Tuesday, January 9, 2018

Blog 168: Absence makes the heart grow fonder…

…As the old saying goes. The time I have spent away from the blog has been far too long. For that I do sincerely apologize.

The almost 2 year time span that I have been away neglecting my blog is unacceptable really. But I’m not here to make excuses for why I haven’t been posting. But I do have a few reasons for my absence. Mental health, pregnancy and raising a newborn, Hurricane Irma, and exhaustion just to name a few reasons.

I took some time off to evaluate my mental health, since my mother passed away I have been grieving in all sorts of ways. Remembering the positive things that she always did, realizing all of the things that I couldn’t do with my mom anymore. Calling her, texting her, giving her hugs, hearing her voice (unless in a home video), receiving letters and cards from her or sending them to her. Coming to terms with the fact that my “go-to” person is no more is very hard to grip. I am more accepting now than I was when she passed away in 2015. My anxiety about being able to talk to my mother was horrible, but has gotten better. I get emotional on certain things still, but I know how to handle it better than before. One thing that helps me now, is that I know she is proud of who I have become and is watching over my family and I. So that was the majority of my 2015 and 2016.

Then in early 2017, my husband and I found out that we were expecting our first child. How exciting. It set off my anxiety little bit mainly because of the unknowns and not having my mother there to answer my “what if” questions. But my husband, my family and his family have all been supportive throughout the entire pregnancy. While everything went smoothly for the pregnancy, no complications whatsoever, my son decided to come exactly 3 weeks early. Which ties into the Hurricane Irma reason.


Now I don’t generally watch the news stations purely because I don’t like that they always report the negative things in the world more than the positive things in life. However, with the pending Hurricane threatening Florida, I watched it like a hawk. I was pleased to see that it downgraded to only a Category One hurricane by the time it reached our area near Tampa. But the barometric pressure set me and many other women in the area into labor. My son was due September 28th, but was born on the 7th. I was released from the hospital a day earlier than I was supposed to be due to the overwhelming demand of the rooms and the hurricane. I was discharged from the hospital the day that Hurricane Irma was due to hit our area. I was able to get home, make last minute preparations with my family and hunker down in a closet for the night while the hurricane blew through the area. Thank goodness the baby slept through the whole thing. We were very fortunate to never lose power, and the only property damage we sustained was a broken tree limb, and some missing patio screening.

As most people who have children know the first couple of months are the hardest with a newborn baby, mainly because baby eats, sleeps, and poops. They eat every 2 hours and sleep most of the day, but for a new mother it was very exhausting just in the fact that I was still getting into the groove of things, getting adjusted with having a baby, being limited in what I could do physically because I was healing from having a C-section, and just life in general as a new mom. More on this with the new blog coming soon – Baby Boy Blogging.

So that is everything that has been going on with me in the past year or so. I hope to be able to get more blog posts done rather quickly. I know that I have a small list of things that will be posted rather quickly.

Thank you for reading and I hope you will continue to read my journey, and please feel free to comment below and subscribe.

Peace and love to you all.

Blog again soon.

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