Fall

You can't tell in this photo, that I took with "Photo Booth" on my laptop

  (being too lazy to get out a real camera and upload anything)

but the tree in our front yard is changing colors. 

(You can see in this photo, that our curtains fell down off of our front window --- It was a toddler hiding in the sheers plus baby and mommy nursing incident....to be fixed in the near future.)

I'm feeling very strangely about the leaves changing colors.

I couldn't figure out why the leaves were even changing,

 until last night it dawned on me that it is October, and that October is Fall. 

And that soon after Fall is Winter.

In my mind it's still August, and I just had a baby. I'm feeling good, so it can't be July --- I don't feel the physical drain of childbirth. But I don't feel like any time has passed at all. So it must still be August... and it should still be warm out, and the leaves should be green. And I can't figure out how my baby is so big, or why she is so "grown up."

 Its been three months since she was born?

I don't believe you!

I'm not ready for Fall.

Why?

Something about Fall is intimidating to me this year.

I've never lived here during Fall. I've never seen Iowa in the Fall.

I saw it in the Winter when we shopped for our home. (Well I guess technically it might have been Fall, but it seemed more like winter. It wasn't the Fall with leaves.)

We moved here in the winter. I feel like I know what's coming there -- bare world and shelter.

But Fall...

I keep getting that sinking feeling in the pit of the stomach, that I used to get when school was starting  as a kid. The ache of losing summer, the disappointment of routine.

I don't know.

I think its just taken me by surprise.

Pregnancy has a way of removing me from time, and I always miss summer completely (End of summer babies). And so it so I get surprised by Fall.

I may be having emotional flash backs to the Fall after J was born.

Of course I was happy, but I was also sad.

Working through the c-section. Physically still sore, emotionally so raw....trying to get the weight off.

The pregnancy weight, 

the additional over-weight, 

and the weight of perceived failure. 

Not to mention seeing my body post-baby for the first time. 

(Shocking when you live in the The United States of Photoshop.)

When the crisp air touches my cheek,

my heart, and not my mind, 

remember taking walks together when it was cold and achey, 

feeling fairly alone, wrapped up together, but no longer one.

Maybe losing baby weight in the Fall is a bit emotional for me still.

That cold air feels more raw than it should. 

I try to pull out of that feeling this Fall.

We have a warm home.

Which is not quiet this year.

And I love that.

I love having a two year old to speak to me, when the baby only smiles.

I love knowing that my baby's mind is alive because I see what she sees through my two year old's eyes.

And I'm just starting to feel a reprieve in my heart

from the c-section.

I'm just starting to process how I can be free.

I've always been an introvert.

So strong in strength, that my thought for others, very weak.

But something new has happened.

My heart is alive for others.

To see the moms at ICAN I burn, fire in my soul, with compassion.

To write letters to friends, near and far, who ask because I've been there -- I buzz inside.

I am outside myself.

And so whole,

despite the break. 

Perhaps even,

yes,

bigger

and better

and 

WHOLE.

A whole I'd never know

if I hadn't had some things removed.

Am I always happy about it?

No.

Do I love 

that I love?

Yes.

I also am only just now starting to realize 

I did it.

I lived through a pregnancy, 

despite the crushing weight of terror.

I lived through a test of faith,

despite how faithless I felt.

And 

I did what so many told me 

I couldn't.

When I go to the gym to swim...

every single time,

 I walk past the doctor's office where I was told not to do what I was going to do.

I wrote about it before --- how he told me I'd likely need another c-section because I'd already had a c-section, but I didn't mention that he told me NOT to do a home birth (because I wasn't blogging about the home birth, till it happened, for my sanity's sake.)

It was a long 15 mins.

I went in for a referral to a Chiropractor, and left with an assaulted hope.

The first few times I walked by that place, after Baby A's birth, 

I only felt the oppression of his words. I only felt the sinking feeling.

I only felt the exhaustion of treading water in a pool of doubt.

Then maybe the third time I walked by,

and looked in the windows, 

and down the hall, 

towards the room of the attack.

I took a deep breath.

Breathed into the bottom,

filled up all of my lungs,

and said,

"You are free."