I had an extremely bad case of spd/pgp and was on 20 mg on oxycodone a day to stay out of the hospital. The 20 mg of oxycodone didn’t even get rid of the pain, it just allowed me to sleep for a few hours and make it to the toilet. Chronic pain was not something I was familiar with, and add to that that I was pregnant so I could not truly adequately treat it? Yikes. I kept telling my husband, “I’m going to need therapy after this.” I’ve relearned how to walk and swallow from brain surgery, and THIS was way worse. So when the baby was finally born I lost an adorable 7.5 pounds but I still couldn’t fit into my usual clothes. But something about my maternity clothes upset me.

They looked sad. They looked mean. They made me want to cry.

I had never had an emotional response to clothing before, but I began to understand that those dresses were my uniform for that particular span of time in which I was in a lot of pain and a lot of stress.

I took all of my maternity clothes and anything that I wore during that time and put it in a pile. When I’m feeling a bit beat up by the day, when things are just not working out for me, I take a piece out and make either a toy or a dress for my baby.

Transforming the icky into something lovely helps me move on from those old feelings and fears.