still surrendering...

this week has been good, but tough.

i am completely broke and because two student loan companies didn't offer a long enough forbearance while i waited for my deferment approval, my credit rating has tanked in two months, A LOT, and i'm so broke i can't pay some of my bills this month, surely adding to another drastic reduction of an already not so great number.

i am seriously trying not to freak out about things that i cannot control and things that are only fears right now, like the possibility that all of my interest rates and my car insurance premium will go up.

i got a call from the counseling place this week and it looks like i could possibly be working for them in the next week or two but had i known when i signed up for the three full training days that it would be unpaid and could still take up to a month to start working, i might have rethought my entire strategy.

i am seriously happy in my decision to stop watching the girls when i did but i might have made better financial plans before saying my good-byes. aside from lack of money, it was a wise decision, though. my sprout hasn't had a runny, icky diaper since. the baby girl kept passing something around. she was constantly sick and the poor thing also suffered from a major lactose intolerance that her parents were well aware of but chose to completely ignore at their convenience. changing multiple diarrhea diapers every day was the worst! i have also had time (and energy) to devote to much needed organization around my house. i still have lots of grown-up phone calls to make and other business to take care of but i got a handle on some very important rearranging. i'd like to say that my house was in tip-top shape but my pelvic misalignment is back in full swing, it's gotten progressively worse over the last seven days. yesterday, after two near-falls and being unable to get back up, both times, for about twenty minutes, i got serious about making sure my core muscles were tight and did a much longer series of realignment exercise a la the don tigny approach which was always more helpful and accessible than anything my PT wanted me to try last time i was pregnant. truth be told, she didn't even know what to do with me and the one chiropractor in town that supposedly specializes in SPD (which is apparently now known as pelvic girdle pain, in the UK, at least, where they do a ton more research on the topic) caused way more pain than she helped relieve. at this point, i'm all about self-help techniques, but yesterday was so bad that for the first time in three years, i need pharma-pain-relief as well. i think between babies, i had taken aleve or motrin a few times, but i hate pills and never take anything remotely risky while pregnant. i also have a pretty high pain tolerance but i'm going on five years of feeling like shit nearly every day.


so i took a vicodin. whooo, did that make me drowsy. i was so happy that i could walk around pain-free, but that only last twenty minutes before the pain came back. the previous three hours i spent on the couch trying to rest or nap, which the littles wanted nothing to do with.
the other night, the pain wasn't even full-throttle like yesterday, but i threw my right leg out of whack while putting the little ones to bed and the thought crossed my mind that maybe some inner emotional stuff was working itself out as this odd manifestation of severe symptoms again. see, i generally have some mid-cycle "looseness" and mild pain in the hip/pelvic region but since last tuesday it's been much more pronounced than it has since sprout was born. two years postpartum, i thought it would be getting better. i'm not nearly as immobile as i was while pregnant but i find that i have to once again move around very, very slowly. anyhow, after this thought crossed my head, i mentioned it to my husband. i don't think he believes in the mind/body connection at all, at least not in the sense that real tangible pain and dis-ease can be somehow intricately tied to inner thoughts, feelings, and emotions. his answer was no, i was in pain simply as the result of having three children.

i don't even know how to explain why i resented that comment so much. if only my mind allowed me to think of this problem as so easily explained. if only i wasn't in pain, mostly all the time, as a reminder of why i can't have any more babies. if only that were true, than more women would be limping around as well. but when i think about that one too long, i realize how often it is that i do see women limping. how often i notice older women with walkers or canes or wheelchairs, while their husbands walk gallantly aside. i don't like to make statistical claims and i'm no scientist but it does make me wonder how many of those women had pelvic misalignment during pregnancy. that ol' pregnancy limp that we've gotten so used to seeing as a mock-pregnancy signature walk? yeah, it ain't normal.

anyhow, despite all of this - the pain - the lack of money in the bank - i am so grateful that my husband supported my leap of faith and that i've had this time off, so to speak, to tend to matters around the house. even if i haven't been the most patient and available mama this week, i have had some small successes.

i was able to handle all of the last minute details of highschool choir and variety shows last week, i was able to start small and plant seeds in three planters with pea, and i have fully weaned sprout (thus why i felt safe taking that vic, yesterday) but have open and available arms for him to fall asleep in every day at nap time and every night before bed.

still learning what it means to surrender to the process that positive thinking will pay off but making time to journal every morning helps a lot ;)