S.E.Saxton Blog

Haven't gotten to sit down and write for a very long time. I have so many ideas for stories but until my almost one year old is older I can't sit down and put it on a page. This is the first time in a while I get a short me day. It's nice to finally breathe and have a few moments to myself.

Its funny back when I first got divorced I took for granite my alone time. I was so depressed back then that being alone would feel like a punishment. Now it is a reward. Don't get me wrong I love spending time with both my daughters, they make me laugh so much. I also look forward everyday when my husband comes home. He is the best thing that has happened to me. However my life right now is hectic and stressful and the few times a month or less that I get to sit and breathe are so precious and helpful for my mental health. I can't fill others cups if mine is empty.

Now to empty my thoughts. My baby girl is one years old next month. I can't believe it. It seems like I just had her. This year has gone by so fast. She was hardly ever a tiny baby. She was 8 pounds 3 oz at birth and already holding her head up. At one month she rolled over for the first time and was crawling at six months. She hasn't walked yet but could if she really wanted to. She stands on her own now. She wants to practice when we aren't looking, she has been doing this for everything. She is so careful before she masters the next thing. She already has eight teeth as well and eats only solid food for the past 3 months. Its like I birthed a toddler. But she is such a joy to have and I am so blessed I get to share her with my husband who is the best father I know. She is a daddy's girl for sure. I got her a bunch of band tees to match his energy and they are so adorable together.

So blessed to have my family, to have what my heart always wanted. To have a man that will listen and not yell at me, not tell me I'm stupid and everyone hates me. To not gaslight me in everything and to actually tell me he loves me daily and is careful not to trigger me as I have ptsd from my past marriage. Four years together now (minus the year we thought we had to be apart until we talked to the Guardian ad-litem). It has been challenging but I would walk through it again to be with this most caring, loving man. I wish all could see his heart and not his past mistake.

My oldest is now 13. Except for being addicted to technology she is like a mini adult. Always sharing the drama with her friends at school. I do my best to keep up. She loves horror movies and occasionally gets me to watch. I'm not really a fan of horror so sometimes she watch's with her stepdad and I pull out a book when I'm not chasing after the baby. They mostly make fun of the cheesiness of the movies. Her favorite is the Purge movies which is one I can handle as its more of a thriller and a good storyline. We own all of them. She needs more motivation in school though. She's smart, but lacks motivation if the subject isn't of interest to her. She just learned about the Alamo in school and was excitedly telling me about it so over Christmas break I took the girls to see it. We all had a good time. It was really neat to see history is person, to be where such an amazing battle took place. Much better for kids to see something like that than just go on a cruise or a theme park. Those will be useless if the world ends. She needs to learn life skills. Her birth father and uncles taught her how to use a knife and shoot a gun. These are life skills she needs to know. When my baby is older we will teach her also. She loves Japan and their culture, she said when she graduates she wants to go to college there. Her style is kinda goth punk with some pink punk as well, she's also taller than I am now.

For me I am just taking it one day at a time. It is hard to get much done with a baby that is now mobile. We only trust my mother and each other to watch her so I am not working at the moment. My mother in law can only handle her for like 30 mins before she hands her back. We don't trust day care (she will be homeschooled in the future). I joined a walking moms group and a playdate group to get out of the house and get exercise. It helps my mental health too, to be around other moms that motivate me. Someone who shall not be named tried to get me kicked out of the group just because of my husbands past. But they are wonderful women and after telling them my story, they chose me. Goodness wins in the end. It's sad that so can be so miserable that they want others to be miserable as well and not just let people be. I feel sorry for this person ( the group confirmed who they are.) Anyway that is the tea on what's happening so far. Love you all!

Sitting here in Starbucks after a very stressful few months sipping out of a holiday cup. Only retail stores show any sign of Christmas. Yes I know it is only November but what is wrong with celebrating for two months? Its acceptable for Halloween why not for Christmas? Christmas has always been my favorite time a year. A whole new excitement comes with it and a warm happy feeling. With so much bad stuff always happening I need Christmas.

We had to make some temporary changes in my life that has added a whole new kind of stress and depression on me. I feel like I am constantly going with no end in site. My beautiful baby thinks 5/6 am is morning even though it is still dark. If she sleeps all night I cant protest to that. I pick her up and she hugs me with her sweet little arms then I give her a bottle before her puree breakfast with a side of berries. My husband will get up a bit later to feed the dogs and get ready for work. He will take the baby after he is ready so I can eat breakfast and get dressed for the day. After im ready he will kiss us both and head out for the day. My baby girl loves him so much and he is such an amazing dad. The bond those two have bring tears to my eyes.

Then I go on with my day, trying to entertain a 8 month old all the while trying to teach her new things and keep her from screaming for no reason other than she likes to scream. I am lucky if I get laundry started before he comes back home. I put a Christmas movie on in the background as she isn't interested in tv yet. It calms me a bit. I usually have the baby fed, bathed and ready for bed before my husband returns. He takes over after he winds down and he gets her to bed for the night. We are a great team. I have just been so overwhelmed; by not only this routine (Which I know it doesn't sound like much) but by other things going on in the background I wont post for privacy reasons. So many things going on I have a constant headache and a feeling that the walls are closing in on me. Today my husband let me take a mental health day. Sadly nothing is going how I want it to and I feel more defeated. I probably need to mediate again but its tricky to find the time and a quiet place to do it. So this brings me back to Christmas the one thing I can hold onto.

One of the great feelings I remember as a child or even a teen is the warm feeling at home. The warmth from the fireplace, the soft glow of the Christmas tree and the smell of fresh cookies being made. One of the cats curled up next to the fireplace and does the little mrrr when it sees me and lets me pet its soft fur. The warm heat on my face as I admire the tree I helped decorate. Each ornament had a special story or place in our hearts. Under the tree a ton of gifts carefully wrapped by my mother and put out too early because that's what we do. Later that night we would put on a Christmas movie we would all agree upon and laugh at the jokes we have heard a million times. My family that is what makes my Christmas magical. It is hard to always have ones that don't understand that. My ex and my new husband their Christmases weren't as magical and they didn't get or give gifts like mine did. (not that it is about gifts at all. However my mom and mine love language is gift giving).

Well this has been nearly 20 years in the making. It seems like my whole adult life I have been dreaming of having a baby. I was so lucky 12 years ago to be able to adopt my niece as a 3 week old.  I got to watch her grow and see her personality come out. She is almost a teenager now and such an awesome kid. Adoption and birthing a child both come with very different emotions, but filling your heart at the same time. I may have already wrote about the adoption in the past. It was a long journey. That little girl (who is almost as tall as me now) will always be my first born, and I will always be fighting in her corner.

Now I write about having a baby at 4 am because this child doesn’t sleep all night like my first born did. So I am very sleep deprived. Even when I was pregnant I got very little sleep, especially towards the end. My journey to birthing a child was a very hard one. With my first marriage I didn’t even get a positive pregnancy test the whole 16 years we were together. I later thank God for unanswered prayers as it is hard enough sharing my first born. I also found out it was my fight and flight that made me not get pregnant. It took finding my true mate to get here. On this journey we did lose two pregnancy’s. This was a super hard time and I almost gave up. We ended up seeing a specialist who did an outpatient surgery on my uterus. He found a septum in my uterus he removed, also found polyps and endometriosis scaring he also removed. Then less than a year later I got pregnant again! 

Though because we lost two before we weren’t excited like we should have been. We kind of closed our hearts to the whole thing. I got excited on big moments like when my numbers tripled, I heard the heartbeat, saw her moving, felt her moving. But still even when we went to the hospital to get induced I was in denial of taking home a baby. Up until I heard her cry, then I cried. The whole pregnancy was very difficult for me, which is why I am done now. I am also 40 this year so I was already high risk, with my age and the two losses. I was sick the entire pregnancy's so I didn’t gain a bunch of weight as I didn’t eat a ton. I also in the last trimester I got gestational diabetes. So I had to prick my finger 4 times a day. This was the worst. I had to be on a very strict diet. I was actually losing weight in the last few weeks. Two weeks after my baby was born I lost all the pregnancy weight, but still have my squish belly.  Anyway we went to get induced on Feb 21st. They gave me something to help things along. It caused contractions and stomach pain. I suffered for 19 hours but I did not progress at all. I did get an epidural in between and that was amazing. On Feb 22nd I ended up getting a C-Section. I cried when I heard my baby cry. I knew then I finally created a baby and this time with the love of my life. 

She was equally as beautiful as my first born. Makes sense that they would look alike as they are blood. My husband took to her so fast. He’s such an amazing dad. He got to see her first and the first thing she did was wrap her hand around his finger. He melted.

Healing from a C-section is a lot harder than any surgery than I have ever had to recover from. We went into the hospital on a Monday night and left on a Thursday afternoon. By all rights I should have stayed until Friday but Thursday is the one day a week I get to see my oldest. I had to prove myself to leave the hospital and even re teach my body to use the bathroom. All to see my daughter. I could hardly walk and to get up from laying down took a very long time. My mom stayed a week and was super helpful. It was hard at first when my mom left and I was still in a lot of pain. My husband works all day so I was alone. It has been 6 weeks today and I am still not 100% healed. I am much better, a few more weeks and I can go back to the gym on the weekends. All in all it was a humbling experience (that I never want to do again ha ha). I am blessed with the child God has promised me and I am so happy to be her mom.

Years ago I wrote a blog called Dear Younger Me. I was at the very beginning of my self journey and was on the edge of my divorce (we were still living together and “trying to work it out” a joke I know). Honestly I should have left right when he asked but I was so mentally broken at the time I didn’t know what I wanted out of life. I was more scared to start out on my own as I was so codependent back then I didn’t know what to do. Now the question is would I go back and change the past? Tell my younger self what will happen if I walk down that path or just tell her to tread softly you will come out alright?

Honestly I think I would tell her to tread softly and only give her a few hints. Like don’t date so fast after any breakup. Back then I was so broken and since what I thought love was ended up breaking everything I knew I was searching for it. Nothing bad happen with the men I dated as I am still friends with most and with their new girlfriends. I did break my heart once but for the most part I should have worked on loving myself not finding someone to love me. It wasn’t until I stopped looking and truly loved myself that my true mate came along and instead of trying to fix me he took my hand and walked into the storm with me. 

So I wouldn’t tell my past self much. Everything horrible thing I have been through and am still going through has shaped me into the person I am now and I love her. If I didn’t stay with my ex for so many years I wouldn’t have adopted my niece and have the most amazing, smart, funny and talented daughter. I would have never moved to Texas and finished my books and met my true Mate, my wonderful husband that is my #1 fan and shows me what true love should have been all along. I wouldn’t have gone back to school and got my certificates to be an CARC (Certified Abuse/addiction Recovery Coach). I have met some wonderful people through this that have had similar stories and I am so glad to help them.