14 in 2014

Breaking news: you gain weight when you’re pregnant.

And on that matter, when I first started going to my prenatal visits, my doctor told me I shouldn’t gain over 10 kilos. I’m calculating this in my head…10×2.2…22 pounds…that’s it?!? Dude, have you ever been pregnant? I kept it pretty reeled in for the first five months gaining only 5 or 6 pounds that whole time…then month 6 hit and all was lost (or gained). I started gaining 2 or 3 pounds a week and that whole “22 pound total” dream of my doctor was passed by at an astonishing speed.

I ended up gaining just over 40 pounds, probably the majority coming in November and December where I might as well have had a dump truck of food going directly into my mouth. I was unstoppable, and uncomfortable and hormonal. What a blissful balance. And you can bet that dollar I didn’t care even a little, tiny bit about laying in bed and eating double-stuf oreos…at 11am. Give a woman 6 weeks off before her baby is due and this is what happens. Thanks Chile…really. Thank you. It was a paradoxical time in my life of self-loathing and utter bliss.

Once I had Joaquin, I dropped 26 pounds without even trying in a period of a month. I have now slowly come to terms that these last 14 pounds aren’t just going to “drop”. They’re going to be stubborn, annoying and ugly little pounds that will kick and scream to stay on, as much as I would just like to ‘wish’ them off. Back to work…outs.

So, my goal for the rest of the year is to get rid of those “didn’t-get-the-message-that-I’m-not-pregnant-anymore-and-don’t-need-this-extra-weight” pounds. I was just gifted a new wardrobe of new running clothes for the upcoming Chilean winter. I think me talking about how much I needed to start exercising again to my family got the good word in that that’s all I really wanted for my birthday. They take hints so nicely.

Now that I have a small human to care for, finding time to exercise will be more challenging that before, but not impossible. Jogging strollers are out considering the sidewalks in Chile are like the road to Mordor, so Andrés and I will have to have some tag team running sessions and then maybe keep the sitter at our house for an extra hour once I go back to work so I can get my endorphins on. Because happy mommy=happy baby.

This is my shameless losing weight post because if I make it public, it will be harder for me to back out of. How all the great athletes get in shape.

Back To Running

I was cleared by my doctor last week to start exercising again. Exercising as in, not walking. It is a convenient time to be able to start running again. The weather is ideal and the days are long.

So, on Monday I literally dusted off my running shoes, charged my Garmin watch for the entire day (that’s how dead the battery was, it had to be CPR’d and resuscitated for a full day), then headed out the door when Andrés got home from work. Well, the good news was that my knee didn’t really hurt. I don’t know if that’s from taking a full 6 month break (probably), or the relieved stress on my lower extremities from not bouncing around with a small human in my abdomen. I suppose both contributed. However, my groin was killing me by the end of the 2 miles, a problem I started suffering from the last half of my pregnancy. What the heck, body? The baby is out! Trust me, I remember it very clearly.

Before doctor clearance, I ran one illegal mile when my sister was visiting two weeks ago and I noticed it then, too. She said something all intelligent and nurse-y about how things are still going back to normal and probably will still hurt for a while. She better be right and it better go away eventually! Just kidding Julia…sort of.

I’ll probably have to work through the pain, take it slow as well as a lot of anti inflammatories (my friend, how I’ve missed you), because the endorphins are worth it. It’s funny what having a baby does to you…at least in the first months post-partum. I could give two hoots and a bit more about what I look like, and thank goodness. Joaquin decided to have a major growth spurt during the last three weeks in my belly and hoo boy did those stretch marks come with a fiery vengeance. I suppose they’ll fade eventually, but for now it looks like I’m stuck with zebra stripes. Needless to say, I think the bikini is out of the picture for our weekend at the lake for everyone’s peace of mind.

But he was worth the stripes.