NO EXCUSES!

When I say no excuses I mean for any and everything. There really are no excuses under the sun to give us a way out of anything. On a personal note I would like to share my experience with you.

At the tender young age of 18 I had my first child. I gained a total of 16 lbs. while pg. and took very good care of myself. My husband and I walked every night and I took all my vitamins. I also quit eating meat and sugar at that period in my life.

We had a beatiful healthy baby boy and life goes on. Every two or three year for the next 15 years I had a baby. Again, at the tender young age of 32 I had my sixth and during the pregnancy decided last baby.

48 hours after the birth of Hannah I had the artery going to my uterus bust, causing what my medical records labeled an "abdominal catastrophe". When it happened the doctors did not know why I was bleeding to death. I ended up with 23 units of blood and 3 gallons of saline solution being pumped into my body.

The last thing I remembered was being wheeled into the o.r. and waving at my husband as he held our baby in his arms waving at me. I was in excrutiationg pain and for the first time in my life really just wanted to die. At one point I grabbed the anestesiologist by the shirt and yelled at him to knock me out.

After four hours of surgery and millions of stitches to put Robbie back together again I was back in my room. The doctor said it was probably caused by an aneurism. I was the same age at that time my dad was when he died from an anneurism in his head. All the docs agreed about how lucky I was that it happened while I was in the hospital. I agree.

I spent the next two weeks in the hospital. I liked to tell people that I spent time in every ward of the hospital. I started in labor and delivery, had my baby in the nursery, moved into o.r. from there into the trauma unit, into intensive care and from there to recovery. It was not fun.

Once the anesthesia wore off and they took out the breathing tube so that I could talk, I told my doc that I wanted to nurse my baby. It took him a few minutes to figure out what I was talking about because it just did not register. He looked at the nurses and told them to take me off all the pain killers, dopephine, morphine, blah blah blah. I almost changed my mind at this point thinking that I was going to be hurting a lot more. But I did learn pain is pain.

Seven hours after getting off the meds they brought Hannah for me to nurse. Well now we had a real problem. I had a million stitches in my gut, plus 35 staples up my belly. How the heck were we going to do this? Oh yeah, and someone squished my hand during surgery and it had compartment symdrome and could not be used. This is how we did it. I hung Hannah over my shoulder opposite from the nursing side. Then my mom would help put the nipple in her mouth and away she would go. My nurse midwife came in during one of these shows and said she would like to get a pic for the next time someone told her they could not nurse their baby!

Two months after my surgery I was finished with physical therapy for my hand and could actually walk standing up straight. On a nice warm day in March I went for my first walk. All the way down the street and back! That was the begining for me of many triathlons, marathons and century rides. Does that make sense?

I learned in that one block what it meant to hurt, but to want something bad enough to work through the pain! I was done having kids and knew that I wanted my body back and I was willing to do whatever it took to get there. I have never done a run, or race or workout that has hurt as much as that one block walk, but it was sure worth it!