Good lord… I am tired and nauseous. I woke up after about five hours of sleep with the raging need to pee. Thankfully, the 18mo is still asleep. Unfortunately, I am not back asleep. The nausea is strong this morning, probably not helped along by the glass of chocolate milk I just had, but what are you gonna do?
Yesterday, I went to the dentist and had a root canal done. It was my very first root canal, which…considering the horrible state of my teeth, I think is saying something. I had psyched myself out so bad about the appointment, and it really wasn’t terrible. There was a lot of local numbing that went on, a good bit of drilling into my tooth, and then some things that I have no idea what they were doing, but I can speculate, but I really don’t want to. The dentist and the assistant I saw yesterday were both amazing, which is a stark contrast to other dentists I’ve been to. They were ridiculously gentle and very cautious of my pregnancy. It was a very long appointment, and the healing has been sucking hardcore, I’m in a fair bit of pain right now, but overall, it wasn’t nearly as horrible as I had convinced myself it would be.
The night before, while I was psyching myself about the appointment, I saw a deck of Oracle cards that had just come in the mail from a friend of mine. I had no idea they were coming and it was such a great surprise! Anyway, I had decided to pull a card to help me with my ever mounting fear.
This is the first card I came across:
Wanna talk about on point? Holy cow. It gets better, though. I was reading through the description of the card after just being in awe of the one I saw (I mean, really take a look at the artwork, it’s incredible). A few things really popped out at me: “Part of the healing process is to believe you deserve to be healed…” “Have you been delaying your own healing?” “Once you prioritize time for self-care and healing, you’ll be able to face the world again…”
So, there is A LOT to unpack there. Once of the things that I kept repeating to myself was this: “I deserve to be healed.” Lord, it’s hard to believe. We can talk about my teeth in this instance, but it really goes across the board. I have always had ridiculously soft teeth. I grind my teeth at night. I am on my fifth pregnancy and after every pregnancy my teeth have gotten worse. I have not always been the best at keeping up with my dental care (the sensation of flossing leaves me gagging and I just have a lot of sensory issues with keeping my teeth clean). It really feels like I did this to myself. And, yeah, maybe I did. But I still deserve to heal.
I have absolutely been delaying my healing (again, this applies across the board). One, because I never really felt I deserve to heal. Another, because it’s terrifying. I know who I am when I’m broken. I’ve been this way for so long. Who will I be when I’m not? This is actually a very common fear in the mental health community, too, but we can get to that another time. I don’t wear makeup because of my teeth. I don’t want to draw attention to them. What about when my teeth are fixed? Will I just discover that I’m actually a swamp hag that doesn’t like makeup and now that excuse is out the window? It sounds ridiculous when said out loud, but that’s just one of those fears that can’t quite be rationalized.
And, of course, there is the prioritizing self-care and healing bit. I went back and forth a lot with whether I should continue my dental treatment plan once I discovered I was pregnant. I had always been under the impression that the only dental work you could have done was cleanings. I did a lot of research. Generally, most dental work is considered safe while pregnant, though they do suggest waiting for the second trimester for root canals (and a few other things like extractions), unless it’s an emergency. I don’t know what classifies a root canal emergency, but I do know that my tooth was in bad shape and ultimately, I had to tell myself that I need to get this done. It IS a priority to fix my teeth. And, honestly, whatever infections I have in my teeth, they could affect the babies. Does it feel like a gamble? A little bit, but it does seem that the good outweighs the bad with this one.
Anyway, that card has caused a lot of reflection and self-assessment over the past twenty four hours, not to mention opening a whole new jar of worms of Shadow Work. It’s going to be a lot to work through, but I guess it’ll give me something to focus on when I can’t sleep and I’m already miserable.
Speaking of miserable… All of the symptoms I listed in my last post are still going strong. I have an appointment with an OB next week, which is good, because I really want to make another ultrasound appointment just to make sure everything is going well with the babies. I’m pretty sure everything is okay because all of my symptoms are still obnoxiously strong. My pants are fitting even tighter than before, but I know that I’m going to wait until the absolute last minute (or, honestly, well after the last minute) to buy any new clothes. In the meantime, I think I’m gonna throw up. So, enjoy the latest “baby bump” picture while I’m doing that. 🙂
