Workin on my Fitness

Thank you to everyone who sent messages and commented on the breast feeding blog. All the support and suggestions are MUCH appreciated.

I thought I’d devote this blog to something I know much more about and that I feel in control of! I’ve always been an athlete and worked out. I started running long distance about 5 years ago. I enjoyed the competition with myself to run faster and longer each time and it really became addictive. Before getting pregnant I ran 6-9 miles 3 times per week. I would also swim and/ or go to the gym 3 other days of the week. I logged more miles when I was training for a race but had cut back when we were trying to get pregnant. I had really wanted to continue running all through my pregnancy but that proved to be much more difficult than I had anticipated.

I spent a lot of time researching running, fitness, and nutrition while pregnant. I was determined to keep my weight gain minimal yet healthy for our growing baby. I think that’s my main reason for writing this blog… to let women know it IS possible to keep working out or at least continue to be active AND get your body back after baby. I had REALLY wanted to be like the women whose blogs I had read that kept running throughout their pregnancies. While this didn’t work out for me I was still active at least 6 days per week. Since running and working out is a stress reliever for me I really needed, not just wanted, to continue my routine for my own well-being. Swimming was my saving grace and I swam multiple times each week all the way up to the end. It felt so good to be weightless in the pool and stretch out all the aches and pains.

I set my goal at gaining 25- 35 pounds. I downloaded a nutrition ap that tracked everything I ate and calculated the calories I burned during work outs. This allowed me to make sure I was getting what my body needed in addition to accounting for the calories I would need to make up for those lost during work outs. I found a base number of calories suggested for a person my size during each trimester and made that my daily goal. I already split my diet into 4 meals; breakfast, lunch, dinner, and a snack(s) so I continued that. I have never been one of those people who can live on three meals a day…. I literally eat every 1-2 hours.

I also made sure that I got at least 70 grams of protein each day. This was the biggest change to my diet since I’m not a huge meat eater. I was surprised that the normal amount of yogurt, cheese, and protein shake that I ate accounted for a good portion of that. Luckily during pregnancy one of the things I really craved was chicken and red meat so I easily hit the protein goal each day. Other than that, I literally ate whatever I wanted. Chicken strips were a main staple as well as lucky charms and ice cream. The key is portion control. I would get a chicken strip basket, including fries, and eat half of it. The other half I would save for the next day. Just FYI the Bill Millers chicken strip basket is over 1200 calories. That is way more than the average person needs to consume during one sitting. And I’m not kidding when I say I had ice cream every night! I would find that I needed more calories to hit my goal and a cup of ice cream would fit that nicely.
I ended up gaining 20 pounds. Half of that was during the first trimester when I felt horrible and nothing but random junk food sounded good to me. The majority of the rest was during the third trimester when T was doing her biggest amount of growing. I did not ever feel hungry and I did not deprive myself. In fact, towards the end I would get full very quickly and ate more small meals instead.

Taytum weighed 6 pounds at birth and then there’s the placenta and all the fluids you lose during delivery so by the time we came home from the hospital I had already lost 10 pounds. Don’t hate me but the next 6 pounds flew off within 2 weeks. Due to breast feeding maybe? Those last 4 pounds have been stubborn though. That could possibly be due to my new addiction to ice cream and the fact that I like to have a beer or glass of wine now and again. After week three I broke it to my husband that the ice cream would have to go. I have no self-control when it’s in the freezer. I’m looking into lower cal options and will report back on that shortly!

Even though I’m close to my pre-pregnancy weight, everything looks much different than it did before.  The doctor released me back to normal activity as soon as I left the hospital and felt up to it so I started walking right away. I added intervals of very slow jogging at week 2. I can now run 3 miles without stopping but it’s not easy or pretty. My goal is to get back to running half marathons but right now that’s looking like a far off goal. The Texas heat certainly isn’t helping me out in this department either. I can’t wait to get back to swimming and cycling but I’m waiting until after my 6 week check up for that. I’m hoping that adding the different activities and boosting intensity will help me get somewhere back to where I was.

 2 weeks postpartum

 

I ultimately hope that our active life style will rub off on our daughter and she will love running and have a competitive nature like we do.

Month 1 Struggles

Taytum came into this world a month ago and our lives have changed so much! I obviously knew this was going to happen but I guess you’ll never know what it’s like until you go through it. WARNING… If you don’t care to hear about the details of breast feeding… this particular blog instalment is not for you.

I think the most difficult part for me has been breast feeding. In hindsight, I should have taken the breastfeeding class offered by the hospital but I really didn’t think it would be this difficult. If you are pregnant I strongly suggest that you go to this class! Taytum is getting better but she is a finicky eater to say the least. In the beginning she wouldn’t latch and it was very stressful trying to feed her. I’m not being dramatic when I say she would look at my boob and shake her head like a possessed little baby. I say that with all the love in my heart. We had the lactation consultants come in to help and they literally had me hand expressing and feeing her like a little bird with a syringe. I still call her “little bird” because of that experience. At some point in the week 1 frustration I had the brilliant idea to try a nipple shield and that helped a ton.

Mainly, I think she’s just a lazy eater. She nurses herself to sleep and isn’t really sucking. So at week two I started supplementing with pumped breast milk because I was terrified that she was too little and not gaining enough weight. That resulted in an 11 ounce weight gain in one week BUT it also just about sent me over the edge. I’d nurse her for 20- 30 minutes, feed from a bottle, and then pump. Then an hour later it’s time to start the process all over again. Talk about losing your mind. It was also stressing me out to think about going places with her and planning out her feedings. So when the doctor acknowledged my concerns and said supplementing with formula would be fine if it was going to save me from going nuts I jumped on it. Now I’m supplementing with formula after she nurses and the last feeding before bedtime is formula that daddy gives T! Supposedly formula takes longer to digest so the hope was that she would give me a larger chunk of sleeping time before the first nighttime feeding…. I haven’t noticed a big difference there. The addition of formula IS allowing me to save more pumped breast milk and start a supply to give T once I go back to work. That’s a big plus for me… I just have to deal with the mommy guilt. And I swear now it’s like those “breast milk is best” commercials follow me no matter what I’m watching! My husband seems to think the formula (which is the closest to breast milk that they make) gives her gas. This was like a knife to my heart. Am I saving myself some sanity by making my sweet girl uncomfortable in the process? I don’t notice a difference in her behavior so I’m sticking with it.

I think I’ve decided that I’m sticking with all this until I go back to work. I’ll pump and continue as long as I can but if I start to lose my mind over it I’m throwing in the towel. I’ve had plenty of moms fess up that they or their children were formula fed and still turned out normal.

Month 1 positives- Baby girl is above her birth weight and still gaining… and goodness is she cute!

 

The New Normal

A lot has changed since my last post.... mainly, I'm not pregnant anymore and we have a new daughter! The doctor thought she might come early but I'm not sure I totally believed it would happen.... and then it did. Taytum is 12 days old. When I say it out loud I can't believe it's only been 12 days. But then again 12 is approaching 15 which is essentially half a month and I can't believe she's half a month old either. Do I sound sleep deprived yet?

My water broke on the morning of the June 24th which was awesome because one of the things I really wanted to happen was to experience my water breaking on its own. Weird, I know, don't ask me why. Jim was already at work and I had just told him when he left the house not to worry about coming to my doctor's appointment that day because I didn't think anything significant was going to happen. Little girl is making me in to a liar! I called and told him we needed to get to the hospital but not to rush too much because I still wanted to shower and look presentable. so I did that and texted or called as many friends and family as I could before he threatened to take my phone away. Even though it was very apparent that my water had broken I still had a lingering fear that I would get to the hospital and they would tell me I was just fat and peeing on myself and send me home. Lucky for me my water had broken and we got to stay!

Since I still wasn't having painful contractions they started me on Pitocin to get the party moving along. I thought it was interesting how much the nurse encouraged me to ask for the epidural as soon as possible.... then I found out why. I mean obviously I knew contractions were going to hurt but I was curious what they would feel like and thought I could handle a few. In a matter of 30 minutes my pain went from a 3 to a 9. Then I got the glorious Epidural and the world was right again. I couldn't feel anything below my ribs. Which in hindsight may have been a bad thing because it interfered with my ability to push.

And, oh the pushing. I'm not quite sure how I thought this part of delivery would go but I feel like I know a lot of people who pushed a few times and the baby was out... not the case with me. After the first few pushes I could tell I wasn't making much progress even though Jim, my mom, and the nurse were trying hard to lie to me a tell me that I was. It was even more alarming when the nurse tried to console me by telling me that first time moms have a harder time and sometimes push for 2 to 3 hours!!! what?!?! That was not helpful information. After half an hour I was already tired. At the 2 hour mark I was exhausted and freaking out that I had been through the worst part of delivery and was still going to have to have a C-section. Luckily, the doctor was able to use the vacuum/ suction thingy and get Taytum out! Her bruising is gone but her head is still a little miss-shapen. poor baby!

At 7:10, during a shift change, Miss Taytum Belle Welch came into our lives weighing 6 pounds and measuring 19 and 3/4 inches! And our lives are forever changed! Stay tuned for chronicles of our "new normal."