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Hello! It's me, I'm still here. I often question if I exist apart from my little one, since I truly do nothing other than take care of her, go to work and sleep in 3 hour intervals. Based on that description. it sounds like I have a newborn but alas, I do not. I have a 15 month old that does not understand the joys of sleeping for more than 3 hours in a row. She'll get there, right? This too shall pass...right? Yeah, I've heard all the thought cancelling cliches, and I know it can't last forever, but until she no longer holds us as sleep hostages, my life will not start going back to 'normal'.
I say "normal" with the clear understanding that my normal has change irrevocably. Bit by bit I am starting to feel better and more comfortable in my skin but I realize that I will probably never feel like my old self again. It's just taking so long to get myself to a state of normalcy that I question if it's taking place at all. It's glacial movement kind of slow. But, just like people told me, eventually I was able to sit down again after giving birth. Eventually the scar tissue lessened its rage and allowed me to shower and perform other hygiene based activities without cringing/wincing. My abdominal strength even started to slowly reappeared, even if it was hidden under a lovely sheath of belly jelly. I even had 20 odd skin tags removed from my neck - bet you didn't know that those were a fugly side effect of pregnancy, did you? So, what's left? What strange bodily changes have remained? Let's see....I have a double chin that looks like it's hear to stay. A new skin condition that appears to be rosacea on my cheeks. There is the high likelihood of snizzing if my bladder is full when I sneeze. My feet never returned to their old size and now my feet are too big to fit into most of my oh-so-pretty pre-pregnancy shoes. There's the undeniable deterioration in my vision, which will be confirmed shortly at the optometrist. Then there's the obvious, goes without saying weight gain that is taking so damn long to address.
I'm not stupid; I know that weight loss is simple math. Reduce calories in (less fatty intake) and increase calories out (through exercise) to achieve weight loss. I know my body (or at least I did before the baby), I need to exercise to increase calories out because I like to eat way too much. My adult body was comfy at 140 without much exercise or 130 if I was working out like a fiend (i.e. training for a marathon). I also knew my body type could have been described as "athletic"; never thigh gap skinny. I will never be 120 pounds again like in my high school days and I am SO okay with that. But I don't want to be 165 pounds. I need to move my ass. But with Olivia, winter weather, traffic, chores, daycare and work hours hemming me in, I can't even fit in 30 minutes at my work gym. Every day I wake up thinking 'it's not hard, don't eat all that extra stuff and you will fit in your nice clothes again'. But there is always something extra I want to eat. Eating makes me happy. Food makes me happy. Cooking makes me happy. To make matters worse, I consider myself a stress eater, so basically the last 15 months of stressful (I mean blissful ) motherhood has translated to an abundance of stress eating.
But here I am. Let me paint you a picture; I go to work in clothes that are too tight and often covered in dry spit , with sallow eyes ringed in dark circles, and the same old shoes that I bought to fit my pregnant feet. My beautiful jewelry that I scoured for on eBay doesn't fit my swollen fingers and I am lucky if I get to brush my teeth before I leave the house, much less put on makeup or style my hair. I never thought I needed to wear makeup before; now I feel like I must hide behind it.
Ouuf, sounds like someone needs a sit down with a therapist and a massage, hun?
