This Is How I MomSolving the puzzle of motherhood one piece at a time

At this point, I have completely accepted my new life as normal. Some things would be nice, like more sunny days (like today!), but things are pretty amazing all in all. I now regard my physical and emotional recovery as complete. Sure, I still have 15lbs to drop, but hey, I’ve got time and I feel pretty good in my body as is.

In fact, I almost want to say I feel STRONGER now than I did before pregnancy. Not just because of the life experience, but also physically. Now that most of the aches are gone or almost gone, I’ve dropped most of my baby weight and I lug around an 18-pound baby all day, I have energy again and I’m developing some hefty arm muscles! I still go for walks with the bean when weather permits, and I do about 250 situps and 10 pushups every day. It’s not much, and I do miss how accomplished the gym made me feel, but my body is still happy with me.

Speaking of the gym – we did some inquiries when we went in the other day. We iced our membership for 3 months since we don’t really have much of a chance to go with our sleep schedules still not aligned (hopefully we’ll do this very soon!) and still stabilizing our income. But we figure in 3 months we’ll start it up again and feel a lot more comfortable leaving Logan at the gym daycare too. Since he’s not sitting up by himself yet, he’d basically need to be attached to someone that’s not me for the entire time we’re there, and that thought kinda creeps me out. I have no problem with my husband, family and friends holding my baby, but strangers are a different story.

I know I’m being paranoid.

Anyway, the older he gets, the more comfortable and less overprotective I am. It’s actually kinda nice. It’s like the little guy is figuring out he’s his own person, and mommy is figuring out she’s still herself, after all.

Today is one of those rare, stunning days. It was supposed to rain all week, but when I woke up this morning, I was greeted by the most beautiful sunshine – and it’s still there! *knock on wood* Logan and I went outside for a few minutes, since it was warm enough with the sun shining down on us. That was literally the first time I just decided to go outside without putting a billion layers on both of us since Logan has been born, and I think I’m going to LOVE this summer! Not only can we have much fun outside, I get to watch Logan discover the world too! Maybe/possibly/probably he’ll crawl by July, too.

My mother is completely spoiling me for Easter and I got to indulge in this:

Jersey Rouche Dress

I die. It’s so pretty.

We’ve actually had a few of these the past few weeks! We got our first social smile at around the 5-week mark; our first real laugh at around 6 1/2 weeks; he does mini “push-ups”; babbles in one and two syllables (ah-goo!); follows objects with his eyes; grabs hair and other objects and bats at toys! Little guy is growing up so fast. Sniff. He also has a 5-7 hour stretch of sleep every night now! It’s exciting.

20 weeks, 7 days

For many expectant moms, weight gain is one of the things souring the experience of creating new life. I am one of them. To give a little backstory, I was always overweight as a child and teenager. My parents didn’t have a good grip on handling rewards without giving me treats, and I was home alone for upwards of 6 hours every day after I turned 10 years old. Loneliness as well as accessibility to junk food did their thing and I piled on an excess of about 50 pounds.

Around 20 years of age, I had had enough of being teased and ridiculed about my weight, and made the decision to drop the weight once and for all – with great success. I hit my target weight and ended my weight loss at around a BMI of 19-20. That is my happy weight. 115-120lbs is where I feel my most attractive and energetic and it’s easy to maintain with regular exercise and healthy eating. I had changed my lifestyle for the better and felt good about myself for the first time in my life, and I kept it up for 5 years now.

However, when I fell pregnant, my plans got boycotted. In my first trimester, I more or less lived on simple carbs – bread, potatoes, pasta, pastries and fruit were more or less all that did not make me nauseous and my routine of veggies, whole grains and lean protein got greatly interrupted. I didn’t lose my appetite – in fact; I was hungry a LOT of the time – but the things I was hungry for were things that frustrated me.

Of course, I wasn’t about to let my baby or myself go unnourished, so I ate fruit whenever I could, took my prenatals and made to as best as I could with whatever else I could keep down… but the weight went up. After the first 12 weeks, I had packed on about 5 pounds. After another month, I had packed on another ten. Yes, I somehow managed to gain about 10 pounds in a month! And this was past the first trimester, where I had actually started eating a lot better.

My midwife wasn’t happy with me, and I myself was rather devastated. I knew it wasn’t -quite- as much as 10lbs since I got weighed with boots, before a bowel movement and after drinking a liter of water, but it was still terrifying to see the number.

Thankfully, at the weigh-in a month afterwards, I had only gained 3 pounds (strangely enough, since I went on a 2-week vacation that month and wasn’t watching what I ate at all) and am now hoping to keep up a steady weight gain. I’ve shed most of my bad eating habits and have converted back to whole grains, vegetables, fruit and lean protein – just quite a bit more of it than I was previously eating. I also still visit the gym every second day.

I obviously know that pregnancy is about my baby and giving him the best start to life he can possibly have, so I put my own childish issues aside as best as I can. Regardless, weight gain is hard. This new body of mine scares me when I look in the mirror, and I yearn for my previously slim, non-swollen figure, with which it was so easy to do every day things like running, going up the stairs, cleaning the house, or even just turning around at night.

I aim to revert to my old exercise regime as soon as my doctor ok’s it post-partum. Hopefully I won’t have any issues breastfeeding my bundle of joy, so he gets the best nutrients for his growing body and I get to have a headstart at reverting to my old happy weight (the knockers can stay, though).

20 weeks, 5 days

I used to be a gymrat – my husband and I used to hit the gym at least 5 times a week. We did keep this up throughout the first trimester as best as we could, despite some days being more tedious than others. My first trimester had surprisingly mild morning sickness for me in store, although it came with many food aversions and light, permanent nausea. Since 12 weeks onward however, I’ve felt much much better, and food aversions have disappeared one by one, so the gym was very enjoyable once more from about week 12-16.

At week 16, we went out of country to visit my parents for two weeks, and while we got some decent exercise in form of hikes and various visits, we didn’t really get the same intensity that we’re used to from the gym. Even worse; we fell ill with the flu while we were there, so for about a week we didn’t feel up to much at all. I count my blessings though, I know that flus during pregnancy have the potential to turn into full-blown pneumonia and thankfully I evaded that.

Since our return at week 18, we’ve been carefully making a return to the gym. However, I find that my growing belly – and the ever-growing water bubble within it – make cardio a lot harder than it used to be. I’m a fan of the elliptical, but even though I turned down the elevation to avoid most of the “bouncing”, it still feels like I’m jumping rope with a big water balloon tied to my midsection. It’s uncomfortable! Add to this the fact that everything is starting to take a lot more effort to get done – bending down, going upstairs, sleeping as a few examples – and exercise is no exception. Not only am I lugging a good extra 15 pounds around with me, my blood volume shot up by about 40%, so my heart has to pump extra hard to get its job done and is not a big fan of me putting extra strain on it.

I’m thinking about switching over to the treadmill, although I’m past the stage where running is comfortable, so it’d have to be fast walking… perhaps up an incline to make up for the loss in speed.

Baby seems to be doing fine and goes through various grades of activity. Today he’s been rather quiet; yesterday he’s had a very active day, packing many kicks and rolls and little punches. I do hope he’s growing just fine, since my last appointment had me slightly worried about that. Our next appointment is on June 28th, at which point I’ll be 23 weeks gone. Perhaps they’ll schedule another ultrasound as well! It’d be nice to get another look at the little man and make sure he’s caught up in growth.

In the meantime, I made use of amazon and ordered the following books:
That’s my Son, by Rick Johnson

It’s a Boy!: Your Son’s Development from Birth to Age 18, by Michael Thompson

As mentioned, I have very little knowledge of how to raise a boy and I aim to at least educate myself by the time he gets here! We can learn the rest together, I’m sure.