My little girl is 19 mths old. Hard to believe! She's a little girl now, she's no longer a baby. She's got attitude and sass and is a delight every day of her existence. I am so enamored with her. She's got white blonde hair and blue eyes, and she looks just like me. She's my Mini Me. Even some of her expressions are mine.
J tries to say she has his eyes but it's simply not true. His eyes are green-blue, and sort of deep set, a bit like Nicholas Cage or Judd Nelson, in case you need a reference to picture this. Hers are not deep set, and they are a dark blue, almost the color of denim. They're quite beautiful. I was hoping they wouldn't change color and they haven't.
I was reading through old posts today and saw the one where I wanted to open a Stasis store, and how I wanted to go into stasis and wake up skinny. That didn't happen of course, but I have been working hard over the past 6.5 mths and since January I am down 40+ lbs and many inches. I'm about a sz 12, a very fit sz 12. And this is on top of the 50 lbs I lost during and just after pregnancy so really I'm down about 90 lbs. total. Crazy, right? I was so extremely overweight when I got pregnant that when I dropped weight during my pregnancy it wasn't a concern. I had a lot of issues with first morning sickness and later heartburn that I just didn't eat well. Then breastfeeding, that's a miracle. The weight practically melts off, though only to a point.
I saw a friend over the weekend that I hadn't seen since December and not only was I happy to display myself in a swimsuit in front of other people at her house, many of whom I did not know, I think I might have even been one of the thinnest people there! And that is a very new feeling for me! It. Was. Awesome. Though all night all anyone wanted to talk to me about was diet, exercise and weight loss. It did get old after a while. No, really! It did! Had they just wanted to tell me how skinny I look all night, well that never gets old, but they wanted to talk about HOW I got so skinny. ;)
In August I have a company meeting with our home office staff that I have to travel to and I'm so incredibly excited to go because they saw me last at my heaviest. So now, 90 lbs down, they're not going to recognize me. That is going to be flipping amazing. I'll have to gear up for another barrage of "How did you do it?" questions, because I know it's coming. Diet and exercise. I did it the right way. Well, and pregnancy, but that wasn't on purpose!
The breastfeeding; that never did work out. I still have guilt feelings and feelings of loss about that, but I did the best I could, which was to pump instead. I pumped breast milk for my baby for 9 months. My good friend, who is still breastfeeding her 1 yr old, said that was even more valiant because in pumping is actually harder. It takes twice as long because in breastfeeding, you just do a feeding and you're done. With pumping, you have to pump, then do the feeding. Plus you have bottles to clean and refrigerate and heat, it's a lot more work. It was worth it. I wanted my baby to have the benefits of the breast milk, even if I couldn't feed her directly from my breasts. I do wish sometimes that I'd gone to some Leche League meetings, and gotten more help. Even after she was months old, I could possibly have tried again and gotten her back on the breast successfully. At the time though, I was afraid and it seemed so stressful. I felt rejected by her the first time around, I didn't think I could handle feeling like that again. I do know now that a huge part of that was simply PPD (post-partum depression), the anxiety and worry and feeling like she didn't want me or that I wasn't a good mother, that was all made much better by anti-depressants. These days I watch my friends breast feed their babies and I get kind of sad and just wish... I just wish I'd done things differently.
Doesn't matter though - I have a gorgeous child, who is healthy and happy and likes to hit our dog with things - in other words, who is totally normal, and I'm happy. I am happy every day, even if not all day.
I'm blessed. Here, you can see why.
No comments:
Post a Comment