Trigger Day -- Six Years Ago Sucked

Six years ago at this time I had a 3 week old. I've written about this a lot. My daughter was diagnosed with "Failure to Thrive." I think one of my first posts of this year's challenge was long winded in reference to this so, I'll get into why I'm revisiting it.

Every year on Facebook, the pictures and the posts come up and internally I just start to shrivel. It was really hard. That may even be an understatement. I had extra to deal with, bigger things than just baby, and in retrospect, if I could go back and tell myself to wake up a little more and pay better attention, that diagnosis may not haunt me and still bring me to tears as I type.

She recovered right? Healthiest kid on the planet, I have now! She just had her first sick day of the school year and didn't even have a fever. She was just covered in boogers!

So why does it bother me? I've attributed most of my problems to having a rough run coming into parenthood only to find out that's just the first layer of the onion on so much stuff. But when I think about that time, and extra stuff thrust upon me, other than just being a mom trying to breastfeed, oh man, talk about trauma.

I'm lucky that I was strong enough and had the support I did from moms, friends and my sister coming to make sure I could recover. I was lucky that I didn't just disintegrate into some kind of mental coma because a lot of those doctors were not nice. But, my daughter received excellent care and was just as strong then as she is now.

So this day, much like car accident day, just triggers me. Going to the doctor 6 years ago for a check up and being told she had to be hospitalized and then having to live at the hospital for 10 days and, 8 of those Luna and I were completely alone with only my best friend bringing me good coffee and occasional Chik-Fil-A, that was rough.

Recently I started revealing the whole truth about the experience to a friend and could barely hold back the tears. It actually shocked me how much it still affected me. I have a healthy, smart, awesome kid, but not being able to fully breastfeed her was devastating to me. A lot of the resentment and frustration with immediate family "helping" but not helping, is still there. I had to scrape myself off the metaphorical payment during that time and I realized it was just me and Luna. We were all we had, with the occasional awesome visitor.

When I got home I was so scared and it became even more-so about Luna. I live this every day for her. Even in the car accident, it was all about Luna; didn't matter my head was bleeding, if that guy would have harmed her beyond repair from his negligence, I may be writing my memoirs from a jail cell. 

I think it's important but still surprises me that I'm still recovering from something six years ago! That "Failure" in the title is hard to shake. I'd been so terrified to be a mom and everyone just promises you can do it, something like that three weeks in messes you up!

Now when I watch Luna I think I can't wait to tell her what a little badass she is. How she is just the strongest, fiercest redhead and I love watching her conquer everything on her plate. It's then I remind myself that I have a pretty big part in that, so I think that is all steps of my mental recovery on this taxing day.

So today is one of two pretty severe and annual trigger days. I may have a good cry. I'll definitely hug the little one a little harder, and I'll try and be more gentle on myself. I'm just a work in progress and I'm okay with that. Everything truly is one day at a time. That's all we can do, even on a Wednesday!