Becoming Mother

A book and a blog for first-time mothers

Tag: postpartum

July 20, 2018

Postpartum Weight Loss Reality Check

Someone, somewhere started this saying, “Nine months to put it on, Nine months to take it off.”

Ha, I say.

Nine months?

I wish.

For both of my pregnancies, it took a solid 15-18 months to get it all off.

And it took the magic of intermittent fasting to get the last 10 pounds off.

First, disclaimers. Everyone is different (duh) and I’m not a medical professional (obviously).

But here’s what I experienced.

Basically, the experience of pregnancy and birth puts your body into metabolic overload.

Chugga-chugga-choo-choo!

Then, after birth, your body continues in its highest gear for a period time, before it completely powers down. It takes a while for your body to figure out it’s new normal metabolism. We’re talking months. Even if you’re eating well and exercising.

I’ll detail it out here:

Birth – 6 Months Postpartum: The Engine Slows to a Crawl

  • Birth – 1 month postpartum
    • Exercise: Moving self through the house
    • Diet: Eating whatever I was hungry for–and I was hungry a lot
    • Lost 10 pounds

It’s too bad that I was too sleep deprived to fully appreciate how quickly I lost weight in that first month postpartum. Pretty sure I’ll never lose weight that quickly ever again in life.

  • 2 months – 5 months
    • Exercise: Walking, light aerobics and weightlifting, 3-4 days per week
    • Diet: Eating whatever I was hungry for–and I wasn’t hungry as frequently
    • Lost
      • 2 months postpartum: 3 pounds
      • 3 months postpartum: 1 pound
      • 4 months postpartum: 1 pound
      • 5 months postpartum: 1 pound

I started keeping track of my measurements around this time.

Why? I’m sure some of you are asking. Why would you do that to yourself?

A few reasons. First, any change in my measurements gave me motivation to keep going–especially since I started out with six inches to lose from my hips.

  • 6 months
    • Exercise: Light jogging and weightlifting, 5-6 days per week
    • Diet: Keeping intake to 1600-1700 calories per day
    • Lost 0 pounds

Undoubtedly, six months postpartum was my peak dissatisfaction with body. I mean. Really. Lost 0 pounds.

When the dust settled and my body figured out that it wasn’t carrying another human being anymore, my metabolism settled on a nice comfortable rate of losing 1/4 pound per week. It wasn’t the rate that I wanted, but at least I was moving in the right direction.

7 months: Second Gear

  • 7 months
    • Exercise: Medium-impact aerobics and weightlifting, 6 days per week
    • Diet: Keeping intake to 1600-1700 calories per day, eating more protein
    • Lost: 2 pounds

At 7 and 8 months postpartum, I had recovered enough (Kegels, ahem) to get back into my higher intensity aerobic training. It was a gradual ramping up of intensity, being careful to avoid injuries. This higher intensity training helped to kick start my metabolism again and begin the path back to my previous fitness level.

8 months – 13 months: Figuring Out How To Keep the Engine Going

  • Exercise: Running and heavy weightlifting, 6 days per week
  • Diet: Aiming for 1500-1600 calories, eating more vegetables and protein
  • Lost
    • 8 months: 3 pounds
    • 9 months: 2 pounds
    • 10 months: 2 pounds
    • 11 months: 1 pound

Over time, I saw my metabolism slow again. At 11 months postpartum, I was still 10 pounds away from my pre-pregnancy weight. And I just wanted to be done with the whole thing.

Nevertheless, I just couldn’t stomach counting calories at all anymore. I had been pretty laissez-faire about it from eight months postpartum onward, but at this point, I just cringed at the thought of keeping any more tallies of calories. Instead, I would just eyeball what I was eating and try to keep meals in an acceptable range.

My husband recommended adding more protein to my diet. So I added some peanut butter to my oatmeal. I didn’t change anything else. Just added the peanut butter.

  • 12 months
    • Exercise: Running and heavy weightlifting, 6 days per week
    • Diet: Not counting calories–added peanut butter to daily oatmeal
    • GAINED 3 pounds

It turns out that adding the peanut butter was not such a great idea. So I went back to my old routines.

  • 13 months
    • Exercise: Running and heavy weightlifting, 6 days per week
    • Diet: Return to old diet without the peanut butter
    • Lost 2 pounds

This is the month when I was ready to do something drastically different. ANYTHING different.

Enough already! I’m running 3.5 miles three times per week! I’m eating healthy! I’m tired of just dropping 1 or 2 pounds a month!

This is when I heard that one of my friends (Thanks, Cate) was doing intermittent fasting. She said that for two days per week, she was restricting her calories to 500 calories. On the other days, she would eat normally.

Oh brother, I thought. That can’t be good for exercising.

“You can exercise,” she told me, after I asked.

“Really?”

“Yeah, look it up.”

So I did.

What’s really funny is that I had been reading The Secret Life of Fat by Sylvia Tara for several months–but I stopped reading just before I got to the section about intermittent fasting.

Secret Life of Fat

There are different ways to do intermittent fasting, and eating 500 calories two days a week didn’t really fit in with my need for daily consistency.

But there was a version that would work great for me: Fasting for 16 hours and eating for 8 hours.

For me, that would mean skipping breakfast. Then eating lunch and dinner.

The idea behind intermittent fasting is to extend your body’s natural fat-burning mode, which happens when you sleep. While you sleep, your body consumes its energy from the day before. When it runs out, it starts burning your fat reserves. As soon as you start eating, your body stops burning fat and starts working on the food. If you can keep your fast going for a few months hours, you give your body a chance to burn more of your fat reserves.

And if you exercise in the morning on top of intermittent fasting?

Powerhouse.

14 months – 18 months: Intermittent Fasting = Quick, Permanent Results

So here’s what happened to me:

  • 14 months
    • Exercise: Running and heavy weightlifting
    • Diet: Eating in an 8-hour-window, 10:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m., no calorie counting, aim for lots of protein, good fats, and vegetables.
    • Lost 4 pounds
  • 15 months
    • Exercise: Running and heavy weightlifting
    • Diet: Eating in an 8-hour-window, 10:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m., no calorie counting, aim for lots of protein, good fats, and vegetables
    • Lost 4 pounds

And I’m still going. At almost 18 months postpartum, I’ve returned to my pre-pregnancy weight–and I’ve lost an additional 2 pounds.

If you’re thinking about intermittent fasting, I will say that the first week is probably the hardest. I was extraordinarily hungry until I would eat at 10:00 a.m. But drinking water helped. After a week or so, my body had re-adjusted to a new normal and it’s not nearly so hard to make it to 10 a.m. now, several months later, as it was then.

Not only did I lose weight, but I think that the fasting helped to reset everything in my body.

Read: PMSing and periods have been pretty tame and I haven’t really been sick at all–even though my petri-dish children have given me plenty of chances to travel into the depths with them.

Furthermore, allowing myself to feel hunger for a period of time helped me realize that I was still thinking about hunger from a pregnant mindset. During pregnancy, hunger = nausea. And when I was pregnant, if I allowed myself to go hungry, I paid for it with wanting to throw up.

But not anymore. Now, I can feel hunger again, without the nausea.

More than anything, I’m just thrilled to be back at my old weight, wearing my old clothes, feeling like my old self. It definitely didn’t come easy.

So if you’re out there, trying to lose the baby weight, I’m with ya, girl. It sucks. It really sucks.

My advice to you when you first get into (or back into) exercising: Embrace humility.

No one looks great exercising when they’re first starting out.

And it’s not about “looking hot” anyway, right? You’re over that, right? You just had a baby come out of you. Remember how crazy that was?

Tell yourself you’ve been through harder things then this.

High five to you for hangin’ in there.

I think you’re amazing.

 

bump-pictures-2

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41 weeks, 3 days: Totally done.

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Two days postpartum (No Kate Middleton here. I think she has some special line in her genetic code?)

 

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4 days postpartum

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Two weeks postpartum

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2 months postpartum: Beginning of exercise, still in maternity clothes 

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6 months postpartum: Down to my old yoga pants.

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15 months postpartum: Wearing my old jeans. Jeans, I say!

 

 

8 Comments
March 23, 2018

The Last Mile

In that last mile, my body remembers Birth

The opening, the stretching

The pain, the power

An explosion of endorphins

Water pouring over flame

I remember Birth’s great paradox,

that very first thought with a newborn in arms,

How can so much Destruction

bring about such Flawlessness?

 

In that last mile, I am part Khaleesi

Circle of Fire

Bearer of Blood

Khaleesi

Someone who burns, but is not consumed

Someone who turns nothing, into something

I remember with my body

I am the Sex that brings Life into this world,

And this is Holy to those who understand

 

In that last mile, I am part Mhysa

I am more than Self

Connected to all the Souls who came before me

and all those who will come after me

Life after Life after Life

Link in the Great Chain

Those whom I will never know

Will never see

Will never touch

But in this space

As my feet slow against the earth

They are here with me

In my breath

In my blood

In my heart

And this is Holy to those who understand

mhysa

1 Comment
January 3, 2018

I Wore a FitBit for the First Year Postpartum: Here’s How Much Sleep I Lost

Over the past year, my blog post about my changing heart rate throughout pregnancy and the resulting increase in total calories burned per day has become the most heavily trafficked blog post on this site.

So I figured I’d tackle postpartum sleep loss next.

Because, guys, postpartum sleep deprivation is no joke. (Except when it is.)

So, here we go.

Last Days of Pregnancy, Labor, and Immediate Postpartum Period

I gave birth on February 2nd. You can see that in my last days of the pregnancy, I was sleeping around 6 or 7 hours at night (not pictured: the six or seven times that I had to get up each night to pee). I was also taking a nap in the afternoon since my daughter was in daycare and I was wasting my maternity leave by being way beyond my due date. (That wasn’t really part of the plan… But hey.)

Note: Dates are in descending order. That’s the only way FitBit will let me view the data.

Pregnancy Labor Immediate Postpartum Sleep

The last time that I had some solid sleep before giving birth was Wednesday, February 1st. That night, I finally went into labor around midnight (at 41 weeks, 4 days).

It looks like the next time that I slept was on the day that I gave birth.

Do not be fooled. I was completely incapacitated after giving birth and losing 1200 ccs of blood. The same is true of February 3rd. I was lying in a hospital bed, trying to recover, but not really sleeping.

The next time that I actually fell into a light sleep (definitely not REM or a deep sleep) was February 4th.

That’s a full 72 hours without sleep.

Believe it or not, this was an improvement from my first birth, when I went about 96 hours without falling into at least a light sleep. (Wednesday, August 14th, 6:00 a.m. to the night of Saturday, August 17th)

Yeah.

First Week Postpartum

Even with having the help of my husband and mother, on most days during that first week postpartum, I was getting about 5 hours of sleep in a 24-hour period, but only in frustrating 1-hour increments.

Week 2 Sleep

Why?

There were plenty of times during the day when I could have let my mother do the feedings and caught up on sleep.

But honestly, during that first week, I just couldn’t fully power down. I can’t pinpoint one reason. Was it my fluctuating hormones? Was it racing thoughts? Was the stress of recovering and adjusting to life with a second child?

Sure. It was all of these things. It was probably also the additional stress of feeling like, Oh my God, why aren’t you sleeping! Everyone has everything taken care of! Use your time wisely!

Not the most restful thoughts you can have.

So I was exhausted. I hurt everywhere. The afterbirth cramps were intense. I was still bleeding a lot. Breastfeeding was (once again) complete hell and I was dealing with the emotions of stopping completely. The baby was eating every 2 hours and we were figuring out that, just like his sister, he was allergic to dairy. The house was in disorder. The other child was feeling left out. My husband was trying to keep the ship running.

And every night, from midnight to 6:00 a.m., it was just me and the baby. Although it was emotional and beautiful in its own right, it was also incredibly exhausting.

This is when intense sleep deprivation began to take hold. Not only was I unable to sleep because the baby was eating all the time, but my body began to realize that it had lost its placenta (no more all-is-right-and-good-in-the-world levels of progesterone for me anymore).

This week, by far, was the absolute worst for me. 

Some things you cannot do when you’re getting this little sleep:

  • Have a coherent conversation
  • Drive
  • Make decisions
  • Basically, anything beyond mother-infant survival is way too challenging

At the end of this week, my mom (who had mercifully been staying with us after the delivery) returned home. My husband and I looked at each other like, What now? How are we going to get some sleep and not lose our minds?

We made a compromise.

Second Week Postpartum

We decided that my husband would take the evening feedings that happened before midnight. I would get the feedings after midnight. I would try my damnedest to get some sleep before my first night feeding. In addition, on the weekends, my husband would take all of the night feedings so I could get some restorative sleep.

And because he was extra awesome, he allowed me to tag him in when I told him that I was seriously losing my mind. Because, quite honestly, sleeping like this is simply unsustainable for weeks on end.

Week 3 Sleep

Things you still should not do when you’re sleeping like this:

  • Drive
  • Make important decisions
  • Make plans (for anything)
  • Read (you won’t remember what you read)
  • Shop (you’ll forget what you bought)

Third Week Postpartum

By some miracle, our baby started to shift towards only two night feedings by this point, leaving me responsible for just one feeding since my husband took the other one. This is not a common occurrence, so if it happens for you, just express your undying gratitude to the Universe. Seriously.

By this point, I had mostly recovered from the pain of childbirth and postpartum blood loss. I had more energy and was able to independently take care of household responsibilities like dishes, cooking, laundry, and vacuuming.

This dramatically improved my mood. I mean, obviously, right?

If you’re getting this much sleep, driving might be possible, but honestly, it’s really best to only drive if you’re getting at least six hours of sleep every night.

Week 4 Sleep

Fourth Week Postpartum

After about one month after birth, we started to find our rhythm with taking care of the house, the new baby, and the preschooler. We were still doing night feedings, but they were becoming more manageable.

I need to emphasize at this point that my increase in sleep by four weeks postpartum is a direct reflection of my husband’s willingness and ability to step into his role as an equal caretaker. Without his help, I would still be getting minimal sleep by this point.

So hats off to you, Doug. You kept me from losing my mind.

Week 5 Sleep

So when did the baby sleep through the night?

Okay, first, if you’re trying to make friends with other new parents, don’t ask this question.

But I’m game for it. So…

“Sleeping through the night” was a process for us. Our baby slept ten hours in a row for the first time when he was two months old.

BUT…

… it was just a one-night reprise from the continuing pattern of night feedings that stretched on well past four months. At five months, he started to want to put himself to sleep. No more rocking or holding him while he got drowsy. Odd, but I acquiesced.

By six months, his eating schedule got all screwy and he started to develop a middle of the night feeding again. And we had had enough of it. He was a huge baby. There was clearly no need for him to be eating in the middle of the night. He was healthy. He wasn’t teething. Coupled with the crushing reality that things were not going to resolve by themselves, we made the decision:

It was time to Cry It Out.

It took three nights, but it was the best decision we made. Hands down. He dropped the night feeding and learned to tank up in his first and last feedings of the day. No one was worse the wear.

What did your average sleep look like throughout the year?

Here is what my average number of hours of sleep looked like from February 2017 to December 2017 looked like in summary, with some annotations to help make sense of what you’re seeing.

Sleep in 2017

Sleep in 2017

Keep in mind a few things:

1.) I had lots of help.

2.) I had a pretty long maternity leave (at least compared to most women in the U.S.)

3.) I did not breastfeed.

4.) I committed myself to working out in the morning because it improved my mental and emotional state. This meant that I would get up at 4:30 a.m. on most mornings to exercise before the kids woke up and before I had to get ready for work. Yeah, it was hard, but it made me feel so much better. So I made adjustments to help commit to this goal, like going to bed way early (like 8 p.m.)

5.) There were plenty of bouts of illness, teething, and unexplained fussy nights that were peppered throughout the year.

6.) Our baby did not have acid reflux or prolonged colicky periods or other conditions that made him unable to sleep for long periods of time. With the exception of the dairy allergy, he has been very healthy.

***

Postpartum sleep deprivation is real and it’s tough.

No way around it.

If you’re reading this while you’re pregnant with your first child, don’t despair. There are some things that you can do to prepare yourself for the realities that await you soon.

1.) Establish clear expectations about care-taking responsibilities with your partner.

Talk openly. Talk honestly. Agree that no one really wants to lose this much sleep, but damn it, you’re in this thing together. Tag each other in when you’re down for the count.

2.) Do not be too proud to ask for help.

You cannot do this alone. You will need help. And lots of it. You are not Superwoman and there is no glory in trying to be. Few, if any, will know of your struggles to simply get through the day. Every woman who has been through this understands the pain and exhaustion that you are experiencing. They are, quite often, thrilled to help.

3.) When it gets tough, remember that you’re not doing it wrong.

You’re not doing it wrong. It’s just plain hard. No one has an easy time of this, and any woman who says it was not that bad is airbrushing reality.

4.) Ask those who are close to you to let you know when they think you’re not okay.

Losing sleep can bring you to the edge of psychosis. If you go days and days without sleep, you will start to lose your grip on reality. And from your perspective, you may not realize that you’re not fine anymore. If you cannot achieve restorative sleep even when you are provided the opportunity, it is probably time to seek help from your medical provider.

5.) Buy ear plugs and a sleep mask. You’ll need them for daytime sleeping.

Sleep_mask

6.) Coffee.

I mean… obviously.

coffee-cup-1797283_960_720

Good luck on your postpartum journey, Friends.

It’s a crazy way to live and in the hard moments when your head is warm and fuzzy and everyone around you is so blissfully unaware of how LUCKY they are to have slept more than four hours last night… it feels like it will go on forever and you will forever be stuck in the vicious cycle of Never Enough Sleep.

But you won’t.

Press on.

Please let me know how it’s going for you in the comments below.

4 Comments
November 12, 2017

Gigantic Baby

He didn’t start out that way.

That’s what everyone always asks when I tell them that I have a big baby.

How big was he at birth?

For being born at 41 weeks 4 days? I mean, okay, he was big, but not huge. He was born 8 pounds 10 ounces (which, I assure you, felt like 25 pounds, 10  ounces). Google tells me that is the 86th percentile for weight.

IMG_3823

1 week old

We’re actually used to having big babies. Our daughter hugged the 90-100th percentile growth curve since she was one month old. (She was born at 50% percentile for both weight and height.) And she’s still tall. She is several inches taller than most of the boys in her class.

When I think back to her babyhood days, I remember that she was about one year old (maybe a little older) when she started pushing me away when she was sleepy, no longer wanting me to hold her as she fell asleep.

Ouch.

But okay. That’s what she wanted. To be honest, she was getting kind of big for me to comfortably rock her anymore. By that time, she was the size of an average 18-month old. So I acquiesced.

So when I was pregnant this time around, I thought, Maybe this one will be different. Maybe this time, I’ll get to hold a smaller baby for a little longer.

Ha.

Ha. Ha.

image-20170222_145134

3 weeks old

Until he was 5 1/2 months old, Henry regularly needed someone to rock him to sleep and transfer him (in such and such way) to his crib. At first, it was rocking in the chair, his stomach turned toward mine, his head resting on the inside of my elbow.

But around 4 1/2 months, he wasn’t digging that position anymore. He would fuss and arch his back, pulling his head away from me. So I stood and held him to me again, stomach to stomach, rotating at the hips until he would close his eyes. (I found out later that his favorite daycare teacher had been putting him down for naps like that during the day. I thought that was pretty adorable.)

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4 months old (He hit himself in the face with his keys.)

And then at 5 1/2 months, he was just having none of it. No more rocking. No more holding. No more shushing. No more patting on the back. It was just all out screaming, his head digging into the mattress, until I would walk out the door and close it behind me.

Then, silence.

Truth be told, we still had to do the whole Cry-it-Out process several weeks later since he had developed a penchant for reverting back to night feedings, but his preferences for falling asleep just transformed overnight.

It was almost kind of like, God, Mom. Just back off and let me do this.

To which I said, Seriously, dude?  This is my last time around this merry-go-round. Don’t I get some say in when I stop rocking you to sleep?

No? 

Well, fine.

IMG_4850

Seven months old

***

I guess it makes sense, though. At 6 months, he was as big as my daughter when she wanted to put herself to sleep. (Maybe he was just getting too big for me to make him comfortable?)

Also at 6 months, he outgrew his “pumpkin seat” car seat and we had to upgrade to the monster spaceship carseat that stays strapped into the car unless you want to go through the headache of removing it.

Daycare pickup and drop-off now involves me lugging a gia-normous baby, his bag, and his sister’s lunch bag while keeping an eye on his sister (who is carrying her bag) and making sure that she’s not giving into the temptation to dawdle and pick up trash in the parking lot. Sometimes, I strap Gia-normous Baby into the stroller to manage all the weight, but geez, he really hates the stroller.

I know he’s a baby, but he’s such a baby about some things. Sudden, loud noises, riding in a stroller, an unexpected face–and joy instantly turns into terror. Because those are the only two options. Joy and terror. (If you’ve never been around babies, hunger and tiredness are expressed as terror.)

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8 months old

To summarize, here’s what his growth has looked like:

  • Newborn: newborn-sized clothing for 5 days, then 0-3 months
  • Age: 1 month, Size 3 months (about 14 pounds)
  • Age: 3 months, Size 9 months (about 18 pounds)
  • Age: 6 months, Size 18 months (21 pounds, 4 ounces)
  • Age: 9 months, Size 24 months (24 pounds)

24 pounds is heavy.

Especially when your baby is just now starting to crawl and cruise. I am lifting this baby all the time.

Every time he goes for a wire or outlet or approaches an ant trap. Every time he barrels headfirst toward the TV stand, where a nest of juicy, welcoming wires await his inquiring mind. Come to think of it, he loves the wires that lead to everything: laptops, baby monitors, lamps, blenders, TVs, dusty PlayStations that I have dreams of playing (When? I’m not sure I have a valid answer. Perhaps I should just box them up and give them to Henry when he descends into the inevitable phase of video game obsession that middle school boys all seem to experience?)

Anyway. Wires. He just really loves wires.

If you think about it, I’m basically lifting weights all weekend long. (I have one mean left bicep.)

But it’s his height that has really taken me by surprise.

  • Newborn: 21.5 inches
  • 8 weeks: 24 inches
  • 4 months: 27 inches
  • 6 months: 29 inches
  • 9 months: 31.5 inches

I started to really notice how big he was when I was feeding him in the glider and realized that my 7-month-old baby’s feet were reaching my knees, while his head was resting on my shoulder. And I’m 5′ 6.5.” (I used to be nearly 5′ 8″. Hey, did you know that pregnancy can rob you of height? That’s a fun fact.)

What!?!?

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8 1/2 months old

This huge change matches what his 6- and 9-month check-ups reported. Beginning at 6 months, he outpaced the 100th percentile curve. Now, it looks like he’s approaching 110th.

People ask us where Henry gets his height from.

Pretty sure it’s from my side.

My father was 6′ 2″. My brothers are 6′ 4″ and 6′ 7″. My mother and sister are also taller than me.

So, we’ve got another big child.

There are advantages.

When he practices his “walking” by holding onto my fingertips, I don’t have to stoop over. He’s tall enough that he can hold onto my fingers while we walk. He can romp around with his older sister without being completely overrun by her. He even finds it funny when she crawls on the floor like he does.

But, hey, it’s all good.

Healthy baby.

Healthy me.

Life is good.

Chef Henry 9 months

9 months old

 

 

6 Comments
August 25, 2017

YouTube is Our Third Baby

In the last few months, I’ve started getting the You guys thinking about having a third? comment more frequently. Maybe because several of our friends have just had their third–or fourth–baby.

Um, no.

Emphatically, no.

This is it.

The baby has finally started sleeping a glorious, GLORIOUS, twelve hours at night straight, partially thanks to the four nights of Crying It Out that I stomached. Nothing worse than listening to your baby screaming at full volume for 40 minutes while you paw silently at the door, on the verge of tears yourself.

He’s okay. My God, he had seven, SEVEN!, bottles today. He’s not hungry.

He’s okay. He’s 6 1/2 months old.

He’s okay. He’s 22 pounds. 22 POUNDS! He’s a Monster Baby, for the love of God.

He’s not going to die.

He’s just really, really pissed.

He’s got the eat-sleep association.

You’re not a bad mother.

Oh God… Will he EVER stop crying? Is this damaging his vocal cords?

Repeat that several more times on the first night.

But he did. By the fourth night, Done.

(Can I just say, sure, you love your baby. But man, you REALLY, REALLY love your baby when he doesn’t bother you from 7:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m.)

So no.

Two is enough.

family

***

In the first two weeks postpartum, I went over the numbers in my head and made a list of reasons for or against having a third child. Yeah, yeah. We said we’d only have two, but LOOK AT THIS FACE!!! Oh my God. Babies are incredible. I could totally do this again.

But then, we’d be looking at a minivan.

And I’d be 37? 38? 39? And pregnant? I remember how I felt being 35 and pregnant. I don’t think it’s going to get any easier. This body has been through enough. (And you’re welcome, Offspring.)

And another three years of full time-daycare ($33,000 total at today’s rate)?

I think it was the cost of daycare that was really the deciding factor.

***

We were talking the other night about just how much “free time” we had before children.

I mean, duh, right? Of course we had more time. In some ways, it was great. Coming home from work and relaxing. Nice. It was “the life.”

Of course, we did other things. I wrote a novel. Doug volunteered extensively for our church, cooking meals for 100-200 people weekly. We hung out with friends. A lot. And it was fantastic. We went out to eat. We entertained.

We also worked more than our fair share at our jobs. I worked about 50-60 hours per week at four (yes, four) jobs. Doug often worked more than his required 40.

But from my perspective now, I look back and think, God, imagine what we could have accomplished for this YouTube channel if we had started doing this before we had kids. 

But that was years before YouTube’s currently capabilities and reach.

So here we are.

Instead of having a third baby, we have a YouTube channel.

It’s got his hands and my eyes.

It really is a combination of all of our talents together in one creative outlet.

We’re so proud.

3 Comments
August 10, 2017

Things I Don’t Miss About Being Pregnant (a.k.a. talking about big bellies and peeing)

I was sitting on the couch the other day, working on my laptop, and I pulled my legs up to the cushion and crossed them and thought…

Whoa… Been a while since I’ve been able to do that.

Six months postpartum and 28 pounds lighter–and just now starting to realize that I’m starting to really move past the physical limitations that pregnancy put on my whole body.

From the second trimester until now (October 2016-August 2017), I haven’t felt comfortable with/haven’t been able to…

  • lie on my stomach (duh)
  • lie on my back (heavy uterus on my spine)
  • hunch forward (it cut off my air supply)
  • sit with legs crossed (belly in the way)
  • sit with legs closed (again, the belly)
  • sit much, period (weight of belly would pull me forward)
  • stand in place for a period of time (low back pain)

Now, think about your day. Think about how much time you spent in any of these positions.

Now, take that time away and replace it with either walking or lying on your side. Because that’s how I basically existed for most of Week 40 and 41.

Miserable.

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41 weeks, 3 days

I remember in that last trimester being horrified that my boobs were literally resting on my belly.

And worse, my belly was resting on my thighs.

From my neck to my knees, I just felt like pure belly.

I did not find this reassuring or comforting or magical or any other variation of positive.

I just felt e-nor-mous.

Now that I’m six months postpartum, I’m starting to regain a lot of my old physical self. I can do kickboxing for an hour and running for forty-five minutes. My legs and feet aren’t so swollen that I don’t recognize my legs.

And, hey, I can pee. Normally.

It’s hard to believe that it’s been about a whole year of altered peeing.

At first, it was frequent peeing because of hormones.

Then, it was frequent peeing because of more amniotic fluid.

Then, it was frequent peeing because, geesh, my bladder was completely smooshed under the weight of the baby.

And then, it was my organs moving back into their original places and my brain readjusting my expectations of how long I can go between peeing and then being amazed when, wow, I haven’t peed in two hours and I’m still okay! And, look at that!, I didn’t pee myself when I sneezed!

Woot.

At six months postpartum, a woman’s body (particularly hormones) start returning to pre-pregnancy levels, making it much easier to shed the baby weight. I’ve started to really notice this in the last three weeks. While it took me 5 weeks to lose 1 pound when I was between three and four months postpartum, I’ve now started to drop about 1 pound every two weeks.

To which I say, ” ‘Bout time.”

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4 days postpartum

 

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2 months postpartum

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6 months postpartum

17 pounds left to go.

Bring it.

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August 3, 2017

My New Book: A Birth Story Guaranteed To Make You Cry

After I gave birth this past February, I thought,

Well. How am I going to write about that?

Because what I felt in labor had been deeply spiritual. In my first labor, I sensed God’s presence, but not in a physical way. What I experienced was beyond my physical senses.

But this time… I had seen things.

I had actually physically felt things that I couldn’t explain.

I knew that a blog post would become buried in this website over time. That’s not the way that I wanted to share this experience with an audience. I wanted something more permanent. Something more discover-able and more available to as many people as possible.

***

So I published a short Kindle book, called Why Your Middle Name is Jacob: A Birth Story.

From August 3-7, I will be giving away free copies, so I encourage you to download your copy today and share with anyone whom you think would be interested in it.

Important: You don’t need a Kindle device to read the book.

As long as you have an Amazon account, you can read this book. Just go to Amazon’s website, log in, find the book, put it in your cart, and checkout (for free). Then choose “Your Account,” and then select “Your Content and Devices.” You will see the book there and you can read it in your web browser.

Included in this e-book are six additional essays that I wrote in the early postpartum period, curated and compiled for a larger audience.

  • The World is Good Because it is Bad: A Letter to My Unborn Child
  • Postpartum Hemorrhage
  • These Holy Hours
  • Week 6: A Great Time to Return to Work
  • Week 7: And Now My Watch Is Ended
  • Is There Room in Motherhood for Feminism?

Kindle Direct Publishing only allows me to give away free copies of a title every 90 days. Please take advantage of this free promotional period while you can. After August 7th, the book will be available for $2.99.

If you download a copy, please review it on Amazon.

As an independent author, I rely on you, dear reader, to share your thoughts on my work.

I greatly appreciate your support!

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July 24, 2017

I Heart Formula Feeding (and I don’t care who knows it)

Listen to me read this post here:

 

Or read the post below here:

Something that I should say first

(I shouldn’t have to, but I know how quickly the mind jumps to conclusions…)

I think breastfeeding is awesome.

My love of formula feeding in no way diminishes your breastfeeding experience.

Infant feeding isn’t a zero-sum issue.

(And by the way, when did it become one?)

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Formula feeding, one week old

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As I’ve written about extensively in my book and in other blog posts, breastfeeding was so much worse than childbirth for me. (And I gave birth without drugs).

With my first baby, I was overcome with feelings of guilt (This shit might actually keep her brain from developing as much as it would if I were breastfeeding…) and shame (If I were a better mother, I would have kept pumping, even just a little bit. Every little bit helps.)

In my mind, I wasn’t allowed to openly love formula feeding. Proclaiming how much I loved formula feeding would have been akin to saying that I didn’t particularly care about the health of my child.

That’s what I thought.

When I try to trace back where those thoughts came from, I realize how much of my own insinuations were responsible for the guilt and shame that I felt. I read four or five credible books about breastfeeding when I was pregnant. (The Breastfeeding Book by Martha and William Sears was particularly good.) My takeaway from this and the other books was that, as long as I stuck with breastfeeding, my chances of success were very, very high.

I just needed to buckle down and commit to the process.

Because, let’s face it, breastfeeding is better for me and the baby.

I LOVED THIS MESSAGE.

Because if there’s one thing my friends and family know about me, it’s that I CAN BUCKLE DOWN AND COMMIT like no other.

I’m like a dog with a bone when I move something to the top of the priority list.

And in those first weeks after my first child was born…

Let’s just say, Ruff, ruff.

***

There’s a difference between loving the way that you feed your child and doing it simply because you hate the alternative.

I had to learn this the hard way with my first child.

Because, I confess, I didn’t love formula feeding her.

I just hated the alternative of breastfeeding.

Breastfeeding made me absolutely miserable. It brought me no joy. It only brought physical and emotional pain. Feelings of inadequacy and resentment. And days and days of being awake for 22 out of 24 hours (and that brings you to the brink of psychosis, let me tell you).

So I quietly switched to formula feeding when my daughter was 12 days old. Every time, someone saw us feeding her tiny bottles of formula, the mental tape of guilt and shame ran its course in my mind.

I bit my lip and hoped no one would say anything.

Most people didn’t.

But some did.

And then I was prepared with my boilerplate speech that grew increasingly awkward as I tried to figure out on-the-fly if this audience really needed to know the shape of my nipples or the amount of milk that I was producing. (Does anyone really need to know that?)

It was agonizing.

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***

But this post isn’t supposed to be about how hard breastfeeding was for me.

It’s supposed to be about how awesome formula feeding has been for me.

I’ll admit, I didn’t automatically switch to loving formula feeding after having my second baby simply because I had done it before.

But once I realized the absolute deluge of work that having a second child heaped upon us, I was ALL ABOUT FORMULA FEEDING.

With no grandparents living nearby to constantly stop by and help out, we bear the full load by ourselves. (Read: full-time jobs, daycare drop-off/pick-up, hours of housecleaning every day, lawn mowing (a HUGE yard), shopping, doctor visits, dentist visits, blah, blah, blah…)

So trying to breastfeed when my body wasn’t cooperating?

Nope.

Breastfeeding even if my body were cooperating would have been a challenge.

I think the only way I would be breastfeeding right now is if…

1) I truly loved the experience of breastfeeding

and

2) I could hire outside help to pick up my share of the household chores.

Barring those two crucial factors, breastfeeding would just not happen.

Because now, the day is doubly full of responsibilities.

Now, there are no simply no free moments to wade through the quagmire of the Internet and second guess everything that I’m doing and compare this product and that product and this method and that method.

I no longer run Google searches like “infant formula obesity” or “does formula cause diarrhea?” or “comparison of intelligence breastfed and formula fed” or “mother child bonding only breastfeeding?” And then get sidetracked into a discussion board where self-righteous and insecure young mothers tear each other apart.

So unh-uh. Ain’t nobody got time for that any more.

***

If you’ve gotten this far, perhaps you want some specific reasons that I love formula feeding.

Here are my top reasons, in order of importance to me.

  1. I know exactly how much my baby has eaten (This always helped put my mind at ease in those early weeks when your baby is trying to regain their birth weight.)
  2. I know exactly what ingredients my baby has eaten.
  3. I don’t have to worry about how my diet affects my baby. (After ten months of pregnancy, this is a huge relief, I can tell you.)
  4. My body starts to feel like it belongs to me again, much sooner.
  5. I can more easily share night feeding responsibilities.
  6. I don’t have to pump at night or at work, just to keep my milk supply up.
  7. Actually, just, I DON’T HAVE TO PUMP. (Those machines are like a form of torture, I swear to God. And of course, they were invented by a dude.)
  8. I don’t have to scrape the bottom of my soul for the willpower to endure a baby’s incessant need to nurse all day, for several days–just to get my baby through a growth spurt.
  9. I can get a babysitter and leave the house–without wondering how soon I’ll need to pump or nurse before my boobs explode.
  10. I will never run out of food for my baby–even if my body isn’t cooperating (a statement of middle-class privilege, I acknowledge. Although… so are a lot of these reasons…)
  11. If I get sick, I can take time to recover without having a baby attached to me all hours of the day.
  12. I can exercise without worrying about diminishing my milk supply.
  13. Actually, I can just live life without worrying about diminishing my milk supply.
  14. I only spend 2 hours per day feeding my child (20 minutes X 5-6 feedings), rather than 4.5 hours per day (45 minutes X 5-6 feedings–that was about the fastest I could ever nurse).
  15. I didn’t have to worry about whether my baby would take a bottle at daycare.
  16. I don’t have to confront the frustrating situation of wondering if some nut job is going to find my breastfeeding “inappropriate.” (IT’S NOT. GET OVER IT.)
  17. I’m sure I could go on…

***

I write this post specifically for mothers who are formula feeding.

Because I know what it’s like to be sitting in a group of moms and overhear someone refer to infant formula as “garbage.” Or hear another mom say, “Well, if that’s how you want to feed your baby…”

It ain’t fun.

And, if you were raised to be “ladylike” like me, you didn’t stand up for yourself. (Instead, you just pretended that you didn’t hear… and then complained about it later to an accepting audience as a means to let off steam. Being female is a bitch, isn’t it?)

What I want to say to you is this:

There will be sooo many times in motherhood when you can’t please everyone, no matter what you do.

This truth hit home hard just a month ago when another daycare mom who was considering withdrawing her baby (who had started just weeks earlier) called our daycare center a “dirty”, “expensive,” “baby factory.” (Expensive, sure, but dirty? Uh, have you been to other daycare centers???) After I told her that I liked our daycare, she said,

“Huh. I just thought my baby deserved better. But you’re fine with this, right?”

Ick. I couldn’t get out of the conversation fast enough.

Trust me. There will always be someone who will try to make you feel badly about how you’re raising your kids. No matter what you’re doing.

And if you need even more assurance that everything’s going to be okay, here’s Adam explaining why baby formula isn’t poison.

Press on, moms.

There will always be someone who is sure you’re not doing the best that you can. (And for some reason, it’s their responsibility to let you know about it.)

Press on.

7 Comments
July 11, 2017

The Tough Nights (a.k.a. Don’t Ask If the Baby is Sleeping Through the Night)

Listen to this post here: 

Or read for yourself here: 

You know what I’m talking about. We’ve all got our stories.

Here’s one from me.

It was the first day post-maternity leave that I had to be in the office at an 8:30 a.m. meeting.

Before this, my work tasks had been very flexible. I did a lot of stuff at home and only had to come into the office a few times. (And I totally yoga-pantsed it.)

But on Friday, May 12th, I had to be in the office. At 8:30 a.m.

So of course the night before this was also the first night that the baby was sick.

It was the first night that Doug was completely spent and the baby needed me to hold him all night long to sleep.

Beginning at 1:00 a.m.

crying baby

Photo credit: Brandon Baunach, http://www.flickr.com

What if I told you that my first thought when I heard him crying in the night wasn’t, You poor thing, are you okay?

What if I told you it wasn’t my second thought? Or even my tenth thought?

It was probably more like my thirtieth thought.

After, Oh my God, what is your problem? 

After, Look, we’re not doing this all night. We’re just not. I’m serious.

After, What the f**!?! Go to sleep!

After, I swear to God, if you wake up one more time after I put you down, I’m going to make you scream it out.

After, Why tonight? Really? You could have done this any other night. But now? Really.

After, I’m serious. I’m so f***ing serious.

And on and on.

After eight times of rocking him to sleep and trying to transfer him to the crib over the course of an hour, I relented. I let go of the plan that I was going to get up at 5:00 a.m. to exercise. I let go of the plan that I would even get one hour of sleep before work started.

I just let it all go and embraced the exhaustion.

If I was going to be tired, I didn’t also have to be stressed and resentful the whole day about being tired.

So when I handed the baby over to my husband at 5:45 that morning, I didn’t yell or swear. I just told him what the night had been like and asked him to stay home with the baby while I took the three-year-old to daycare.

Grocery shopping? Okay. I’ll do it. And I’ll pick her up from daycare. I said.

Give.

And would you stay home with the baby while I go to work?  I asked.

Take.

I showered. I made my coffee and drank it while I put on enough make-up to cover up the night. Then I dressed my daughter while she was still waking up and still like a wet noodle. Then, I coaxed her into eating her vitamins and drinking her milk. I put her lunch and my lunch together and made formula for the baby.

I loaded F’s lunch bag, her backpack, my work bag, my lunch bag (but not H’s bottle bag or H’s diaper bag since he was staying home). (If you’re keeping track, it’s usually six bags in and out of the car. Seven on Mondays and Fridays.)

I drove fifteen minutes south to her daycare.

Then I drove twenty-five minutes north to work.

I got off the Interstate with another car.

We both followed the same route until it was clear we were both going to the same university. We parked next to each other. I looked over and saw that the driver was a guy, probably my age. He sprang out of his car holding only a set of keys.

Just. A. Set. Of. Keys.

The nerve.

I saw very plainly in that split second what it takes for me to get to work now versus what it took for me to get to work before I had children.

Now, the morning is a whole orchestrated production. A delicate ballet of exercise, showers, wake-up calls, second wake-up calls, third wake-up calls, Oh-my-God-get-out-of-bed-already! wake-up calls, vitamins, lunch bags, baby bottles, Get-your-shoes-on, Go-potty, Get-your-shoes-on, diapers, Are-your-shoes-on, teeth/hair-brushing, For-the-love-of-God-get-your-shoes-on!, breakfasts, carseats, strollers, kisses, conversations with teachers, punctuated with a deep, satisfying sigh that yes, finally *I* can go to work now.

***

I wasn’t at peak performance on Friday, May 12th, but I pulled through. I recovered.

Thankfully, most nights have not been like that lately. Most nights, he sleeps through the night. Sometimes, he has a night feeding. And then he goes back to sleep.

And by the way, don’t ask if someone’s baby is sleeping through the night.

Unless you know them pretty well.

It’s just not good manners. I mean, really, it’s not a great topic for small talk. The only way that question is small talk is if the answer is clearly “yes.” And the likelihood of that is… meh…

A more likely situation is that you send the parent into a fury of jealousy as they imagine you sleeping on a billowy, undisturbed cloud of silence for eight, God, maybe even twelve! extravagant hours. Only to wake up to the luxury of you strolling to your bathroom and taking a hot, steamy, uninterrupted shower, and then magically emerging from the bathroom, just moments later, completely dressed to the nines and made completely over, from your hair down to your nails. And, lo, breakfast is already made. And it’s cinnamon rolls and waffles and bacon and sausage and the most delicious coffee you’ve ever had in your entire life–all 0 calories! And the only thing that you have to do is climb into your brand-new Mercedes and drive to work in completely, inexplicably empty roads and highways until you are work. Where everything is already done. And the only thing you need to do is drink more coffee and catch up on House of Cards, which you still haven’t gotten to see one blessed moment of and it’s driving you crazy (even though the reviews for Season 5 aren’t very good). But still. You binge. All. Day. Long.

Jealousy makes you crazy.

Do you really want to drive the person crazy?

***

Getting through the tough nights without completely losing your mind is an exercise in long-term thinking.

It’s easy to think, I really can’t do this again. I’m going insane. No. I’m not doing it. I refuse. He’ll just have to scream it out tonight. 

It takes some effort to reshape your thoughts into,

It’s not always going to be like this.

There will be an end to this.

You’ll live. Oh, you’ll be tired. Way tired. But you’ll live.

You’ve been through worse. Remember birth?

You’ve got this. 

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June 21, 2017

Week 20: What If I Told You…

That I am selfish?

That holding my sick baby for the entire night doesn’t feel that rewarding?

That for several months when my teaching load was light, I didn’t pick my daughter up from daycare until 5:30, even though I had finished everything for teaching and grading by 3:30

That I love my kids, but I’m at my best when I have a break from them

That some days are nothing but chores and work from sunup to sundown

That there are periods of several days in a row when the only thing that I get to “do for myself” is drink a cup of coffee in the quiet stillness in my cubicle before it’s time to teach

That I don’t like that

That I miss The Weekend

That I miss binge-watching TV for hours on end

That I wanted a child, but I didn’t want to be a “mom.”

(Does that make sense?)

That each day is a decision to live a spirit of humility and generosity (even though I sometimes want to be childish and self-centered)

That I constantly fail at this

That I lose my patience and yell

What if I told you that I’m not inherently great at mothering simply because I’m female?

That it’s a struggle to put the needs of others before me

That each day is a decision to let go of my desire to preserve my sleep, my time, my energy, my sanity

What if I told you that motherhood has made me more vulnerable than I have ever been my whole life?

That each day is a decision to draw my children close, rather than keeping them at arm’s length

because of my fear that they will sink their hooks so deeply into my being that they can unhinge me

What if I told you that I’ve grown two more chambers of my heart

And birth separated them from me

That they are now out there in the world, naive and not yet broken

And oh so exposed

That when they are crushed by the world, I will be too

What if I told you that before I became a mother, I thought that “moms” were minivans and bad pants and nonexistent sex lives?

That I thought that once I entered motherhood, it was all over

That once I became a mother, I might as well abandon anything that I wanted to do for myself for the rest of my life

And by that logic, I had to finish writing anything meaningful before I had any kids.

(Because they would just make it impossible to ever write again, right?)

What if I told you that before I gave birth, I had months of writer’s block

But once my daughter was born, I couldn’t stop writing.

That between naps and feedings and diaper changes, I wrote pages and pages and pages.

That sometimes I wrote at 3:00 a.m. after a feeding because I had another good idea

What if I told you that after I placed my time and energy and plans on the altar of motherhood

It gave me back far, far more precious gifts.

Strength.

Resiliency.

Wholehearted Love.

Joy.

Motherhood has knocked me down into the messy quagmire of life time and time again.

It has made me sob and ache and grovel and resent and rage.

But it has also made me a Badass.

It has made me skilled in the art of Forgiving

and Getting Back Up

and Moving On

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Artistry credit: Courtney Blair, http://www.patterndaily.bigcartel.com

 

 

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