Today I am breaking down my postpartum living and bedroom set up. Compounding the healing from a vaginal delivery, I have what I believe to be sciatic nerve pain on my right side. I suspect it is as such as I experienced a similar pain on my left side after my first pregnancy. This time it did not start after the arrival of our little bundle; rather two weeks prior to childbirth when I had to take off in a sprint to catch my first born when he made a run for it in the open courtyard outside his daycare. I caught him! However, I did something to my back and the pain has gotten progressively worse by the week, with the exception of the twelve hours that I had an epidural, even after taking an anti-inflammatory which previously proved to be the solution. All this is to say, is that my back pain has ailed me worse than undercarriage pain and I am anxiously awaiting my appointment with my primary care physician.
This makes me all the more relieved that I analyzed our postpartum living situation while I was still pregnant. Our bedroom is on the third floor of our townhome, the climb of which can leave me winded on a good day. However, truth be told, I have been pregnant during the entire time we have lived in our house so I don’t have a great read on how difficult traversing the stairs will be now that I no longer have a little passenger. Aside from the elevation climb, our bedroom does not have an ensuite bathroom; the big bathroom is about five steps down and a short hall away from the bedroom.
I rethought staying in our bedroom during postpartum recovery. Rather, my husband and I opted to temporarily move down a floor to the guest suite upon our return home from the hospital. The guest suite includes a small ensuite bathroom and still enough room to set up the new baby. It is close enough to the laundry room, allowing us to keep a steady rotation of clean laundry.
On the days that my back pain does not contain me to the second floor, I do end up moving up and down the stairs from the first floor several times, if only just to use the facilities. (Our first floor does not have even a half bathroom, which I honestly did not see as an issue while house hunting. Hindsight.) At best, the ibuprofen works for a few hours and I can get up and down the stairs with help of the rails. At worst, I shift my weight forward and and bear climb to the second floor.
Forget the fact that I am not due for a check in with a medical professional until eight weeks post-childbirth. Can we consider why and how we are expected to bounce back, physically and emotionally, immediately after childbirth when it takes nine months to put together a baby, for lack of a better phrase? I can barely move myself between our first and second floors, let alone trust myself to carry a newborn with me.
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