Regaining Lost Aspects: Mind and Soul
Through book events, poetry, and creativity, we dive a little deeper into humanity.
Therapy doesn’t work like I thought it would. I don’t leave a session crestfallen, but broken, memories on the surface of my mind. But sometimes you need to rebreak something to heal it right. Sometimes the hardest part of healing is rewiring your brain to love yourself.
I am now 10 days postpartum. I took a picture of my stomach because it came as a surprise to me how it is looking.
I already can’t wait to work out again, but it seems like working out with weights and doing cardio the whole pregnancy has seemed to have paid off so far. I feel like compared to the other two pregnancies that this is the best and fastest that my physique somewhat came back. I’m hoping that this means that when I can start working out again that I can get back to where I was faster before I was pregnant. Although I really want to, I know I need to hold myself back from jumping back into the fitness train just yet. My insides still hurt and sleep is coming next to none with the newborn, so I need to make sure I take my time to heal and get into a decent routine so I don’t hurt myself physically prolonging my comeback and don’t give myself too much stress mentally on such a lack of sleep. Got to remember to be patient and take care of ourselves mentally and physically, so when we are able to come back to our old routine we can come back full force and better than ever. Although I know that it will be a slow progress to the top again and getting to be able to do what I was able to do before at such high levels, it is good to remember that we need to be forgiving to ourselves and to be patient because healing takes time especially after having a baby.
Last week on the morning of March 8th making me exactly 39 weeks pregnant we had an unexpected arrival!!! Our third baby was born after 10 hours of labor, which is the longest labor I have had. Now here is the kicker…. she arrived at 9 lbs and 1 oz…. Here are the pictures of the beginning and end to each of my pregnancies.
The top two pictures are from my first pregnancy, the second two are from my second, and the third set of two is from my last one.
In the top picture is the first and last picture from my second and third pregnancies in a front view. So as you can see from all of the pictures I started with more abs and was fitter with my third and was able to stay as fit as I could making my stomach look a bit smaller than it had with my other pregnancies. I really thought that this last baby would be smaller too, but apparently I was completely wrong. Our first baby was exactly 7 lbs and was only 19 1/4th inches long. Our second baby was 8 lbs 5 oz and 20 1/2 inches long. and This last baby was a whole 9 lbs 1 oz and 20 inches long….. At the end of my first pregnancy I had gained 25 lbs, at the end of my second I had gained 16 lbs, and at the end of my third I had gained 30 lbs.
Below is a picture that shows pretty well the size of each of the babies compared to me after they were born.
Angela was our first baby born only 2 days before I turned 40 weeks, Sarah our second born at exactly 39 weeks, and Dawn is our third and last born also at exactly 39 weeks. All born healthy. The only issues we had was Angela had a little jaundice, but not enough to bring home a blanket and we didn’t have to keep her in the hospital and Dawn had just a little issue with her blood sugar levels dropping since she was so big, but we were able to take her home after only one day 🙂
It seems that with each pregnancy that I worked out more each baby grew bigger than the last inside of me. My first pregnancy I only walked, my second pregnancy I only ran, and this last pregnancy I did weighted work outs and for my cardio I did running/biking or the elliptical/ stairs depending on the weather.
Below are my cardio logs from when we first found out we were pregnant on July 4th to the end of the pregnancy.
Now onto recovery for 6 weeks before I can start all over with trying to build myself up physically again, but happily I hopefully won’t have to start all over again in the future since this was our last pregnancy 🙂 I’m excited to finally have my body back and am super blessed and happy that I was able to birth three beautiful healthy baby girls over the span of the last almost 6 years. And with that my pregnancy fitness journey posts will end.
So a couple weeks ago I was in the kitchen on the floor crying because my veins in my calves were hurting me so much. In my first pregnancy I didn’t really have this problem in my legs (just in weirder areas), but in my second pregnancy closer to the end I was hurting pretty bad and could barely even walk at times. Now I haven’t even reached my third trimester yet and the veins have come back with a vengeance. I have spider veins in a bunch of different parts of my legs, my varicose veins on my lady parts hurt like hell most of the time, and my legs are already burning with too much pressure. So the night that I was crying cause I couldn’t take it, my husband took matters into his own hands and did some research and ordered me some compression socks, and let me tell you THEY WORK!!! Well, so far they work and I’m hoping they continue to work. The research into them is very interesting on exactly how they work and what they do for you and is worth the read if you ever find time. I didn’t know that athletes and people of about any age could beneficially use them too. I’m actually going to make my husband get some at some point since he drives a lot, and I plan to continue to wear them after I’m pregnant to help me heal faster from some tough running workouts. So it is definitely worth looking into and thinking about pregnant or not in my opinion!!! But make sure you also read the do’s and the don’ts with them if you do plan to get some!!!
Regaining Lost Aspects: Mind and Soul 