Postpartum Bodies and the Mom Who Battles Chronic Illness
I hear him screaming. He’s hungry and though my husband holds him, only I can nurse him. But flare-ups don’t typically pick convenient times to “flare up.” Pain pierces and pulses through my stomach as if to mimic knives twisting throughout my intestines. I can’t go to him as quickly as I would like, and it breaks my heart.
Unseen Changes
There’s a lot of talk about what happens to the physical looks of our bodies after growing a tiny human and birthing them into the world. Though I have a few stretch-marks and a little pooch left from pregnancy, my body appears to be mostly unchanged.
That’s because chronic illness is often invisible to the people around us. Many moms face painful changes from within. Their bodies experience ailments and pains because of pregnancy in a fallen world. They’re more sick. Their bones, more fragile.
For me, years of hard work at gut healing was lost in the labor and delivery room. With just a few doses of antibiotics to protect my baby, my chronic IBS returned with a vengeance. It’s a sacrifice I had to make for his safety, but it’s a sacrifice that still affects me. I now live my days avoiding all my normal triggers and still in pain. Some days I’m sick for hours while my baby sleeps or cries. Other times, I place his body against my stomach to nurse and my insides cramp under the weight. It’s hard and it’s lonely. More than anything, it’s frustrating.
Broken Bodies Break
We may be tempted to envy others' postpartum bodies when we observe women who seem to easily navigate healthy weight gain, their bodies appearing the same before and after pregnancy. But does anyone go through pregnancy in a broken world with a broken body and truly remain unscathed?
I’ve talked with women whose bodies struggled to function with the physical weight of caring for a newborn while also battling chronic pain. For some, pregnancy and birth triggered hormonal issues or autoimmune diseases that were hiding under the surface. Pain that seeps into the bone, rashes that take over the face, hormonal reactions that leave a body sick, and unending digestive issues—all on top of caring for a baby.
But perhaps the hardest part is that we may feel like a bad mother for not being able to be there for our children at every moment of need.
The Father Who Never Slumbers
We are human. We all have limits whether we battle chronic illness or not. As much as we long to, we won’t always be able to be there when our children need us. The comfort I’ve found as I struggle with this in regard to chronic illness is that my Father never slumbers. He’s always there with us and with our children. Psalm 121:4 encourages us, “Behold, he who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.”
He knows your heart, mama. He knows you long to help your child in all things. But he also knows that you and I are dust. And he wants us to turn to him in our weakness. He beckons us to recognize our inability to be the perfect, omnipresent mother and use that to draw us to trust him, our perfect, omnipresent Father.
Let us do all we can in our power to care and provide for our children well, while also remembering that ultimately our “help comes from the Lord,” and he is our hope (Ps. 121:2).
Hope in God
Chronic illness can feel hopeless because you can try all the things and yet healing may remain out of reach. It often seems that symptoms strike at the worst time, and we’re left frustrated and weary. But we have hope, even in these difficult trials. One day, we will put on new bodies. We’ll peel off our sickness and pain and slip into a glorified body, untainted by the effects of the fall—sin and death.
Until then, we run to Jesus. We root our trust deeply in the Vine. We walk by faith knowing he will accomplish his good purposes for us and our sweet children.
I used to be really consistent in asking others for prayer during a flare-up and really inconsistent in running to God in prayer myself. Sometimes I still abstain from calling out to him, if I’m perfectly honest. It’s because I know healing may not be the answer. But what if these struggles aren’t meant to drive us to call out only for healing, but also for the Healer? These painful “thorns” in our flesh are often an avenue to our Father God. We can (and we should) run to Jesus through prayer and lament in the midst of our suffering.
We can also meditate on God’s faithfulness to us. The Psalms are full of reminders of his steadfast love and care for his children. He has sustained us—provided grace and strength for every moment—and he will continue to do so all our lives.
Chronic illness doesn’t get the last word. Jesus overcame it on the day he rose from the grave. We have hope because our hope is in the name above all names.
