I am having my FOURTH baby in about 3 weeks… and guess what?!?!?!

I am on bed rest! Have been for about a month now;-(

 

Does anyone know what that means to a lady that has a to-do list the size of her arm, that can’t sit still for more than two seconds, that lives on a farm and SPRING is coming?!?!?

Well, let me tell you what it means:

It means life just got interesting!

So, you may be wondering what “job” I speak of in the title of this post…

Well, you could be thinking about the “real job” I still work at occasionally at the hospital as a Respiratory Therapist, which is one of the jobs I can’t do while on bed rest…

Or you may be thinking about the jobs I do from home or have done from home in the past, aka health coaching, doing bookkeeping type stuff for my dad’s business, keeping up a HUGE garden, mowing the lawn a minimum 4 hours a week, or building furniture (which I am still doing while on bed rest, with the help of my AMAZING husband!)…

But the job I am talking about is taking care of my home.

It is my job, role, task, responsibility, duty, position… whatever you want to call it… to take care of my home.

Now… I understand women who work outside the home feeling the punch here, I was one and still am one on occasion. But bare with me. I am not all like “women need to stay home and have babies and cook and clean”. I AM all about doing what I know God has called ME to and that is caring for my home so my husband doesn’t have that burden during this phase of life.

How does that happen when you are on bed rest, with three kids running around and homeschooling still needing to get done and food still needing to be made?!?!?!

Here’s how it is going:

GREAT!

As unreal as that sounds, IT IS TRUE!

I am in horrible pain and get really frustrated at my body’s inability to “do what God created women’s bodies to do” but I am learning SO MUCH!

God has me here for a reason!

~It is to teach me patience

~It is to teach me to slow down

~It is to give me the time I need to organize the computer (you laugh, but SERIOUSLY… I could not have changed my blog branding without this downtime)

~It is to remind me that my babes need me to stop and cuddle them throughout the day

~It is to MAKE me stop and listen to my husband and my babes

~It is to LEARN about those babes given to me by God

~It is teaching me to give myself grace

As a SAHM (which I just learned is what people write for Stay At Home Mom;-), it is easy to be home but not HERE.

Not present.

Not interacting.

The saying is sooooo true:

“The days are long but the years are short.”

Bed rest, which I have now been on with 3/4 of my pregnancies, is a blessing in disguise!

How often does a mother with three babes running around have the time to even notice those sweet little baby kicks and learn about the personality of the little human growing inside of them?!?!

How often is if fully acceptable for a momma with three babes to sit on the couch for hours a day reading books to her babes and cuddling while watching too much TV for the day but enjoying every second because it is with her babes?!?!?!

How often does a momma with three babes have DAYS ON END with nothing on the schedule to get done or places to go other than to BE there with her babes and husband?

 

But there is a darker side to bed rest this time around.

I have learned since moving to the farm 5 weeks before my last baby was born how to be self-sufficient.

Right after moving here, my husband decided to go back to school full time which I fully support but with a job in retail and the hours required for that and then school on top of it, I was plunged even deeper into the life of single-parenting.

I was OVERWHELMED that first year here with a brand new baby, two other babes to look after, a farm to upkeep, no help with breakfast, lunch, dinner, or bedtimes each and every single day of the week minus those two random days off that usually ended up being a day he had class until 10:30 p.m. anyway, and my oldest starting kindergarten in a community we had lived in less than a couple months.

I learned in that time to survive! I also started a very time-demanding job around the time we moved working in ministry. Helping women, lots of women, with lots of baggage and struggles than needed me and my time. It was a GREAT outlet for me, but also just another thing that seems to push me further and further into this life of depending on no one but myself for anything… EVER.

Enter a new bed rest time.

I didn’t realize ANY of these things until being put on bed rest 4 weeks ago. I didn’t realize how much I had changed. How much I had “hardened”. How much I had become like those solemn-faced women you see in pioneer pictures because they had to SURVIVE HARD frontier life.

I hadn’t realized how much I depended on myself for EVERYTHING…

To the point of not depending on my Savior!!

I was saying “I got this God!” “I don’t need your help because look at me do it all.”

When in reality I was just SURVIVING.

I was doing what needed to get done to keep my kids fed, clothed and taken care of and my husband fed and out the door each day.

I was not ENJOYING my babes because I was with them 24/7, sometimes counting the days that I was with them without a second’s break (the highest I counted when paying attention was 42 days without a moment’s break) and wanting to just drive in a car to work BY MYSELF and talk to my work people for 8 hours! Work became my “break”. The days I got to work at the hospital made me giddy… because I didn’t have little people needing me all the time.

Survival.

Right now I am living survival in a completely different way. Not in “surviving” the mom- thing but surviving the prego thing;-) With all the medical complications my body seems  incapable of handling… there are moments over the last month where I struggle….

HARD!

I struggle to remain patient when something I could do in 5 minutes is taking my husband 2 hours to do…

I struggle to not snap at my kids for the littlest indiscretions…

I struggle to not have a pitty party for the severe pain I seem to live in constantly at this point…

I struggle with nesting… and nothing getting “nested” because I can’t DO ANYTHING without pain.

I still struggle… not gunna lie. I struggle more right now than I think I have with any pregnancies…

But I also see the victories & God’s sovereign hand.

I see some of the exact purposes God has is doing what He is doing right now with my body. And although I don’t enjoy it and wish for something easier and better… that is NOT what God has placed on my life right now and I need to STOP with the pitty party!

There are people all over the world going through soooo much more than this…. There are women everywhere that would give their left hand to be sitting on bedrest in horrible pain just in order to FINALLY get that precious baby they have been praying for years God would bless them with.

There are people that have/will lose someone important and close to them. Maybe even one of their precious little babes…

When I sit here and think logically and with that kind of perspective… I continue to THRIVE in this season of life God has called me to…

When I start down the road of HATING the pain and suffering and let those thoughts consume me… I return to SURVIVING….

 

 

A place that benefits NO ONE and only brings about more pain and potential problems.

If you have made it this far in this post, I commend you!!!! This was really a ramblings of my MOMMA HEART.

This parenting thing is HARD!!!! It is hard when you are on bedrest, and it is hard when you aren’t. Each of us are in different places and have different struggles. But no matter where you are, whether dealing with rebellious teenagers or a newborn that just WON’T SLEEP… God is faithful!!!

He wastes NOTHING!

Nothing in life catches Him by surprise and he has a purpose in it ALL….

Even those times of life when you can’t do your job anymore… and the phase of life changed on you without your permission….

The dirty toilet with be waiting for my “mom-style cleaning” in a couple weeks… I will wear those nose plugs like a champ and get ‘er done! AND I will be thankful for the ability again to move to a new phase of life and clean that dirty toilet;-)