Well, folks, it's been a wild ride.
Chippy made their grand entrance in the end of March and immediately turned our world on its head in all the best ways. Babies surely complicate things, but Chippy has brought so much richness and joy into our lives. All the silly cliches turn out to be true: they grow up too quickly, the days are long but the years are short, you can't imagine your life without them.
We soon discovered that Chippy is perfect and wonderful in every conceivable way. I genuinely have to hold myself back from sharing details and pictures, because all of them are glorious. But, in the interests of maintaining our baby's privacy, I'll restrain myself. Those who know me IRL are welcome to send me a message if you're not on the baby group chat already.
Also, this blog isn't about Chippy. It's about walking with Jesus and dancing with horses - both of which have carried me through not-the-easiest-postpartum-experience-ever.
I rode up until I was about 35 weeks. By then, I had absolutely no energy. Just clambering onto Lancey or Arwen to walk a lap or two around the arena left me drained. Then again, let's be real: by 35 weeks, everything left me drained---putting on shoes, getting out of the shower, walking across the house, et cetera. Ladies and gentlemen, I was ENORMOUS. DH had to shave my legs and towel my feet. We moved the car's steering wheel back so that I could fit behind it. It was a whole thing.
When Chippy arrived---at 41 weeks, after two days' failed induction and eventually a Caesarean---we quickly discovered why I had been so enormous. Chippy was four kilos (almost nine pounds). How on Earth my five-foot-four frame had produced a whopper like that, nobody knows. More to the point, Chippy was healthy and perfect in every way, and so was I. The first 24 hours sucked (more on that later) but less than 48 hours after my Caesarean, they let us go home, largely because I begged.
Thus began a recovery that was, well, so much less melodramatic than folks would lead you to believe. I had received dire warnings that there would be pain for weeks and that it would be months before I could get back to normal and so on. Truthfully, those first few days of breastfeeding sucked so much more than the incision. It hardly ever caused me any trouble. For the first week, moving was weird and not fun, mostly because it felt like I didn't know my own body anymore. I had minimal or no pain from the incision even after I quit using the painkillers after a few days.
By our one-week appointment, though, Chippy and I were feeling ready to take on the world. The physio in hospital had given me exercises and instructed me to stick to 1000 steps per day for the first week, then to increase that by 1000 steps per day for the next week, and so on until six weeks. When you walk as much as I do---I was still getting 10-12k steps checking horses in the farthest fields at 40 weeks---this feels like prison. I managed it for the first three weeks. After that, I did whatever the heck I wanted, barring lifting heavy objects, and didn't miss a beat despite all the dire warnings. I started doing some groundwork with Wynnie again at this point, including long-lining, but no riding yet.
I did promise myself I'd wait for my six-week check-up before riding again, but to my great sorrow, K departed for England the day I was six weeks postpartum. We both agreed we had to have one more ride together, so at five weeks and five days, I clambered aboard Lancey. I said I'd walk for ten minutes or so. Forty-five minutes later, after a glorious trot and canter, I dismounted feeling like a million bucks.
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| au revoir K <3 |
Part of me had been really afraid that motherhood would reduce me to a shell of myself. That it would rob me, somehow, of my grand passion. The complete opposite was true. In Erin's words, "I don't know why our brains self-destruct without horses, but they do." The Lord gave me a thread to heaven, and it's horses. While I was bouncing on that stupid effing yoga ball trying to get Chippy to descend toward my uncooperative cervix (yoga balls are great when you're in labour, but I personally never want to see one again in my life), I was listening to my riding music, playing a horse game on my phone. Remembering Scripture and thinking about my baby and chatting with my husband and all that good stuff too, but even in those moments, horses were something to dream about.
I made a playlist on my phone called "First Ride Back" with all my favourite riding tunes. "Test Driving Toothless," that song from Top Gun, "Where No One Goes," the music from Narnia, the music from Spirit, a few rousing hymns. "So Will I." "Hallelujah"---the Casting Crowns one. I used to listen to it when everything felt like too much. Did I mention that we built onto our house in my last trimester and couldn't take out any building loans? I picked up extra writing work and earned almost every cent while voluminously pregnant. Yeah, it was a whole thing. Low points were numerous. That playlist, and dreaming of my first time back on a horse, were gifts the Lord used to cheer my heart in those hard, hard weeks.
And that first ride back? It was exactly what I'd been dreaming of. I felt like Hiccup and Toothless soaring over the oceans of Berk, like Spirit running wild in the Cimarron, like Lucy riding bareback and carefree as Aslan bounded over Narnia. I felt home.
God is good.
