Now that it's been six weeks since I gave birth, I have some observations. This is not about the wonderful little chunklet that is starting to develop his own personality and laugh alot. This is about me.
I am having trouble accepting the fact that I am no longer "eating for two". I gained 42 pounds while pregnant, and lost all but 15 in the first two weeks after giving birth. I thought, "Wow, that was easy!" I had managed to get it down to 12, but now I've gained it back. I wonder if it's because I still am eating GIGANTIC bowls of ice cream before finally taking my two hour nap at night while Jav watches Gabriel. Or because I have The Food Network on most of the time, and as a result am hungry and snack all day, usually on something made out of chocolate. I pretty much ate whatever I wanted while pregnant. It's time to have a sweet-tooth reality check.
Pregnancy does some awful things to your body. I don't have stretch marks, but I have a new and wide variety of varicose veins. My hips have widened so much that I doubt I'll ever get back into my old jeans. And I won't go into all of the issues I'm having due to the birth itself. Suffice it to say that my pee used to come out going straight down, and now it doesn't. But... all of it doesn't matter one iota when I look at the result. And I hope to put my body through it again, probably sooner than it's ready for me to.
One of the hardest and most emotional things I've ever gone through is my attempt at breastfeeding. I guess I didn't start reading about it soon enough (I waited until I had about a month to go), and I underestimated two things. 1) I thought it would be easy, and 2) I didn't realize the deep feeling of closeness it would give me. I am heartbroken that it didn't work out, and am having much more depression about it than I did about not being pregnant anymore. I'm less upset about not being able to provide Gabriel with all of the benefits healthwise, although that figures into it. It's more about the bonding during those moments when you are providing milk for your child, as nature intended it to be.
It's amazing what you can accomplish while being completely sleep-deprived. I guess it's Mom Adrenaline. You have this mad determination to get things accomplished, even though you probably won't get anything at all done. My friend Olga noticed this when I went to get my haircut. She said I was scaring her with that determination, talking too loud and walking too fast. But it's just a survival instinct that kicks in.
Having six pets and one child is like having two children, one of which is bad most of the time.
Well, the baby's up and hungry. I'll post pictures next time and talk more about him, and hopefully it will be sooner than six weeks.
1 comment:
Well, as you know Alex just weaned himself a few weeks ago, and I was really worried about losing that special bonding time each night. But what I found was that it was replaced by a different bonding mechanism. Now after book and night nights to everything in the room and turning off the light, I get some blessed moments with his head on my chest while I rock him. He usually pats me, sometimes talks to me very quietly, and wants me to either sing to him or recite a book from memory.
Which TRUST ME by the time Gabriel is two you will have many memorized books in your mental library to choose from. Alex's two current favorites are "Big Red Barn" and "But Not the Hippopotamus".
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