Did you ever stop to remember the worst time of your life? The most difficult? Challenging? When you were at your lowest, your hygiene was poor, you felt exceedingly sorry for yourself, you burdened everyone around you with your helplessness and sickness and general bad smell? Can you picture what it was like to be you? Were you in pyjamas? Sweatpants? How long had your bedding gone without being changed? Were you several months behind your scheduled dental check up? Did you just eat from the same pot of soup for dinner every day of the week?
Okay. You can picture it. You feel sad. You feel physically repulsive.
Now add three children.
Maybe you already had three children and you were at your lowest low. Good for you, because you are a tough motherfucker and I am proud of you for coming out the other side.
I've had some low lows in my life. But my low lows didn't include three children. After my eldest two were born, I had some raging post partum depression and anxiety. That was really difficult. To feel so overwhelmed and sad and helpless and be responsible for small humans. But I got through it. Going through disability and hip surgery was also a super tough time in my life. I couldn't walk, go to the bathroom by myself, cook, work... I couldn't do anything. And now my other hip is hurting and I'm terrified that I'm going to have to do it all over again except be ten years older and have three children. Three freaking blonde children who are six, four, and almost two. Who need their mom.
What if I am disabled again? How can I hold my precious baby and feel her little head nestled on my shoulder and rock her while I sing a lullaby and put her in her crib? How can I do that if it hurts to pick her up? Or cuddle carry my four year old into bed? Or follow after all of them when they come inside with my stick vacuum cleaner that I am obsessed with and use at least three times a day? How can you lift kids into their car seats, or not walk to preschool, or not be able to sit on the floor during music class, or not lift hundreds of thousands of loads of laundry every week?
How can I be me? What if I can't work anymore? What if I can't do the physical tasks that I do as a mom hundreds of times a week? How will we survive?
I'm hoping it's nothing. I'm hoping it's just a sore hip that needs some massages or physio or excercises. I'm hoping the loud thunks that I hear when I'm walking aren't really my leg bone sliding in and out of my hip socket. I'm hoping that the ache I feel when I fall asleep and wake up are actually overblown manifestations of an anxious mind.
But I'm scared. And I'm sad. And I am already so, so tired. And I think I might need to get a triple periacetabular osteotomy all over again, but this time with three young children along for the ride.
