Working on that new body

Well, I've taken greater steps at becoming healthier.  I've cut 99% of the crap out of my diet and really focusing on wholesome and organic foods to feed myself and subsequently my baby.  On one of my favorite blogs, Le Petit Owlet, she writes about all the benefits of juicing and got to try out The Healthy Juicer.  Reading about this awesome contraption on their website has me convinced not only of the benefits of juicing, but also of wheatgrass!  On all the research I've done throughout the years on PCOS and infertility in general, I've heard of the amazing benefits of wheatgrass on egg quality, but had no idea all the other added ones such as organ detoxification and immune system boosting.  I'm sold!  I'll be adding wheatgrass to my Whole Foods grocery list from now on.  Maybe I'll even be able to win the Healthy Juicer since Le Petit Owlet is giving it away on her blog!  Check it out!  :)

28

It's my birthday today and I'm a mommy.  It's pretty crazy to look back on everything that happened in one year.  Even though this day will probably be the most lowkey birthday I've ever had, it will most definitely be the most profound.  I look at my little Judebug and wonder how I got so blessed.  He is truly my everything.

No major plans for today.  Phil and I are going to go grab dinner at a deelish Mexican restaurant and my parents will watch Jude for the evening.  I sure miss being away from him, I'm so attached!  It's hard working full time during the week that I feel absolutely guilty when I go on a date or have to be away from him for any period of time on the weekends.  This is why I feel practicing the B's of Attachment Parenting works so well for a family whose parents both work fulltime.  We are able to bond every second we are together, and that means the world to us.

In an attempt to lose all my extra baby weight that I am STILL carrying around, I am starting P90X on Monday.  I know a few people who are dedicated to it and they are seriously RIPPED.  So, after Jude goes to bed every evening, I will be dedicating an hour a day to this regime.  I used to dance 8 hours a day, 6 days a week for years, so I'm not worried about the physical demands or the dedication that is required of me.  The only worry I have is if it will have any impact on my milk supply.  I always hear of people warning about starting up a fitness routine causing their milk supply to tank.  I've been looking into this alot over the past few weeks and it seems like the warnings are more towards newer breastfeeding moms whose supply hasn't been established yet.  On kellymom.com, she mentions some studies that point to milk supply increasing with more physical activity.  Also, breastfeeding immediately after cardio could cause a fussy reacion in the baby due to lactic acid buildup in the breastmilk, but this should subside in about an hour post- working out.  I'm already taking fenugreek, blessed thistle, eating oatmeal and drinking tons of water to keep my milk supply going strong at 8 months.  I want Jude to have nothing but breastmilk (and solids) until one year.  I didn't realize how important it was to me until my supply started to tank around 6 months.  I've been doing everything possible to keep up with his demands in regards to my pumping output and so far, things have worked. 

I will report on my P90X progress in this blog.  I will also be posting before pics soon.  Ouch.

I'm Back (and Jude's birth story)

I feel so awful that I've neglected this blog when really, it should be such a wonderful way to document and remember my sweet baby boy and his little life! I guess I should go back to where we left off. It looks like my last post was from 36 weeks. I'll recap:

On June 17, I was at work and I started to have crampy lower back pain. It was the kind of back pain I usually get whenever AF arrives, so it wasn't completely unbearable. I continued to work throughout the day and before I left to go home, stopped to go to the restroom. Lo and behold, I had lost my mucous plug! Still, I know that this didn't necessarily indicate baby arrival right away, but I knew that things were definitely changing! That night, I just laid around and watched TV while the lower back pain continued. I went to bed. I woke up around 3 am to go to the bathroom for the thousandth time that night. After I crawled back into bed, while I was lying there trying to go back to sleep, I heard a *POP*! Then, a huge gush. MY WATER BROKE! Apparently, that lower back pain was contractions! I woke Phil up and we got ready to go to the hospital. Here comes a funny part of the story: the night before, Phil had a work emergency (he is the area director for a beer company) so he had to grab a Coors Light van and was planning on returning it to work the next day to go get his car. So, I was driven to the hospital in a Coors Light truck! Oh the stories to tell this little one. :) Anyways, contractions started on the way to the hospital.  Once I got to Bergen Mercy Hospital, my water had broken again and again. Yeah, that’s right…one of the many things nobody tells you about labor: your “water” keeps refilling to keep the baby hydrated, thus, you keep having gushes of it breaking over and over and over…. By the time I waddled up to Labor & Delivery, my overstretched maternity jeans were soaked and sagging. Lovely. There were no questions: I was most definitely in active labor. I got hooked up to a fetal monitor and the mister looked good. I was dilated to four centimeters. The nurse asked if I wanted an anesthesiologist paged to start my epidural. I stupidly said “Nah, this is nothing, I’ll be fine until it gets to be a little later, I don’t want to wake anyone up, “ (Stupid, stupid, stupid) So, I waited. I facebooked, drank some water, read a magazine, grimaced and winced at contractions, listened to classical music, laughed with my husband. This labor thing was cake. The nurse came in to check my progress. Not much progress, maybe another half centimeter.

Then things started to change. All of a sudden, my uterus started contracting HARD. I vomited. And vomited. (Another thing I didn’t know, labor makes you nauseated. Go figure.) The short waves of pain became intense, long, and knocked the wind out of me. I breathed through them. I had decided ahead of time that I was going to try to make it as long as possible without an epidural since I have a high pain tolerance and really wanted to experience med-free labor for as long as possible. It was at this time that the nurse mentioned that the anesthesiologist was there for another patient and if I wanted the epi now, she would grab him. YES YES YES! And it was a good thing too. Right before the godsend administered the epidural (which was NOTHING, by the way), I had a contraction so long and painful that it seemed like it lasted an hour. After the “zap” of the epidural, my legs started to go numb and the pain from the contractions subsided. I was back in good spirits.

But then, my blood pressure dropped. Hard. I was on the verge of passing out. Cold water was administered on my brow and I struggled to keep my eyes open. My face went white. Ahhh, the third thing they don’t tell you. A side effect of an epidural can be a drop in blood pressure. For the next several hours, ephedrine had to be administered to me to bump my BP back up. And then, my progress pretty much stopped. Right before I got my epidural, I was at 6 cm. Two hours after, I hadn’t progressed much further than that. Another side effect. My labor slowed. They administered pitocin. (Something I didn’t want to happen, but because of my choice of an epidural, was probably inevitable.) The contractions became very strong and violent and I did feel the pain, but nothing I couldn’t handle.  I am totally rethinking pain management during labor for the next babe, more to come in this topic in the future.

 Two hours later, push time.

I was a champion pusher. I only pushed for twenty minutes before I heard my beautiful, wonderful son scream his entrance to the world. When they handed me my baby, time stopped at 12:46 pm on June 18, 2009. It was just him and me in a world frozen around us. I had never felt such love in all my years and knew that life would never be the same. The moment lasted but a second, but will stay with me forever.