I’m not even really sure how to introduce this post. This past year has been one of the most unique of my life. There’s the obvious: I had a baby. Everything about how we prioritized our time and ourselves changed immediately in February 2016. Parenthood was (and is) hard and weird and wonderful and so much more than we expected it to be in so many ways. That’s the obvious, right? It was wonderfully fulfilling, satisfying, difficult, and emotional. And right smack in the middle of this adjustment…I started falling apart.

Physically that is. Emotionally I wasn’t doing great for the first two or three months, but that’s to be expected as a new momma. #hormones.

Looking back on that 4 month span of life is so surreal. There was a time when I was in some type of doctor’s office at least three times a week. I’ve been struggling with what it has looked like to process all that happened to me and I thought that writing it all down might do me some good. I learned some concrete things and I’m still swimming around in some big questions. And still dealing with a little bit of getting back to normal. And in a spirit of honesty and vulnerability, I wanted to share that with you all.

Disclaimer: I know, know, know, this is not that dramatic in the long scheme of things. People have been through much worse (in fact, I’ve been through worse!), and this isn’t a clamor for attention. It’s just a dose of transparency with the hopes that it could be comforting or encouraging to someone who’s experienced something similar.

Here’s the actual details of it all:

First, in July, I noticed a twinge of pain in my back. I’d had a pinched nerve before and back pain wasn’t super uncommon for me, so I didn’t pay much attention to it. But after it lasted for a week or so, and I was uncomfortable all the time, I figured I should see a chiropractor and see if I could get any relief. Around that same time, I started feeling like I had a hernia. Stay with me. I know this sounds extreme. I was trying to get back into working out, since I had been cleared to do so, and every time I did anything ab related, I had hernia symptoms! Eek! So all that to say…I just thought that birth/Ollie had super messed me up. It’s not uncommon to experience some of that weirdness postpartum, and I was for sure experiencing weirdness.

So this is where it gets a little weirder. I’d started going to the chiropractor regularly, I’d scheduled my hernia specialist appointment with instructions to stop working out for 6 weeks, and I was getting plenty of rest…in short, I was doing what I was supposed to do. David and I started going on walks with the stroller in the evening because small business ownership means you stay in your house a lot. So we’d go on nightly strolls to get some fresh air and remember there was a world outside the office. And we started going on longer walks because it was July aka the beginning of Pokemon Go madness, and because I can’t resist a good trend, I was on board.

Every time we’d go on a longer walk, my lower left leg would start swelling up. It was crazy! I would feel pressure as if a balloon was expanding near my shin and the only thing that would help was elevating my leg. I felt like I was imagining it! I’d even make David look at my leg just to see if it was really happening! Again, I ignored it because I attributed it to Ollie weirdness…plus how do you even explain that to a doctor?

Meanwhile, I’m still going to the chiropractor three times a week and now I’ve started having back spasms when I do “too much” activity. Essentially, if I went on a long walk! I started being exhausted constantly, I would physically need a nap in order to go on with my day. My hand would grow tired as I wrote my to do list down. And finally, the real tipping point, my arm felt weak when I brushed my teeth. Seriously. I’d have to sit down while I brushed and every night I’d tell David how out of shape I was. It was ridiculous. But then again, I was a new mom! Wasn’t I supposed to be tired? Wasn’t I supposed to feel weak?

I remember telling my friend Carly about all of my isolated health weirdness and she commented on how not normal it was to get tired brushing your teeth, no matter how out of shape you were. I think that was like a lightbulb moment for me. I was having so many different health issues happening…was this really normal?

Here’s the positive. God was so protective and kind to us in this process. Everything took a downward turn during the ONLY summer month that we didn’t have weddings. We had been so bummed to not book during that month, but in retrospect, we NEEDED that month to deal with all of this! And at some point during this, we realized that I had hit my premium with health insurance (I was still on my parents’ insurance…another Godsend), and that I could essentially go to the doctor as much as I wanted without being charged a cent. I never thought I’d be thankful for the mountains of medical bills it took to have a baby, but here we were, SO thankful.

All of that, plus the fact that we were about to be in the thick of it with weddings again plus the fact that I couldn’t walk ANYWHERE without my leg swelling, is what gave me the motivation to finally go to the doctor. I stopped at an Urgent Care after a client meeting one day and was immediately taken to the back. I didn’t even know where to begin! So I just told them the whole story. No one knew what to say. And it seemed like no one had answers. Really, I just wanted to find out if I could walk around on a wedding day without my leg exploding. A doctor or two told me that it was all unrelated to each other and set me up with a few different specialists. They even drew blood just to make sure I didn’t have mono. I booked emergency appointments with specialists because I needed to get this figured out before weddings started.

I still remember walking out of my ultrasound appointment for my leg, another dead end, when I got a call from the Blacksburg Urgent Care. A nurse practitioner had taken a look at my files and my blood work and said she had discovered my numbers were off with my thyroid. I didn’t even know what the thyroid was or where it was located! She told me my TSH levels were at 220. And they were supposed to be in the 1.5-2 range. Two hundred and twenty when they were supposed to be at two! This was cause for concern. Often, people get put on medication when their TSH gets a couple numbers above 2…like 4. She asked me to come in and see her immediately.

David, Ollie, and I drove out there and she made sense of all of it for us. Everything was connected. The back pain, muscle spasms, muscle weakness, exhaustion, leg swelling, even the issues I’d had breast feeding…all of it. There was one single answer. And it was easily solvable. It’s probably something that I’d been dealing with for years and my body had just tanked postpartum. Hypothyroidism (aka slow thyroid) is super common and great change is seen with daily medication being regulated properly. (your thyroid is a gland located in your neck and it affects, well…everything. google the list of symptoms and you will be amazed!) It was surreal and so relieving to hear all of this. Yeah, it was going to take 8 months to a year to regulate (a number that is holding up so far), but there was an answer!

I can’t tell you how happy I was to hear that my exhaustion and weakness were not normal. I’d been beating myself up for weeks and even experiencing some discontent towards Ollie because of my constant pain! There was hope. It was going to be a long process, but there was a lot of hope. And this was normal.

The next month was a blur of continued doctors’ appointments and waiting, waiting, waiting for change. And it came! Slowly but surely, my symptoms started to disappear. By October, everything except exhaustion was a distant memory! Keep in mind, we were right in the thick of wedding season again as we waited. It was difficult, but it was so much easier to push through now that we knew what was going on. Also keep in mind that this was around the time that school picked up! So needless to say, we were busy. Annnnnnd then I broke my toe. Seriously, guys. That’s how it happened. That’s a whole other story. But it was a comedy of errors in the Phipps house from mid summer through the fall.

Here’s where we’re at now: still figuring it out. It’s been close to a year since everything started and most of what we’re dealing with now is getting me to the right place with medication. We’re almost there, and it’s crazy how much my pain and weakness has disappeared since getting medical help. At this point, the only thing that I’m really dealing with (that I can tell) is exhaustion. And it gets better all the time!

Emotional details:

The wear of all of this physically was nothing compared to the wear emotionally. Unexpectedly, I really loved being a mom. I thought I would struggle and was fearful I wouldn’t love motherhood like I was “supposed to,” but that just wasn’t the case. I loved being a mom and I loved Ollie. And it was breaking my heart that it was painful to hold my son for more than 5 minutes. I hated how tired I was and how unable I felt to keep up with him as he learned to crawl. I really struggled with not wanting to go on walks with him in the stroller because my leg would swell up and my back would spasm.

And then when you throw in the broken toe issue into it…I was just frustrated! I felt like what was being taken away from me was my ability to serve. To be a good wife, a good mom, to do my jobs well. I didn’t feel like I wanted my health back for me…I just wanted to be able to do what I felt like I was called to do. (did I mention I broke my toe the weekend before our annual Fall Retreat…where we camp in the woods. And two weeks before we were going to do 5 weddings in 6 weeks.)

I felt a lot of guilt because most of these things were my natural tendencies. I’ve always been a pretty tired person. I’m not often the first person to jump up and tangibly, physically serve someone else. I have terrible self discipline and am naturally bent towards laziness. It all went together. I fought off guilt and fought for truth the entire process and am still trying to muddle through it.

How God protected and provided for us:

Now that most of this is in the rear view mirror, I can see God so clearly. He ordained this process even if I’ll never know why it happened. The fact that all of this happened during a non wedding month. The fact that my toe healed quickly enough for me to serve well at Fall Retreat and not experience any severe pain during a hectic wedding season. The fact that I went to over 40 doctors appointments in a five month span and never had to pay for them. Including an ER visit. Multiple ultrasounds and x-rays. I had no fear about getting all the help I needed from professionals and that would not have been true in pretty much any other season of life!

And there’s more: I NEVER experienced the most severe of my symptoms on wedding days. Once I got my diagnosis and the okay to shoot weddings, it was time to go full force into busy season. And we did it! Eight weddings and many, many engagement & anniversary sessions happened while we were figuring this all out. We had such great fear that this would interfere with our client experience and it absolutely did not. And we are so very thankful for that.

God was also really sweet in the way that our community showed up for us in the midst of this. Our small group prayed and prayed. We had friends babysit during doctors appointments. And lots and lots of grace as life was full of doctors and not as much with friends.

Things I learned:

I took three concrete things away from this experience. I’m still learning and still asking some big questions about the WHY in all of this. I may never know the why…but all of this has caused me to ask the hard questions of God and get comfortable in the uncertainty.

1. Prayer works. It does, it does, it does. I knew that. But, oh goodness, did I know it after last year. It was a whirlwind. But we had several friends who were so constant in prayer for us. (and faithful to ask how I’m doing now!) We even shot a double header in the middle of the height of my symptoms and those were my two best health days all month! I knew that God was sustaining me so I could serve my clients. And it meant the world to me.
2. Know your body. In a different season of life, I think this could’ve gotten much worse. I don’t pay attention to myself much. I forget to eat lunch, I ignore random pain, I don’t prioritize my own health. But, because I was in the midst of postpartum recovery, I was in tune with what was going on in my body. I could describe what was going on in all of it’s different facets when I normally would’ve just had an “I don’t know” response! Friends, know your body and take care of yourself!
3. Getting your blood drawn is never quite as bad as you think it will be :] Take it from a girl who’s terrified of needles, and now gets her blood drawn every 6-8 weeks. Distract yourself, make sure to eat before you go, and bring something to do in the waiting room and you’ll be a-okay!

Bonus: Really, the biggest takeaway in this for me was a special moment I had with God during the summer. Way before we figured out what was going on. I’d been thinking about Jacob, the man in the old testament who wrestled with God. He wrestled all throughout the night, and God touched his hip, dislocating it. Finally, the wrestling stopped and God gave Jacob a new name. It’s a super interesting story, but what I was specifically thinking about was the fact that Jacob was changed from his interaction with God. Yes, emotionally and spiritually…but also physically. Jacob probably walked with a limp for the rest of his life. He was reminded every day, by his ailment, that he’d encountered God. God saw him.

So what if I could do this same? Chronic pain is a weird thing because it just takes over. It can be all you can pay attention to no matter how short lived that season is. So what if my pain could be a reminder that God saw me instead of a constant annoyance? What if I could sacrifice my defiant attitude and exchange it for a heart of thankfulness in all circumstances towards the Lord? God sees me. And I wanted to learn to cherish that.

I still haven’t. But I had real glimpses during the summer of what it could look like if I did! There were days where I felt reminded of God’s love for me with each bit of pain and it was glorious. So here’s to more of that.

Thanks for reading all of this! It comes from a deep place in my heart and it means a lot that you’d stick through to the end.

PS: David was a rockstar in all of this. He basically took over doing everything. Ollie duty, house duty, taking care of me…just all of it. He’s incredible. And I’m the luckiest.