Setbacks

A few hours after my mom left, I developed a pain in my lower back. It felt like I'd pulled a muscle, and I assumed I must have done something. But no matter how much I thought about it, I couldn't come up with any sort of triggering injury. I thought maybe I'd done something simple that was amplified by my extreme weight loss. I'd been losing almost a pound a day since Gavin was born, and I know that can make you susceptible to injury.

When neither rest nor stretching nor ice helped my back feel better, I started thinking it was a pinched nerve. It took over a week before Kevin convinced me to go to the doctor where I got my shingles diagnosis. In the meantime, I was confined to the couch. It was a real let down, after such an active  week. But it took me three or four days just to wash the sheets on the guest bed so we'd be prepared for the next guests. And my grand plans of cleaning the house (or at least the toilets and floors) were thrown out. Luckily we were able to hire a professional cleaning service to come through and keep the house somewhat in order.

The shingles was exacerbated by Trump's win, which was a serious shock. I was almost glad to have a physical reason to stay on the couch for a while. During Gavin's third week of life, I let my world shrink. I focused on taking care of him and taking care of myself. I watched a ton of Star Trek in an attempt to feel optimistic about the future (turns out Deep Space Nine is not the right series if this is your goal).

At the end of this week, my dad and his girlfriend came to visit, and Gavin started to learn some new tricks. He seemed able to make eye contact and to be looking at things with more intent than before. It was exciting to start seeing him make some mental leaps, even if part of me still thinks that we're projecting skills on him before he really has them. We did go out and buy a mobile for his crib, but it was a couple more weeks before he seemed able to focus on it at all.

After dad left, I went to the doctor and started getting treated for my shingles. Just in time for Gavin to develop a second round of thrush that made it painful for him to eat from my left boob. It was just one more in a seemingly never-ending series of minor setbacks. And while we kept powering through, I still wasn't able to focus on anything much bigger than caring for my son.