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New year, new us! Enough of this “we’re exhausted new parents; we have to eat whatever’s easy” crap. Oatmeal for breakfast! Salads for lunch! Lean meat and a vegetable for dinner! WRONG!! Nice try, Jenny Craig. Your baby has other plans.
At three months old, he has given up daytime sleep. He’s never been a good nighttime sleeper (it’s the ONLY thing about him that’s been consistent — I can count on a consistently poor night’s rest) so this is adding up to very little sleep. Not only does he not sleep, but every blissful (but brief) snooze is preceded by an epic meltdown. After witnessing one particularly awesome display in her office, the pediatrician has prescribed something for suspected reflux and ordered me on a bland-foods diet to rule out a food sensitivity. ”If it looks at all interesting or like it tastes good,” she says, “don’t eat it.” Think nursing home fare. I was allowed white bread, white rice, baked chicken breast, plain baked potatoes, and water for four days.
A stronger woman than I may have found a way to make the most of each acceptable food and composed healthy (albeit tasteless) meals from that limited menu. I did not. I stuffed myself full of plain bagels and snacked on bowls of rice cereal with rice milk. I ate loaves of sourdough bread with sides of chicken broth, and when I realized I could probably eat Jell-O (it’s served in nursing homes!), I nearly wept with joy.
By the end of day 2, I was starving, rundown, and convinced my hair was falling out. My New Year’s goal of daily yoga (even if it’s just for five minutes!) was abandoned, but I did take several walks with the baby — mostly in an effort to distract myself from hunger pangs (but a calorie burned is a calorie burned, regardless of the motivation!).
Within 36 hours the meltdowns had become a thing of the past, but we had made so many changes at once there was no way of knowing which was to credit for our success. After much debate, we continued the Zantac and kept my diet free of coffee and dairy. I would say three good things emerged from this exercise: little man clearly feels better, I’m off carbs for awhile (you can get too much of a good thing!), and I was reminded that I should never, ever make New Year’s resolutions.
About a month after my triumphant (ha!) return to running, I developed plantar fasciitis in my left foot. I’m no expert, but the injury was probably due to the fact that I frequently returned home from a run to a crying baby, so instead of stretching, I immediately sat down on the couch to nurse. Alternately, I returned home to a sleeping baby, so I jumped in the shower to rinse off the sweat before baby duties distracted me from hygiene for the next three days. Naturally when the latter was the case, I couldn’t waste precious time waiting for the water to heat up, and it appears that my tendons are no fans of the no-warm-up/straight-to-cold-shower fitness regime. Jerks. I’m hoping to run the local half-marathon in the spring, and possibly the full in the fall. And because I’m still harboring the delusion that being a mom is going to get easy and routine enough that I’ll be able to train for a 13.1 or 26.2 mile race, I’ve decided to stop running for now to allow my foot to heal. Which means, I am now attempting to shed my baby weight without benefit of my go-to cardio. Ha! I might as well hope for the baby to sleep through the night too!
[I wasn't blogging yet when I went for my first postpartum run. If I was, this is what I would have said.]
I went for a short run today for the first time. Pee came out with every step I took. Every step. Literally, every footfall = dribble of pee. It was alarming to say the least. I was listening to music, but all I could hear as I envisioned my future — free of running, dancing, jumping, and all other pee-inducing moderate- to high-impact activities — was my own voice resignedly saying, “So this is my life now.” Not only was the pee a problem, but the run itself was also incredibly difficult. My body was sluggish and my lungs were on fire. I didn’t think I was going to make it. But I did; nearly two miles. My success was due entirely to the fact that my concern over the constant dribble of urine leaking from my body distracted me from the misery of the effort.
[I've since learned from my doctor that this is totally normal and could remain a problem while I'm breastfeeding, but should get better after that. Kegels and time will help.]
Why am I inflicting this blog on the general public? The simple answer is that I hope amid my ramblings, someone, somewhere will find some information they can actually use.
Now here’s the long answer:
A year ago this time, I was super fit and enjoying a relatively carefree life with my husband. Then we decided to procreate. I got pregnant and embarked on 9 months of 1) eating all the foods I usually tried to avoid (Little Debbie became my middle name) and 2) a vacation from sweating. ”No worries,” I thought, “I’ll be back at it by the time the baby’s three weeks old. I’ll be bikini ready by Christmas.” If you’re not a parent, you may be thinking, “Sounds reasonable. Wasn’t Miranda Kerr back on the runway like five weeks postpartum?” If you are a parent, you’re probably thinking, “AHHHHHAHAHAHAHA!! Good luck, sister!” As it turns out, the experienced parents in this imagined scenario are right. My son is now three months old, beautiful, and blessedly healthy. But he is a handful (literally — I’m typing this one-handed). Being a mom is a lot of work, even when you’re in love with the job. There are days (STILL!) when I don’t have time to take a shower, let alone the 6- or 7-mile daily runs I was sure I’d be nailing by this point.
But I haven’t given up on reclaiming my pre-pregnancy body. I’ve just had to get sneaky about it — stealing time for a workout when I can, and incorporating exercise into my everyday mommy activities when I can’t.
Maybe some of you out there are in the same boat — maybe you’d be hitting the gym or the running trails for an hour or more a day if time and energy allowed, but they just don’t, and maybe you can learn from my failures and my successes and sneak some fitness back into your lives too. At the very least you can save yourselves some time by not repeating my many, many mistakes in exercising AND in parenting. This blog will likely become a cautionary tale on how not to get in shape and raise your children…
