Sandy Jorgenson

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Death, we know because it’s drilled into us from an early age, is a natural part of life.

Childbirth isn’t kidding around. Here are eight special gifts that your blessed body bestows upon you to say thanks for turning it into a baby-making machine.

When I check on our daughter before heading to bed myself, I have to do a quick scan around her full-size bed just to locate her. She is almost never remotely close to where she started out. But she is almost always upside down, head jammed up against the wall or her footboard, stuffed animals scattered like confetti all around her.

My daughter was just reaching her first birthday before the dense fog of postpartum depression started to lift off of me. I didn’t realize it right away, though – and I certainly hadn’t even realized I was suffering from PPD at all.

...[O]ur very responsibility is to equip them with everything they need before we shove them out of the nest and watch their wings spread far and wide... But what, then, is left for us?

I know motherhood is hard. Especially new motherhood — those early days are a fog of tears, confusion, and helplessness. But I also know that yearning for something you can’t have, particularly with regard to children, is a feeling far worse. I’ve lived through the pain of childbirth, of a 3rd-degree tear, two related surgeries and a year of recovery, of postpartum depression, of miscarriage and of infertility and my god; I’d do it all over again in a heartbeat if it meant a chance to… Well, to do it all over again.

Welcome to #RavsWriters, an opportunity for you to get to know some of the outstanding human beings who fervently type to make Ravishly the awesome place it is. ​

I didn’t start out as a particularly easygoing person.

But what can be said for the day upon which I am no longer enough? I dread that day.