The Bigger I Get, Lest I Forget

Readers, forgive my musings.  Most everything takes me back exactly one year in time.  To a most significant and significantly painful time - Eli's pregnancy, birth and aftermath.  One year ago Eli's already been born and  I'm left to sift through the emotions and weight that his short life left me with.  Now I am watching my stomach grow larger and  larger by the day it seems and this only serves to remind me of my struggles last spring.  The same struggles, with slightly different emotions, that I have dealt with after giving birth ever since our first son, Wyatt, graced our lives so briefly.  Wyatt was our first child, my first pregnancy and my first experience with childbirth.  Because we knew that he would not survive halfway into our pregnancy we never had the opportunity to prepare to bring a baby home.  So my preparations for Wyatt's c-section included attempts to erase the memories of that pregnancy from my physical world.  This meant packing away my maternity clothes before giving birth.  It is a tradition I have continued with each and every child since, those living and those not. This baby will be no exception.  I not only packed away the clothes but I took on the burden of losing my pregnancy weight, specifically my pregnancy belly, as quickly as possible.  It was too painful to still look pregnant, to even chance inviting questions from well meaning acquaintances and strangers.  Last year was no different except that I think, like during Wyatt's pregnancy, I indulged my emotions (grief, sadness, self-pity, fear) with food and I found that weight so hard to lose  for many months.  I lost the last pound of pregnancy weight when I got pregnant with this little one and since that was about six months after Eli's birth it  has been a little hard to watch that same stomach which I had worked so hard to deflate puff right back up again.  My internal mantra is to remind myself this one is different.  That  we fully expect to bring this baby home.

Those struggles have made me so much stronger than I ever imagined.  To some they may seem petty but to me my struggles with maternity clothes and pregnancy weight are so closely intertwined with the complicated emotions of grief and child loss that they are major battles within the war.

Fitting the Jeans

My latest greatest struggle. After having my 3rd child I lost about 20 pounds beyond my pregnancy weight. I chalk it up to breastfeeding, the introduction of fruits, veggies and portion control as well as running. The weight literally just melted off. I gained and lost my "normal" thirty pounds or so with my next pregnancy, our youngest daughter. With Eli I was careful with weight gain and exercise from the beginning. I exercised throughout the pregnancy, literally until the day before he was born. I gained a few pounds less than normal though he was a bit smaller than all of my other babies. Since I have not had a baby to tend to and have been sleeping through the night most nights I have had time to devote to my physical well being. And I have. I got on the treadmill for the first time the week Eli was born. Since then I have been walking, and now running, my butt off. Or so I had hoped. It's nowhere near off. I hit my weight loss plateau at about the two week mark and I could not be more frustrated (though in all fairness I can fit into more clothes than I did at two weeks). I'd been walking usually two miles or more a day until the six week mark and now I've been running at least 2 1/2 miles at a time, using the elliptical on other days and have added in weight training and yoga. I have also paid close attention to my nutrition and have adjusted my calorie intake post pregnancy. Not to mention I keep up with three girls under the age of 7 on a daily basis!

I understand I may be a little impatient and to be honest I have no real specific recollection of how long it took me to lose my pregnancy weight with each pregnancy. What is sticking in my head is that I lost all of my pregnancy weight but maybe two pounds after having Wyatt by the time I got pregnant with our oldest daughter less than four months later. Perhaps my expectations are too high and really they almost always are, but it's such a sore spot!

Our lives appear normal and for the most part they are. My husband goes to work every day, my daughter to school and I continue to hold down the home front with our youngest two. It's kind of like the old Sesame Street game about one of these things doesn't belong. The ten plus pounds or so that stand between me, my jeans and feeling good about how I look. They don't belong.

I am going to take a deep breath and head back downstairs to the treadmill. It just has to start making a difference, right?