Returning home after having a baby is such an emotional moment. That feeling when you are being allowed to leave the hospital with an actual human, to love and care for without any medical professionals to ask at the touch of a button! It’s a scary but exciting moment, then you walk through the front door and think “oh my goodness - this is it, there’s no going back now!”
For us this was the second time we’ve experienced this, both very different moments. This time it was all about Wesley. We were so concerned about him accepting Averly into our (his) home, that took our complete priority and he did amazing. He couldn’t wait to introduce her to Millie and I don’t think he has stopped kissing her since she has been born.
That night is a bit blurry now but I do remember us all tucking Wesley into his bed with a story and me purched on the end of his bed, trying to ignore the pain so I could enjoy the bedtime routine I’d missed so much the last two nights.
Without sounding too dark and morbid, it pretty much went downhill from there. The only pain relief the hospital could let me leave with was paracetamol and ibroprofen, as I was breastfeeding. This was along with a box of iron tablets, a 10 day course of anti-clotting injections to do at home and two types of antibiotics all to help after the placenta removal.
As mad as it may sound, my main focus was to be able to breastfeed Averly. I felt so useless with everything else as I was so immobile, breastfeeding was my only way of ‘proving’ I could actually do something only a mother could do. Because if that was taken away I felt there was no point in me even being present. Luke had to do the nappy and outfit changes, he had to pick her up and put her down for me. Even winding her was a struggle to find a position I could hold for long enough. That’s without factoring in Wesley and his movements!
My days and night were spent attempting to find a comfortable position to be able to rest. In the end I gave up attempting the bed and just propped myself up on the sofa with two hot water bottles and a number of pillows to support myself. If I was fortune to sit comfortably for a long enough time, I’d doze sleeping upright and after about an hour I’d wake in excruciating pain as I’d been still for too long and it took hours to bring the pain back to a manageable state.
In fact I can’t forget to mention Penny, a very old friend who is a physiotherapist who came out at the crack of dawn on the Sunday after we got home to show us some gentle exercises and loaned us a Tens machine. She was an angel sent from heaven that morning and the Tens machine became an extra body part for a period of time. We were so overwhelmed that she dropped everything on a Sunday morning to come and help us. One of many people on this journey who deserve such big thanks.
That went on for about a week and a half. After an unsuccessful trip to the GP, we had new pain killers from the midwife who had liaised with a breastfeeding specialist to find something stronger that wouldn‘t effect Averly. I was put on the waiting list for physiotherapy. But I just counted down the hours (sometimes minutes) before I could take more pain relief. Sometimes I felt good enough to attempt a walk which helped, but then I’d suffer afterwards. Trying to find the balance between exercise and getting serious cabin fever and over-doing it was hard. We stared at the same walls for far longer than we wanted to. We had so many plans to get out and about.
In terms of days, I’d had Averly on the Friday, home on the Saturday. It wasn’t until a week and a half later on the Wednesday that we both sat there in tears saying we can’t do this anymore - we need some help. We considered bottle feeding to allow myself to get better pain relief but no one knew what was best as it wasn‘t guaranteed a fixable problem anyway.
That Wednesday Luke attempted a GP appointment but was unsuccessful. A private physiotherapy session was booked for Thursday afternoon and we managed to bring the NHS physio apppintment forward to Friday. Then one final call to the midwife to see if any more pain relief could be provided. At this point she was concerned there had maybe been an issue with either my epidural or spinal block procedure and booked an appointment with the anesthetist to check me over on the Thursday at the hospital.
Anxiously (and uncomfortably!) waiting until Thursday all we could do was continue what we were doing. Around the clock pain relief, hot water bottles and some serious prayer.
I‘ve mentioned the medical side of this so far in this enormous post but not the spiritual side, purely to emphasise it more. In our house we pray. Before bed Wesley reads his book, has his milk, we have a cuddle and then end on a prayer. Me and Luke pray, but up until now, we see it was not as often as we should have together. We put worship music on and listened to preaches on YouTube on the odd occasion. To be honest it was something we had both already decided we were going to do more of during my pregnancy with Averly. But we went into overdrive, we never turned off the worship, we continued to pray so hard that we were both in floods of tears in the middle of the room as I rocked in pain. We watched healing videos, we asked every member of our church to stop and pray. I dragged myself to church on the Sunday and had hands laid on me with oil. On the first night we were home Luke called his mum at 3am and said to wake Dad (who is an elder in our church and a prayer warrior) and pray right now as we are in a mess, and they came around at about 7.30am also to pray together.
We kept saying ‘be healed right now, be pain free, God’s fixed it’. Then I heard the voice saying - it’s in my time, Be Still. The words be still over the next couple of weeks were told to me numerous times, which I’ll get to!
We never lost Faith through that week and a half. But honestly, seeing all those healing videos and hearing people ask God for healing when I was still in so much pain, was hard. It made me doubt if I was praying enough or deserving enough to have that healing. The devil really creeps in when you are so vulnerable.
I know I’ve rambled on again in this post (there’s just so much to tell!) but I will finish on this - when we were having our prayer and worship time, with tears pouring from my face, clinging onto a hot water bottle I had a vision from God, some may find visions a bit bizarre or too spiritual, you may even stop reading - I don‘t mind! But it’s not something I get often...I was running (well a girl was running but I believe it was me) through a desert, hills of bone dry sand and scorching heat. I was running as if I was being chased by something even though there was nothing there, no person, no buildings, not even a cactus! Stumbling up sand dunes and slipping back down the bottom the struggle continued for a while. It was a sunset sort of time with an orangey-red glow to the sky and as if quite intense music was playing to make me want to run faster from the chase. Until I got to the top of the biggest dune, sweat dripping, I stood there and looked out at nothing but the great big orangey-red sun which filled the entire sky and the music stopped and I felt the chase was over. Then ‘Be Still’ came over me. It was less of a struggle and I needed to be still and wait on the Lord’s timing.