Looking back at rest

So it’s the last day of February and the end of my ‘rest’ experiment. I don’t know if I would call it a success, but I did try.

My darling baby came on his due date, February 10th. I delivered Oren Aster Young unmedicated, but because his heart rate was dropping, a suction was needed at the very end to help deliver him more quickly. I knew that birth was going to be difficult, but you really have no way to prepare yourself for the intensity of it without having prior experience. Needless to say, I am glad I never have to do it again.

After the birth, I couldn’t do anything but rest. My body felt like it had been hit by a bus, and my main job was feeding our baby. Prior to Oren’s arrival, I had done as much preparation as possible – buying baby supplies, grocery shopping, cooking and freezing food – so that when we got home we could just take care of him. That worked out really well, and Harley picked up any slack and did all the diaper changes in the first few days. I actually don’t think I changed a diaper until O was five days old.

As my body began to heal, I found myself wanting to do simple chores like tidying and folding laundry. I wanted to to move gently, and these felt like good ways to do that. Now that I’m two and a half weeks out, I’ve ramped it up a little, but I still spend most of my day sitting on the couch. It does help me to get up occasionally to move around, and I typically pick something up or put something away before I come back to the couch. I’ve also made a point to shower every morning, which keeps me feeling like a real human.

Harley was able to take the first week off of work, and my parents came for the following week. My mom stayed until yesterday, which was a tremendous help. For the month of March, Harley will be able to work from home three days per week, so that will give me a good transitional period for figuring out how to be at home alone with O for the next couple of months. I definitely will need to continue to incorporate rest into my day to day, and I’ll need to be creative about finding ways to make that work.