This month though? I'm doing it. Who cares if I don't have much that's interesting to say right now. Who cares that I'm not a member of BlogHer. Who cares that I'm not even American, so I don't qualify for a national (as opposed to international) blog posting event. I'm doing it anyway! And I'm going to take a photo every day to go along with it, and see if I can't figure out how to use this stinking flash at the same time.
So here I go.
First of all, may I just say how ridiculously blessed I am? I don't say it to be prideful, I just so frequently find myself in awe of the blessings I have been given, and my complete (personal opinion here) unworthiness of them.
I mean, look:
She's so perfect and beautiful that it hurts sometimes. And check out that back spike! It's not quite as impressive as Elijah's, but I think that, given time, she might have a rooster-do to match even her brother, in all of its double-crowned glory.[caption id="attachment_1203" align="aligncenter" width="199" caption="Case and point."]
[/caption]Really, though. What did I do? How do I deserve this much goodness? It reminds me of that song from The Sound of Music, that goes,
Nothing comes from nothing
Nothing ever could
So somewhere in my youth, or childhood
I must have done something good
I don't know where or when, I feel so unworthy of it even now when I'm living life and trying to be good, but at some point I did something well enough to enjoy the many good and beautiful things that I have now, and the things I will yet have.
Anyway...
We're surviving life with Matt at work, and I have to say that it's a lot easier than I thought it'd be. Sure, it's hard at times, but I actually don't find it any harder than life was when I was pregnant with Abigail and had Elijah to take care of. In many ways it's easier, and in some ways it's harder, but that balances out to be about the same to me.
I came across a blog post from when Matt went back to work after I had Elijah, and I realized something then that I had forgotten about, which was that life MUST become normal and easier and livable at some point, so why forestall that day, but refusing to adjust right now, and make life hard on myself by telling myself it's hard? That probably made no sense to anyone but me. Let's see if I can explain it better.
I have two choices. I can get stressed out about life with 2 babies, or I can learn how to deal with having 2 babies. The more time I spend stressing and saying, "this is so hard!" the less time I have to learn how to make it not hard anymore.
It's funny, because I really did find having a newborn hard when it was Elijah. I didn't know what I was doing! This time though? It's a piece of cake. I need to learn Abigail's personality and preferences, but beyond that, I know how to change diapers, treat diaper rash, nurse, burp, clean puke off the carpet, the whole 9 yards. That's not the funny part, though. The funny part is that I never consciously realized that I had learned how to take care of Elijah, I just did. It became the new normal.
So, back to having 2 kids. Hard? Sure, of course it's more hard than having one. But I'm consciously choosing to learn and adapt, rather than feeling victimized by puke-capades, short nights and temper tantrums.
Holy hannah, that was a long ramble. If Matt were reading this, he'd be bored by now, and would be saying, "Okay, you've already said and resaid that 3 times now!" Hahaha, sorry about that.
On a different note, I am LOVING crocheting right now. I made a hat and 2 little flowers for it for Abigail, and she wore it to church on Sunday. I shamelessly showed it off to my friends (who got me into crocheting in the first place) and had some requests to show them how to make one too. It was fun, and I hope that I can learn more and more techniques, and get faster at it. Some hat patterns say they only take 20 minutes to whip up, but then the author forgets that they just designed a beginner-level hat. Oh well, I'm sure it'll come in time.
Yesterday I bit the bullet and ordered some Zumba dvd's that I'm hoping to get the go-ahead to start using tomorrow. I'm going to ask that my MW check my stitches and let me know if it's safe for me to start working out and to start...**ahem**...again. I feel so fantastic, and have for at least 2 weeks now, that I have a hard time imagining not being allowed to do those things, but we'll see. My stitches have never bothered me, so I really can't be the judge of how well they're healed if I'm simply basing it off of how I feel.
(next part is TMI for some, if you don't want to read about choosing which birth control method we're going with. It's not graphic, I promise, but I'm honest about it.)
Here's the dilemma of the moment, though. After Elijah, Matt and I never felt the need to use any form of birth control. After years of infertility, you tend to be anti-birth-control because, hey, getting pregnant? A miracle. A miracle of miracles. Getting pregnant TWICE? So very welcome and exciting, and who am I to dictate when that should be, if Heavenly Father sees fit to bless us with that? But all of a sudden, when you have TWO babies under the age of two, you start to think that maybe, just maybe, it'd be wise to do something active to prevent yourself from getting pregnant quite so soon. But then there's the question as to what to do, because the one perk to infertility (if there can possibly be ANY) is that you never have to worry about not getting pregnant, so all of a sudden when you have to think about it again, you realize that it was actually nice to not have to use co.ndoms, and to not worry about being on the pill long term and how the hormones of that or an IUD would affect your body.
So I, for one, am anti-BCP, because I don't want to pump myself with more hormones than I already did having done IVF once before, and also, my cycles are so irregular that it bothers me to no end, having no clue what they would be throughout the next 1.5 years before we consider "trying" again. I want to know my body. Also, co.ndoms are gross, and not an option. The end. That really just leaves the diap.hragm, because the IUD's are for longer term than 1.5 years. We'll see how it goes.
Want to know something crazy though? Part of me doesn't want to think about this or care. Logically, I know that it'd be best for my body, and more importantly for my FAMILY for me to not get pregnant again so soon, but part of me still feels like it's ridiculous to use birth control and to think that I could get pregnant right now while breastfeeding, even though there definitely ARE post-infertility women who are nursing who do get pregnant in that time frame.
And then part of me starts down the missing-being-pregnant path, and I have to go read my post that lists all the perfectly good and logical reasons as to why it's a good idea to not get pregnant right now. Because I have such a rosy-tinted memory that I needed to write a post for myself to read whenever I get the itch and Matt, Heavenly Father and I are not on the same page as to trying. I just didn't expect to need to read that post 3.5 weeks after having Abigail.
PHEW! Any other thoughts I've been stewing over lately, that I want to toss into this random blog post/journal entry?
Oh, CHRISTMAS! I am so excited for Christmas, and all the more so now that we know Joel and Heidi will be home for Christmas. I'm hoping to do Abigail's baby blessing on Christmas Sunday, because that's the only Sunday they'll be here. I don't know how it'll work out for my family, though, if they'll come or not because it's Christmas, and we're hopefully not celebrating until the 26th.
And now that I'm thinking about blessings and Christmas, I think I'm going to finish this up and go and look for some cute crocheted blessing gowns or cute dresses that I can crochet with white yarn. If anyone has a pattern they know of, feel free to let me know.
**Edit** Abigail smiled her very first smile today! 3 weeks and 3 days old. It feels so momentous, maybe because it's the first real milestone that you look for them to hit, and she has now. She's growing and growing, and it's...strange. She's almost not a newborn anymore, and I know time is going to go so fast to the point where I'll look at her like I look at Elijah, and she won't be a baby anymore. BUT until then, we have lots of baby moments to look forward to. :)
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