Weight Loss After Pregnancy

I've mentioned this in past posts, but I've struggled with weight my entire life. I remember wearing a two piece bathing suit when I was ten years old and being made fun of by a friend's brother because I was chubby. I remember being so jealous of my friends in middle school for being able to shop at 5-7-9, while I could barely squeeze myself into a stretched out pair of cutoffs in the biggest size the store carried (in case you were wondering, it was a 9). I know exactly what I weighed on every single important day in my adult life. I know what my weight was the day I graduated both high school and college, the day my sister got married, the days that both my nephew and niece were born, the day I visited my brother in prison for the first time, the day I met my husband, the day I married him, the day I found out I was pregnant, the day I gave birth to our daughter. I especially remember the day I got to my highest weight ever and I vowed to never see that number again. I also recall the day I got scarily close to that highest weight ever when we were going through fertility treatments while trying to conceive. For some people, important events can be recalled by a certain smell or song. For me, they're recalled by numbers on a scale. And for each and every one of those events, the number was different!!  I HATE that my weight is such an obsessive topic for me, and yet I can't seem to break the obsession. Right after Abby was born, I lost a large amount of weight super fast. By the time she was a few weeks old, I weighed 22 pounds less than I did the day I found out I was pregnant. It was wonderful! I still had quite a bit to lose to get down into a healthier weight range, and I was so sure that breastfeeding was going to make weight loss easy (for the first time in my life!). It turns out that I was wrong! Breastfeeding makes me feel like I am STARVING. I'm seriously hangry (that's hungry and angry combined) if I don't eat something every hour or two. It is absolutely ridiculous. And so, over the past few months, I've actually gained weight! At one point I had gained back 12 of the 22 pounds I lost after delivery. Talk about depressing! Thankfully, I have a very supportive husband who is also watching his own weight. Together we've been tracking our calories (for the most part anyway...I'm determined not to get too obsessed about the numbers this time around) and I'm feeling better about myself these days. I'm also trying really hard to distinguish hunger from thirst, because while I sometimes think I'm hungry, breastfeeding also makes me really, really thirsty. Sometimes a few glasses of ice water can be the difference in whether or not I'll have enough calories for an evening snack. Mostly, I want to focus on eating balanced meals and healthy snacks. I also want to raise our daughter in a health-conscious environment, as opposed to a weight-conscious one. I don't want her to grow up feeling like the fat kid like I did! I just want her to have access to healthy options and not feel the need to use food for comfort like I did as a child. It's a lofty goal, because as a society Americans are very focused on weight and body image. I still have quite a few pounds I'd like to lose myself in order to feel more comfortable in my own skin. Hopefully the combination of making healthy choices, being accountable for what I eat, and having a good support system will help me to be successful!

4 Months Old!

Our little lady is 4 months old today!  She's getting so big.  At her pediatrician appointment today we found out that she is 13lbs 9.5oz and is 23 and 3/4 inches long.  She's gone up in all of her percentiles too!  Basically, she is doing great!  We're STILL waiting on a big belly laugh from her, but she's finally started to give us little "heh heh" sounds every now and then.  Abby is definitely not a squishy little newborn anymore and hates being held any way but upright.  In her bouncy seat she strains to sit up on her own and looks like she's doing baby sit-ups!  She loves sitting in her bumbo and chewing on a toy while she watches me cook or put the dishes away.  Abby still loves bath time and has started to kick her legs more and splash a little, which is so fun to watch.  As I wrote in the last post, she's not sleeping all the way through the night anymore.  Last night she only got up once between 7pm-8am though, so that was a good improvement!  I've been trying to be really mindful of her awake time so that I can get her down for naps in the optimal window of time.  Awake time for her right now is only about an hour and a half. She CAN stay awake longer than that, but she starts getting very fussy and then nap time is a struggle.  If we can get her to her crib right around the hour and fifteen minute mark though, she'll usually go to sleep right on her own and wake up happy.  It's pretty remarkable!

Her doctor mentioned starting her on solid foods sometime between now and 6 months when we feel ready for it.  The old recommendations were to start feeding baby rice cereal around 4 months, but there have been recent studies that show rice cereal may predispose kids to childhood obesity, so our pediatrician recommended starting with oatmeal or just skipping the cereal all together. At this point, Abby isn't showing any signs of being interested in food. She isn't sitting up on her own, she still has a tongue thrust, and she doesn't really watch Dave and I eat or try to take our food.  So, for the time being I'm just going to continue breastfeeding her and reevaluate as needed. The tentative plan is to start with either green or orange veggies around 6 months.  I plan to try to make as much of Abby's food as I can.  I'm sure there will be posts about that in the future!

Here are some more recent pictures of Abigail:

Sleep Regression

Well, I suppose I shouldn't be too surprised that I'm writing this post. Abby was such a great sleeper for so long! We've hit what is commonly known as the four month sleep regression. At around ten weeks old, Miss A was consistently sleeping about ten hours straight at night, with good naps during the day. Then around twelve weeks she was sleeping 11-12 hours straight. Sometimes she would even eat and go back down again, so most nights she was sleeping from 7pm-8am with one early morning wakeup. Then all of a sudden she started waking in the middle of the night again. She acts like she's starving at that time, so even though I know that she can go all night without eating, I feed her anyway. Then she'll wake again sometime in the early morning. So we're back to 7pm-8am with two wake ups. She's also having trouble napping...which may be why she's waking at night more. Her naps now are usually just one 45 minute sleep cycle. On a rare day she'll consolidate and take a longer nap. Those days she's so much happier! I wish I could figure out how to get her back to her old sleep habits. It's supposedly really common for this to happen right around four months, and Dave and I don't believe in doing any CIO or sleep training until she's a bit older, so for now all we can do is stick it out! We are also in the process of trying to stop swaddling her. We've tried one arm out, both arms out, no swaddle at all and just a sleep sack, and this star shaped little sleeping bag called a Zipadee-Zip that's made specifically for transitioning from the swaddle. So far none of that worked though! So right now she is sleeping in a halo sleep sack with the arm holes sewn shut! She can still move her arms around but she can't get them to her face to startle herself awake. In about a week we plan to unsew one of the arm holes and see how she does with one arm out. I think that this swaddle transition is causing some of her sleep problems too, but she needs to be able to sleep without it now that she's rolling, so it's time (whether I'm ready or not!!). Anyway, I am really, really hoping that things get sorted out and she starts sleeping all the way through the night again soon!! 

Here she is in her Zipadee-Zip taking a nap one day:

And this is how I found her one day when I unswaddled her - she had managed to get her arms completely out of her jammies!

Here's hoping that her sleep troubles resolve themselves soon!

One Year Ago

Exactly one year ago today we conceived our beautiful daughter Abigail. Most people don't know exactly when they conceived their child, but because we used IUI to get pregnant, I have very vivid memories of the day! I thought I would share some journal entries from the day of the IUI and a few days afterward. They're very private entries, and not something I would typically share, but for some reason I'm feeling compelled to do so today...

Friday, May 4, 2012
Our first IUI is today. I'm feeling nervous and excited. I want it to work so badly, and yet I can't put all of my hopes in this because there is always a possibility that it won't work. Dave and I are killing some time at Starbucks right now in between his lab appointment and the actual IUI. I know that I'm not much of a prayer person, but please, God, if you're listening today...we really need you. We want this baby so badly and he/she hasn't even been made yet. We are so ready for our family. I am putting our fate in your hands, and I'm having faith that you will provide for us and do what's best, even if it doesn't make sense to us at the time.

The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Something to remember. I'm feeling more spiritual lately, and I know it has to do with going through this whole process of infertility. It hurts and it's lonely and it's tested our marriage in many ways. It's also made us stronger though...it's made me realize how badly I want to be a mother...how confident I am that Dave will be an amazing father. Part of going through this process is realizing that growing up in an unstable family without a father has just made me that much more determined to have a family that is the opposite of what I experienced growing up. Please, God, please let us start our family...


Wednesday, May 9, 2012
5 days past IUI today. I'm feeling SO emotional. I'm sitting here torturing myself watching A Baby Story and hoping that it will be my turn soon. Last week Dave told me that he got teary looking at pictures of our friends' baby. It made me realize that Dave wants this just as much as I do, he just shows it in a different way.


Friday, May 11, 2012
7 days past IUI. Another Facebook friend announced last night that she's pregnant. I broke down crying and had a good pity party. Dave was amazing and just sat and held me as I cried and listened to my "it's not fair" rant. I know that I just have to have faith that it will all work out. Everything happens for a reason and it will all happen the way that it's supposed to in the end...right? I never, ever thought that the road to becoming parents would be paved with so much grief and heartache. That month after month I would feel like a failure...like a broken woman. I feel so bad for Dave too, who has to sit by knowing that there's nothing he can to do make things any better because it's ME who's the broken one. I just want our child to be in our arms. I want to sit up in the nursery and rock him or her to sleep. I want to be the one to announce on FB that we are finally expecting our first child. I just want it to be our turn SO badly. My heart hurts, and my face is tear stained, and sometimes I feel like these past 14 months have been nothing but a bookmark in this chapter in our lives. We live in such limbo...waiting month to month and hoping for something that has yet to come. This Sunday will be the second Mother's Day since we started this TTC journey. Two Mother's Days and I'm still not a mother. Please, God, if you're listening...please bring a baby to us.


Wednesday, May 16, 2012
Omg, omg, omg! WE'RE PREGNANT!!! I was honestly starting to doubt that this day would ever come! I go back for another blood test on Friday to check my hcg level. It was a 26 today, which is a little low but it's also super early. I can't believe it!!


Reading these journal entries still makes me cry. Remembering how much my heart hurt when friends announced their pregnancies is still fresh in my mind. I felt so torn, wanting to be happy for them and yet being so angry that we couldn't get pregnant. The day of our last consult with our fertility doctor, we went to visit friends in the hospital who'd just had their first baby. We were running out of options and were given the choice of me having a laparoscopy or trying an IUI before moving on to IVF, and my doctor was strongly pushing for the surgery. I remember holding their beautiful baby in my arms and being in complete and total awe that they had MADE her. It felt like we might never get to experience holding our own newborn baby. And yet here we are, a year later, and I get to hold our amazing daughter every day. When she smiles at me, it melts my heart! Being a mom is honestly the very best gift I've ever been given - she's our little miracle baby! The day of the IUI last year, Dave and I were in the room at the fertility clinic waiting for the procedure to start and I felt SO awkward. I even said out loud, "This isn't quite how I imagined we would start our family!" The sweet nurse just smiled, told us to look into each other's eyes, and said, "Let's make a baby!"

And we did :)