Settling into a New Normal, Planning for the Future

Over the last month, Ben and I have been getting more and more settled into our (new) normal way of living. My body is continuing to heal physically from giving birth back in March. The steroid shots did not seem to help speed my healing, but I am seeing improvement after just giving myself more time to heal. I'm working on getting back into shape. I'm exercising 4-5 days a week and eating more healthy foods. I'm enjoying my daily activities-- exercising, gardening, spending time with people, working on a scrapbook for Elam, etc. Ben is continuing working as an electrical engineer. He enjoys his work, and he's looking to take on some side work to help us in our finances, hopefully allowing us to pay off our car. Also, we are both enjoying pouring ourselves into the church small group we lead. So overall, we are enjoying life and glad to be getting back into the groove of things.

It has been almost 5 months since Elam was born. For the past couple months, we've been thinking more and more about our next pregnancy. But because this blog is for Elam, and for what we've learned from being his parents, we decided to create a new blog where we will talk about our experiences in having more children (and about our experiences in life in general). We still plan to continue updating this blog with things we are still learning from our experiences with Elam.

As you can see in my post yesterday, the funeral home finally received and installed Elam's marker. We visit his grave every now and then. We dearly miss our little one every day, but we're glad to know that God is taking good care of him.

One small prayer request: You know how you can have dreams about something emotional, and when you wake up you still have those emotions, even when you know it was only a dream and that your emotions are totally irrational? Occasionally, I have dreams about Elam. Sometimes, I dream that he lived for a while after his birth, and my dream involves taking care of him. Sometimes, I dream about giving birth and discovering that he has died. After I wake up from one of these dreams, it usually colors the rest of my morning (and perhaps the whole day). It's like the dreams open up an old wound, if only ever so slightly. I had one of these dreams last night, and unfortunately, even though I haven't been consciously thinking about my dream, I have carried the sadness from that dream with me throughout my day so far. I know this is a small thing, but if you think to pray that I wouldn't have these dreams anymore, I would appreciate it. I'm sure that having dreams like these after a traumatic event is pretty common, and, who knows, maybe they're even part of the healing process, but it would be nice to have fewer of them if they're not totally necessary. Thanks for your prayers.