I'm Not Broken Anymore!

It’s been a LONG road. A very long, hard road. I didn’t know if I’d ever be writing this! Here’s my story.

One thing you may not know about me is that after my third baby was born my doctor told me that if I had another child I would most likely be put on bed rest by 4 months into the pregnancy.

You see, when I was pregnant with our second child I ended up with extreme pelvic pain. It felt like my pelvic bones couldn’t handle with weight of my baby and were splitting and cracking apart. It was excruciating!

My OBGYN explained that due to very high hormone levels my pelvic bones had separated almost twice as far as they needed to by as early as 4 months. During that pregnancy I would end up unable to walk or even stand by the evening, it was so challenging, especially since I had a 1-year-old that was all about toddling and exploring everything, so keeping up was very hard.

My third pregnancy was even worse. I went back to work at 5 months pregnant to teach Kindergarten and was taken off work within a couple months due to my inability to physically do my job. Nothing makes a girl feel like a beached whale than having to pull yourself around on your wheely chair with your feet while sitting it in because you can hardly walk around. Or squatting down to help a little one do up their zipper just to realize that you’re not going to be getting up anytime soon unless your E.A. is strong enough to help heave you off the floor.

We weren’t planning anymore children as the recovery process after our third was extensive. So 3 years later when we became pregnant with our 4th a couple months after running my 2nd half marathon, I was excited, but also nervous.

To my surprise, I didn’t have much pelvic pain at all during the pregnancy! I attributed that to the work I had put into strengthening and healing my body after baby number 3, but after our 4th was born it was a different story.

The recovery process this time around has been MUCH longer and harder than I expected. Our baby is 19 months and I am just now able to walk at a regular pace for more than a few steps without pain! It has been very discouraging and has included a lot of modifying my workouts, physiotherapy, some tears, many feelings of hopelessness and more patience than I knew I had.

Today I went for a walk with my kids and was able to very gently jog a couple times without pain... I have no words to describe how amazing that felt!

It’s crazy how we take our health for granted, how I have anyways.

I’ve always been able to run and play with my kids and so these past couple years of pregnancy and postpartum recovery that left me so physically limited has been hard not only physically, but mentally as well.

And that’s why I couldn’t give up. That’s why I couldn’t accept where my body was at. That’s why I couldn’t just sit back and allow myself to be broken for the rest of my life.

The challenge of healing was not just so I can run with my kids again, but so I can laugh with them too.

The recovery process WAS . NOT . EASY . But I know it would be much harder to have stayed broken. So every time it got hard, I fought back tears and considered throwing in the towel, I reminded myself how much harder it would be to quit, how much harder it would be stay broken, how much harder it would be sit on the sidelines and watch my family move on without me... and so I kept going.

Something I’ve learned along the way isn’t just how much stronger I am than I realized, but how much I’ve taught my children as they’ve watched me journey through this challenging time. How they’ve seen me struggle, but keep going and how they’ve watched me get stronger.

Today, when we were out for our walk and I started jogging with them it wasn’t just me that was excited, but they were too! “Mom! you’re running” they said with so much excitement!

God doesn’t allow us to go through struggles to break us. He allows us to go through challenging times so we can become stronger, better versions of ourselves, and He's by our side the entire time.

This journey hasn’t been easy, but I believe it's been necessary, and although I feel like I hit a major milestone today through my walk and little jogs, I know that this is just the beginning of a very strong, healthy future for not just me, but my whole family.

Thank you so much for taking the time to read this,

God bless,

Sarah