Hellobee

I gave birth to Little Bug about three months ago, and I am getting to the point where my body feels more like my own again. Except for the boobs, which are not mine at all anymore, but more on that later.

I gained about 31 lbs during pregnancy and have lost all of it luckily. But I am still wanting to lose about 10-20 pounds to get to a weight that I feel comfortable. Over the last 4 years, I gained some weight between the two successful pregnancies and the miscarriage. I used to hover around 135-140 and I have a goal now of getting to somewhere around 150ish. I would honestly be happy at 160, but I would feel healthier at 150. Right now I am still mostly following the diabetes diet I was on during the pregnancy, and that seems to help a lot. Once it gets a little cooler outside I can do more of my walking and exercising. I am not at all interested in working out or following any sort of hard core exercising program. I have never been that kind of a person. I love walking though and since I am about 10 lbs from my reasonable weight goal, I think I can accomplish this with walking and continuing to eat better. I am not about to give up our Sunday morning doughnut runs, but I am happy to not eat crap all the time. Plus, since I was denied fruit for the last 12 weeks of pregnancy, I want it all the time and that is not something I felt before. I have signed up for a couple of 5 k’s during the fall and I am slowly working my way into that. I will be walking, not running, and I plan on either having just Little Bug with me or both of the kids as an added bonus.

In other parts of the postpartum, I am struggling with the idea of being done having children. The mental and emotional toll of being pregnant is not something that I think I can do again. But I always pictured having three kids, and I am not sure how I feel about letting go of that dream. Mr. Cereal says he is done, but we both have decided to wait a couple of years and then make a final decision. Basically I want to wait until I am 34 and decide if this is our ideal family, so that puts a three year timeline on our decision. It sucks because I don’t think I would do well being pregnant again; I would likely have gestational diabetes again, and if I had another baby with colic I would probably lose my mind. But I am already sad at the thought of not experiencing the little baby stage again. My heart and my head are saying completely opposite things and that is messing with me. I am happy with our family right now and I know that if we choose not to have another, I am fine with that. I also have to weigh the possibility of another miscarriage to my decision. I am just not sure if I could handle that. I guess for now I am sitting in the “if I get pregnant again I would be happy, but I am not going to actively try and I am going to do my best to avoid it” camp.

I find it extremely hard to move out of the trying to get pregnant / being pregnant phase to the being done phase. I still get a little jealous when someone close to me announces their pregnancy and that is a super weird thing to deal with. As I move further and further away from my miscarriage, I am having a hard time with my feelings about it. I still have some weird trigger days that shake me, but I don’t feel comfortable talking to anyone other than Mr. Cereal about it. It’s hard because this is more intense for me right now with all the hormones I am dealing with. I suspect in the coming months, this will start to fade again and I will think of it less often.

The one other thing I want to hit on is how I feel as a mom. I am oftentimes judging myself because my patience is thin with both of the babies. I am exhausted and this obviously adds to my lack of patience, but I also just find myself wanting space more than I used to. I think this is because someone is always touching me. I never am free from the kids unless I am out grocery shopping alone, which has happened exactly once since Little Bug was born. I decided to go back to work early and this was a good decision. I don’t really want to be away from the kids because I don’t want to miss anything, but these few hours I have at work are so nice and freeing. I feel like the small breaks where I am actually using my brain and being productive are really helpful to me.

I guess there are no rules about how to do this mom of two game and I am trying my hardest to get it right. I am looking forward to seeing them both grow up and I am excited for the coming months, but I am also wondering if I really am done.