This post is brought to you by Endorphins

Y'all, I just worked out! Wheeee! I feel so self righteously accomplished right now, it's amazing. I feel like maybe I will really not spend the rest of the year in a lumpen sleep-deprived stupor on the couch. Man, it that workout was hard, too, after not working out at all - not even a little - for seven weeks. I had intended to start back at the beginning of this week, but it just didn't happen. Even this morning I was feeling discouraged because I put the Little down for her morning nap and got my weights and stuff all situated and of course she woke up and it took me another hour to get her down for good. It was like she knew I wanted to do something. It took me over an hour to run through the workout because I had to keep stopping in order to not puke a lung up onto the carpet.
Did I tell you guys I was in pain for the better part of six weeks? I don't think I did. I mean, I think I mentioned the infection thing and the pain that nearly surpassed the birthing of a seven pound human, but I don't think I told you how much of a rollercoaster my recovery was. I mention this only because I am really only JUST feeling capable of exercising. I had fully intended on taking six whole weeks off from formal exercise anyway, but I thought it would have been nice to get some long walks in or maybe a hike or something before then (see how naively ambitious I was?!).

The recovery from the birth itself was really not that bad. I was sore for the first few days and then felt fairly good. By the end of week 2, I felt pretty well healed. And then that infection reared its ugly head and oh my lord the pain. DID I MENTION THE PAIN??? Anyway, you all know that landed me a 10 day course of antibiotics, which of course led to a yeast infection and horrifyingly painful constipation, and let me just say that when you spend nearly $30 on various hemorrhoid treatments and then have to send your husband back to the mini-mart at 10 pm to buy an enema, you know you've hit the "worse" in "for better or worse". Until that moment I had been maintaining with Adam that girls don't poop or fart, it just doesn't happen for us. Let us never speak of it again.

After all that, I had to go back to the emergency clinic and have the stitches removed because they didn't fall out on their own (yeowch!) and then developed another inflamed and painful cyst probably caused by my body having a reaction to the internal stitches and an unrelated but weirdly coincidental ingrown hair that the doc actually wanted to do another course of antibiotics for! I told her if they were going to do that, they might as well take me out back and put me out of my misery because I didn't think I could survive it again. See how one thing led to another in a vicious cycle of pain? But I'm finally starting to feel like myself again... um, down there.

Aaaaannd... now you know more about me than you ever wanted to! But seriously, I don't think people talk about postpartum enough. I'm sure I'm not the only one who's gone through wonky recovery hell, but no one talks about it because who wants to admit they had to buy rectal suppositories? Anyone? Anyone?
On a completely different tangent, yesterday I pumped a bottle** and Adam was going to attempt to give it to Avery for her first nighttime feeding so I could get some extra sleep. Would you believe that when I got into bed, I actually felt sad that I wouldn't see the baby for her next feeding? How insane is that?! I get an opportunity to sleep for 6 hours and I almost say no because I will miss her. Even though I would be sleeping and probably not even notice. This does not bode well for my return to work in 5 weeks (*sob*). I am already feeling like I want to cast myself off a rooftop when I think about leaving my Little Biddle and not knowing if she's crying for me and I'm not there. I think Adam wants me to quit my job. I'm still somewhat on the fence about it, but that's a whole 'nother blog post.

**Speaking of pumping, is it supposed to be a little painful? Is it supposed to take a long time? I have a Medela Pump In Style and it kind of hurts and my nipples turn purple or white after using it. And it took me about 30 minutes to get 3 oz out of one boob yesterday. Normal? Suck it up? Or am I doing something wrong?