…"give all who serve you the gifts of obedience and patient endurance." A petition from today's evening prayer.
I could really use some of that latter gift right now. As much as I am enjoying our new baby — who is growing chubby and pink and milk-fed — I am in the middle of the postpartum period and full of complaints. Shut in in the cold weather, I itch to go out — but when I slip off to run a short errand with the baby, I come back exhausted. Night nursing and baby hygiene is wearing my sleep thin. I can manage little housework and the barest minimum of school. My tailbone STILL hurts (more on that when I get to a later part of the birth story). I am leaking milk all over the place. I can't seem to drink enough water and am currently chugging unsweetened cranberry juice in an attempt to ward off what feels ominously like an incipient bladder infection. Maternity clothes are too big and my other clothes are too small, and I have to lose about 22 pounds if I don't want to buy another wardrobe.
This is a perfect example of something Mark likes to repeat out loud: Every problem we have, every kind of stress in our lives, comes because of the great blessings we enjoy. All of these complaints are a direct result of our little Leo, longed-for and long-awaited, loved.
OK, maybe the bladder tingling is an indirect result. I am crossing my fingers and hoping that the cranberry juice and lots of water flushes it away before it gets worse and I have to seek antibiotics…
Even though I am reminded and chastened by the "patient endurance" petition, I'm going to cut myself a little slack. A lot of the weeping that's been going on around here, I can chalk up not to "impatient wussiness" so much as to "hormonal mood swings." Funny thing about those, though, knowing what they are and naming them does NOT make them go away…
bearing blog 