I weighed myself yesterday. All scales say different things and this was one of those quite unreliable digital ones that give you two different results in a ten second span. However I clocked in between 62 and 63.5 consistently over the time I was using that scale. Which puts me in at about 2.5 kg or 6lbs over where I would like myself to be. On the other hand, we are on vacation and I've been pigging out.
I thought that my pregnancy woes would end after I gave birth but no, some things linger on (besides my muffin top.)
Faithful readers will recall that I had more than a wee bit of trouble with my teeth during pregnancy. Well, my post pregnancy teeth weren't fully recovered. The one tooth I had treated was still sensitive until last week when all of a sudden the pain went away. Odd. Then I developed a bump on my gum just above that tooth. Odder. Actually, a bump on your gum is kind of scary. To make a long story short, it turned out to be an abscess-- a bubble of infection above my now necrotic tooth and I had to get a root canal in it. Turns out I'd had an infection there probably the whole time which eventually reached the bone. The tooth then died. Most unpleasant and, worse, expensive. I've become an avid flosser.
So it's just over six months since wee one was born, and life is just starting to come into order again. Which is probably why people want to know if I'm having another anytime soon. Maybe they ask because of how close my first two are. Which isn't all that close, really.
My answer is usually a very frank "not today." This usually gets people off my case.
Rest assured, dear readers (the multitude of my most faithful) you will be the first to know.
Just don't hold your breath.
At 5.5 months post partum, I think my hair loss is finally slowing a bit. I think. I brushed it the other day and ended up with significantly less than an enormous clump of hair on my brush.
It fits! The skirt that I've been thinking should fit me but hadn't until now... fits! Which means that other clothes that depend on my hip breath should fit too!! Celebrate! My wardrobe and I are reunited. Now if I can only get toned up a bit and rid of this flab....
After my last pregnancy it took me 4 months to fit back into all my clothes. It's now about five and a half months since I gave birth now. Assuming that all my clothes really do fit and it's not just this skirt, I'm still not doing TOO badly.
Is it rude to comment on how close --or far, for that matter-- people's children are spaced? I have definitely done it, but I think it has to be in the right context like, for instance, amongst friends. For example, I know people who have had or are having a hard time getting pregnant. But I guess the question there would be why they are waiting so long to have kids and not why they are spread out. I know that when people comment on how close my kids are (twenty-one months is not THAT close), they often do it with sympathy. Like, 'wow, that must be tough.' I guess it's tough. Certainly, I have almost no personal time, which accounts for how often I get to blog lately.
There have been times when I asked someone about the spacing of their children and wished I could have taken it back. Sometimes it's better not to know.
I just weighed myself for the first time in several months. I've been evaluating by back-to-pre-baby shape by the way my clothes fit, which is probably the best yardstick. However, it's always interesting to see how things are going in the weight department as well.
Well, the big news is that I'm at my pre-baby weight! About 138 or 139 lbs, assuming that my sister's scale is correct and that it corroborates with the scales I've been using since I gave birth. It took me four months to get here, or maybe less considering that I may have been sitting at this weight for a while and not known it. This is also how long it took me in my last pregnancy.
But before you pull out the balloons and streamers, note that my favorite skirt, which I managed to get on over my hips, is still barely closing and I actually busted the hook and eye thingy that holds it shut. I still have this belly. I'm back at my regular weight but I seem to have traded muscle for fat. Muscle is heavier. I'll have to start doing crunches or something. I can't stand the way things look across my middle. Also, my hips still look wide to me, though there's no real way of telling if they're back or not, or if they ever will be. At this stage after my last pregnancy I was back in my regular clothes. Well, it's okay. I am a bit older now and this is my second kid and it's okay for our bodies to change a bit as we get older. I just don't have the cash to restock my entire wardrobe right now.
My hair was gorgeous during my pregnancy. I really enjoyed it. Now it is once again all over the house, the baby, my hands, everything. I am shedding like a cat. A sheddy cat. You'd think that at this rate I wouldn't have any hair left at all but it looks pretty much the same as usual, I guess. They say you lose about 100 hairs per day anyway. I'm probably losing about three times that amount, minimum. At leat this time 'round my hair is reasonably trimmed so that it's easy to brush. Last time I had to cut off 10 inches when my baby was 6 months old because it was taking me three-quarters of a hour each time to brush it and the resulting hairballs were as big as my fist. Guess I'll just have to wait for my hormones to rebalance themselves.
I remember worrying so much about my after birth belly last time 'round. I did eventually go back to my original flat tummy, but it was never quite as firm as it had been, though I think it was only noticeable to me. Bellys are soft immediately after birth but they slowly do shrink back. I think that now that it's been 3 months since my second child was born, I'm softer at this stage than I was at this time after the last baby. I might actually have to do some exercises to tighten it up a bit. But who's got the time with two kids to look after? I suppose I could do it if I really wanted to. Instead, I've taken to wearing -- what are those tights called again?? The kind that sucks your tummy in. Not support hose... I have to go look in my drawer and see if there are any... though really any pantyhose or tights or leggings will do it. It's not comfortable but you have to wear them way high up to your rib cage and voila! No belly.
Aha. Control top. That's what they're called.
P.S. Let it be known that my husband loves my belly. Which makes it all that much easier for me to put off the sit-ups....
Well, it's been three moons since I had the baby. Although she doesn't latch well, that doesn't seem to impede her eating. After my last pregnancy I was able to fit into my clothes again at four months. This time I'm still wearing bigger-size things but people are commenting on how skinny I am. I think that maybe my hips haven't gone back to where they were, because my weight has pretty much dropped down but I still don't fit into my favorite jean skirt (which was the same yardstick I used the last time 'round.) Also I have a bit of a tummy which is really annoying. DH doesn't mind it, but I do. It makes my shirt ride up and I think it sticks out too much compared to how big my boobs are-- which they aren't. I shouldn't complain. Some women don't go back. My sister says that she doesn't drop back entirely until after she finishes breastfeeding. That would really suck.
I feel so much stronger now than I did during pregnancy. I can't believe the difference. I took DS the pool the other day. I had taken him a bunch of times in late pregnancy. It was so hard to move around with him then and to get in and out of the water or in any position other than plain old sitting. Also, my swollen feet hurt when I walked through the water. Not sure why. But now I was able to really have fun with him. I was able to put him on top of me and swim with him, and I could run through the wading pool with him and play games. It's so much better-- it's astounding.
I've been really tired lately. It's not the baby keeping me up-- ironically, she's been sleeping through the night with just a little wake-up call here and there to eat. It's DS who's been calling us and crying. Well, last night he slept pretty well and didn't wake up until after 7am! The morning before, he woke up at 5:30 and was up and running. I was able to take a nap but DH had an exam that morning which he thinks he did poorly in. We started changing our reaction to his calls when my sister was over to help with the baby. She was sleeping in his room.
We're moving soon and the time has come to start packing up my stuff. Normally, this would be a great opportunity to clean out my closet and get rid of stuff I don't wear-- something I'm normally really really terrible at. I always think I'm going to end up using something again. And I almost always do. On top of all that, I am at this in-between stage where I have no idea what fits me and what doesn't and what will fit me in two or three months from now. I still managed to fill up about half a garbage bag with stuff to give away. And I can add a few pairs of well-used boots to that pile. But most of that stuff is stuff that was given to me over the last year or so that I've never really taken a shining to. So it's just skimming the fat off my wardrobe by a little. It doesn't constitute a major wardrobe turnover. AND I am itching to buy new clothes now to fit my current body.
That great hair feeling I was enjoying throughout my pregnancy? No more. I've already begun finding long, wavy stray hairs on my clothes and on baby, and I don't think it's my new conditioner at fault here. It's those postpartum hormones making my nails crack and my hair fall out. Last time 'round, I had to cut my very very long hair after six months because it was taking me at least forty minutes to brush it every time I washed it and I just couldn't afford the time. The hair would fall out and get tangled in there. I would have to stop several times during the brushing and pull handfulls of hair out of my brush. My hair is very tangled on a regular basis and so I'm used to spending time getting knots out, but this was ridiculous. Cutting it helped because there was simply less to get tangled.
I got my hair styled about six months ago and haven't cut it since. I don't cut my hair very often. It's still in a stage where it's quite easy to get a brush through. Hopefully I won't have to do another drastic cut to get through this period.
Also, my beautiful nails from during pregnancy are starting to lose their strength. Sigh. There are some things about pregnancy that you can't wait to get rid of, and there are some things you wish you could keep.
Looking good at two and a half weeks postpartum. At least, that's what people are telling me. I went to drop off DS at nursery yesterday morning after going through my closet to figure out what I could now fit into. I think it's good to start phasing out my maternity clothes so that I have a real sense of where I am in terms of getting back to myself. Last time, I allowed myself six weeks to wear maternity clothes and then I put them all away and made myself face my closet.
Anyway, the skirt I wore yesterday was one I was able to wear through my pregnancy although it is just a regular stretchy denim skirt. The shirt is a very simple cotton t-shirt that I don't normally wear at all because it's so shapeless that I usually get lost in it. But now thanks to breastfeeding and my recent pregnancy, I'm a little more curvaceous and so I fit into it nicely.
The teachers and parents who haven't seen me since I gave birth were making all kinds of comments about how good I looked and how they look more pregnant than me.... I kept denying that I'd 'returned to my old body' because I know what lies beneath the facade of clothing.
The truth is, I'm fine with how I am right now. I'm not crazy: I just gave birth under three weeks ago. I don't expect to look like a runway model quite yet. I was somewhat surprised and pleased to find out how little I care about what others think about how I look. What really matters, as they say, is what's inside. In this case, I'll say what matters is what's inside my own head. You have to know in life to take things that other people say with a grain of salt. When it comes to the shape of my body, I guess the other opinion that matters besides my own is my husband's. So I'l keep it in the family.
I should have done a day-by-day photograph of my belly. I'll have to do it next pregnancy. I'm talking now about my post-pregnancy belly. On the day after birth, it sagged like an enormous misplaced boob over where my waistband would have been had I not been clad in a hospital robe. By day 2 it hadn't changed much. On day three, by the time I came home from the hospital, it had regressed significantly. I still had a soft mushy belly, but it looked like the soft mushy belly of a soft mushy person.
Looking at pictures of myself from a day or two after that, I can see that I still looked a bit pregnant. However, within the fist week, I was already able to feel that I had a waist again. It was a very good feeling. I keep putting my hands there because I can't believe it. What a feeling! A waist.
Now, about two and a half weeks after delivery, my stomach is soft and mushy still but it's not so protruding anymore. I probably look like I could stand to lose a few pounds-- and I probably can. I only weighed myself once, and that was within a week of delivery. My stomach was down but my weight was still about twenty pounds more than my pre-pregnancy starting point.
Another thing is that I normally have very prominent hipbones. I wouldn't say that they are prominent now but I can feel them again. I also feel like my thighs and legs are on their way back to being what they were before I gave birth. I still think my butt looks big, but I've learned that a big butt is not necessarily a bad thing. Fashion models may have nearly nonexistent bottoms, but I think a little bit of roundness on a girl is a nice feature. I am normally quite angular.
My face has thinned out. DH observed that women who are about to give birth tend to bulk up around the face. I noticed this in a friend of mine as well who's about 37 weeks right now. She's a thin girl with a tiny bloop of a belly but her face looks swollen. Mine was like that towards the end, but it's thinned out now.
All this is without exercise or any special dieting. In fact, I just finished consuming an ice cream pop. I was all ready to start going shopping and wandering about town after the baby was born but then she got sick with fever at one week and landed in the hospital for three days. Of course, I went with her. We were all but quarrantined in our room. You don't want to wander around a germy children's ward with a newborn. I was totally paranoid about germs that whole time and also totally sedintery. I had DH bring me my yarn and I sat and crocheted the whole time. Ever since then, DH doesn't want me to take her out until she's at least a month and even when he's home, which isn't so often lately, it's hard for me to leave her b/c I'm breastfeeding. Pumping is an option but it's hard to find the opportunity.
Anyway, the point is that my body does seem to want to get back to its normal self. Now if only I could help out by getting some exercise.
I keep looking at my feet. They are so... gorgeous and shapely. Not at all like hot water bottles. I can't believe they're mine. And just think-- they were hidden under all that swelling all this time.
They didn't shrink back to size straightaway. They went down significantly immediately but they felt bruised and sore, which I guess they were. It didn't help that DS liked to step on them while they were huge.
It's only in the last couple of days that I've noticed the sinews showing through the skin again. I have very long, thin feet normally, so seeing sinew is normal for me.
Well, I'm glad to have them back. Now I can wear my crocs again! Can you believe I grew out of those too?
I've spent the last nine months blogging about my pregnancy expeirences. And while pregnancy technically ends with birth, the effects of it go on. So going forwared, this blog is going to address what it's like to be post-partum. Physically, emotionally, and any other way.
For my breastfeeding blog, please see http://breastfeedingchronicles.blogspot.com
Soon to be updated.
Enjoy!
