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    JENSDAY1012   2,532
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Friday, February 01, 2013

So I'm down 18 pounds. Yay! That's just passed the halfway mark for my Baby O weight. Yesterday was the first day I caught myself in the mirror and I feel like I look a little different. I'll be honest, my workouts have been few and far between here lately. I just seem to find it so hard to find the time. You'd think that I could come up with at least 15 minutes at least a couple times a week. Actually, that was my intention yesterday. I even put on my workout clothes and sneakers. Unfortunately, it just didn't happen for me. :( What a crazy month! Here are a few things that happened in January:

1. (this might be TMI so if you don't want to know, stop reading) I brought my Baby O to the doc because he just didn't seem to be putting on any weight. My older son was such a little fatty butterball that for O to be so small was a little off putting. I took him in and talked at length with his pediatrician. He had fallen off his weight curve and we needed to do something about it. He certainly didn't act like he wasn't feel good. He's my little party animal! With big brother, I breastfed him exclusively until he was 5 months and then we started adding in solids slowly but he kept nursing until he weaned himself at 11 months (yes, he was just that kind of baby). After the initial 5 or 6 weeks of agony, breastfeeding him was a breeze! Well, for some reason this time around, my milk supply just wasn't there. I spoke with my aunt who's been an RN since before I was born and she said he has all the symptoms of being a "lazy sucker". That means he nurses fine and gets the foremilk but when it requires some effort to get the fatty hindmilk, he'd just rather not. I would guess it has something to do with him being in the NICU when he was born. He was on IV "food" until he was a few days old and then they gave him tiny little bottles. They were of my milk but still. I didn't get to nurse him until he was a week old. So between that and him being so easily distracted, we've been having to supplement with formula. I tried everything I could think of including supplements and pumping and drinking 58736 glasses of water everyday and it just didn't make a difference. No one can tell me why my supply is still so low. What matter is that O is healthy and thriving so we bought the formula. Now he nurses first and then takes a bottle. It's pretty time consuming but I want him to have that milk. Any is better than none. And after just a couple weeks, he's up almost 2 full pounds. He's my little fatty peanut butterball! But overall, this was a huge amount of stress. Even though he never indicated that he wasn't satisfied, I still felt like I was starving my poor little baby. I cried a lot. January seemed full of tears..

2. Potty training. Potty f*&^ing training. So we started with the potty training right around the first of the year. The first few days were absolute hell. Pee and poop everywhere. We tried a couple things to ease him into it but they didn't work so we opted for no more diapers, straight to underpants. On the up side, a good amount of the time now he takes himself to the potty and pees in it. On all the other sides, he does not have a good track record with poop. There were a few nights where I stayed up crying with husband because he had pooped on the floor 3 times in 1 day and I scrubbed and washed and mopped the WHOLE day. At times it made me feel like a sh*tty mother (no pun intended). Like he wasn't getting it because I was doing something wrong. This is the kind of thing you only understand if you've been there because from the outside, it doesn't seem rational. It felt like my whole life was poop. Poop in Baby Os diaper, Brother Ns pants, on the floor, in the cat box, on my sneakers after taking the dogs out. This is when we decided I needed to get out of the house more. My life needed to feel like more than potty training and breast milk and laundry and dishes. I needed to feel like person, not like a cleaning/feeding machine. That leads me to 3.

3. After this revelation, I started going back to Yoga. Our local library does classes for $2. Boy did I forget how much I loved it. And the instructor is just so awesome. I'm so glad I started back. I meet my mom there once a week and I get to just be there, in the moment. I also decided I wanted to learn to crochet more than just potholders so I took out a book. Last weekend I met my mom (she's trying to learn knitting) and we just worked on it for a couple hours. If I try to do it here, there's just always something that needs to be done, laundry, dishes, something, so meeting her out of the house is probably going to be the way to go. I just need a hobby!

4. Money. Money is always the biggest source of stress. When it was just me and my husband, who cares if we had $4 until payday? We would eat Ramen and occupy our time in other, more grown-up ways (wink wink). Now we have 2 people relying on us and that really turns up the stress. Besides having Baby O last year, we bought a house. We closed a month before he was due and moved in 2 weeks before my c-section. Then he was in the NICU straight away for 10 days. I can't believe that was only less than 6 months ago. Feels like so much has happened in such a short amount of time. Anyway - so we were already broke. Add in Christmas, which we kept minimal but still. And then Brother Ns birthday was a few weeks ago. We are just struggling. We get paid once a month. Sometimes it's good because we can buy things in larger quantities and this saves us. But sometimes it stinks, like last week when both of our dogs had to go to the vet, a total of $265, and we still have 3 weeks until pay day. On top of that, our dryer just broke. Thankfully, it's fixable but we can't afford to get the part until pay day. So until then I have to wash and hang the laundry, which takes FOREVER to dry in the garage. I can only move it into the house a few pieces at a time or else the toddler and the pup get there mouths and paws on it and it has to go back in the wash! Yesterday Baby O was on his last bib so I had to lock myself in the bathroom with the blow dryer and try and get a couple dry. Jeez man. It's really feeling like we're never going to get ahead. We started our taxes last night and at least it seems like we'll get enough back to break even and pay down some things. Which is good because I'm not sure how much longer we can carry everything the way things are.

I realize that when we're older we'll look back at everything and think of us starting out and laugh about a lot of it. But in the moment it seems to be just one thing after the other after the other. I know that working out would help alleviate some of it but my days just seem so full. I've been trying to get up before Brother N in the morning just so I can have 10 minutes before the sh*t storm starts (that's literal AND figurative) but it's like my eyes make noise when they open because no matter how early I get up, he's right there waiting for me. And by the time everyone is sleeping at night and dinner has been cooked and eaten, I'm just so tired. So I guess my goal for February is to try and find 15 minutes where ever I can, as often as I can, for some quick cardio. Wish me luck! Because I don't seem to have much of my own lately.. :/

How was everyone else's January? What are your goals for February? I'm out of the loop. Please pull me back in!!!
  Member Comments About This Blog Post:

RYDERB 2/3/2013 2:41PM

    emoticon Sounds like you've had more than your share of stress in January. Congratulations on making yourself a priority and getting back into yoga. emoticon and on your 18 pounds! emoticon emoticon emoticon

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NUTKINNB 2/2/2013 9:10PM

    January definitely sounds like it was stressful, but I think you're on the right track with adding in yoga & some crochet time away from the house. While I'm not a parent, I've heard from a lot of my friends that finding a way to retain their individual identity after having kids takes a lot of work. Best of luck with that & the 15min goal! Maybe try keeping a calendar up to cross off when you do it?

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DAMIENHUSTED 2/1/2013 10:10AM

    great job thank you for sharing

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NFGFANIAM 2/1/2013 9:36AM

    I enjoyed reading this. Thanks so much for sharing!!

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