week 24: pregnancy and body image.

I always feel bad talking about my pregnancy because I so easily wander to the negatives rather than the positives. So I will start out by saying I have thus far been blessed with the easiest pregnancy ever. I've never thrown up, I have huge stores of energy, I can still work out and I can stay out until at least 12:30 if I really mentally prepare for it. I have wanted to be pregnant more than most things in my life and I am so thankful and blessed to have such an easy go of it when we started trying. I thankfully have a partner who wants to be involved. He reads pregnancy books, gives me a massage every night, and kisses my belly every time he leaves a room we're in. So then what do I have to be negative about, right?  I know this is naive because clearly we have all seen pregnant women before but I did not expect to feel the way I do about my body. Jim often asks me "what did you think was going to happen?" He is right. But the changes happening to my body, and the body of all pregnant women, is a little more than not fitting into my skinny jeans.

As my body has slipped from a place that I am proud of to the place where I'm now back to buying size 12 jeans and XL shirts in order to stay out of maternity clothes, my mind can't exactly wrap itself around what is happening. I know it's more important to be healthy than it is to worry about the weight gain but let's be honest, fitness is a numbers game. Think about it--even when we're not talking about the number on the scale or a pair of pants we are tracking how fast our mile is or how many pounds our deadlift. I don't need numbers to show me my changing body but I haven't come to the place where I find these changes beautiful. I see them as completely utilitarian.

It's hard to explain to anyone, including mothers who love their pregnant body, why it's so bothersome to wake up in the morning and find a shirt that fit in the last wash cycle no longer does. People always talk about the glow and the great boobs.  My boobs have decided to stay the same while my ass seems to be receiving more of the curve than my stomach. The only glow I have is the one that last the four hours after a facial and don't even get me started on the craziness that is my curly hair. I have spent the last 18 months losing all my curve and now they are showing back up but now in unpredictable ways. When I'm eating unhealthy and not working out I know what to expect but letting go of control and surrendering to whatever unpredictable changes occur is one of the most difficult struggles I've ever gone through.

Maybe the problem is that over the last 18 months I have invested too much of my identity in fitness and nutrition. When my body tells me now that I have to spend the extra half an hour in bed rather than going for a morning jog, I find my heart breaking slightly. (On the opposite side, after not eating carbs for almost a year, when my body is begging for pasta, I probably give in a little too easily.) I will be running my first 5k with this little guy next month and I might find that key for me. To get back to some sense of normal physical activity beyond a few miles on the treadmill to give me a taste of the runners high I so love to hate. To train for a goal, no matter how short.

I have no answers on how to change my mental attitude. I can tell myself I am growing a human, that it's not about me, or to just to get over myself but I haven't been able to cross that mental plane yet. I'm not sure that I will get there during what is perhaps my one and only pregnancy but I'm okay with being  one of those woman who just didn't love my pregnant body. If I have one positive thing to say about my pregnant body, it will be the most amazing little guy that I will get at the end of it.

ginger snap: 18 weeks.

How far along:  18 weeks

How big is the baby: Snap is the size of a sweet potato (~5.6 oz)

Total weight gain/loss: Although it feels like a hundred, I'm up only two pounds. 

Maternity clothes: I haven't had to make the switch yet to maternity clothes. Thankfully I wear looser style shirts anyway so they fit the same. However, from my lack of ab work and bloating I'm on the edge of having to buy pants a size up or get my perfectly broken in J Crew jeans turned into maternity jeans at Tony Walker. 

Stretch marks: Not new ones ha. 

Sleep: I am sleeping better now than I did in my first trimester. Some days I wake up early but I just jump right into my day so at least it's productive lack of sleep!! 

Exercise:  I made it to the gym 6 days this week thanks to some awesome friends who went with me. Cycling two days in a row did not work for me--I am still sore. At this point I am doing more (light) weights than Cardio. I spend about a half hour doing cardio and have dropped my running to a mile here or there but I'm hoping once it finally warms up I can increase my mileage when running outside. 

Best moment last week: I felt the baby fluttering around for the first time. I have to say it is a strange but wonderful feeling. I have had so few issues with my pregnancy and don't have much of a bump so sometimes I feel like the little guys not really there. That God for Doppler and Sonograms. 

Movement: I know from when we had our 3D sonogram that this guy is a mover. Mostly he likes to kick and push into my bladder. 

Food cravings/aversions: Pancakes, fruit, string cheese and sweets. Basically, everything I loved before but an unparalleled need to have them immediately. 

The smell of cooked meat grosses me out. I swear I'd go vegetarian right now just to avoid that smell. I try to eat as much meat as I can but honestly I rather just have veggies, quinoa pasta and white beans. 

Other symptoms: My round ligament pain just arrived yesterday. It's not the most cozy feeling. Also, my tailbone is in a position right now that makes it very difficult to stand up without extreme pain. (Hence, Jim having to always help me stand up.) 

Gender: Baby boy (He's a UCONN fan. Go Huskies!)

Belly button: Innie (can't it just stay that way?)

Weddings rings: On! I have not swollen at all yet--I'm very big on hydration. 

What I miss: With this week being a little warmer, it makes me sad that I'm not out hiking. I would've started a few weeks ago but a few friends were up at Hunters Creek, my normal hiking spot, and said it's slick and they had trouble. I can't risk falling wrong on snap so it looks like I'm cooped up for a few more weeks. 

What I am looking forward to: I can't wait for snap to kick so that Jim can feel him, too. I feel like he is my little pal right now and even though Jim reads to him every night, I can't wait for him to be able to feel him!

Weekly Wisdom: Pregnancy is no excuse not to go workout. Sure I don't leave the gym sweating buckets every time but even just getting in 30 minutes of walking on the treadmill makes me feel so much more peppy and lively. 

a week of change.

I have thought about writing this blog for days but like most difficult things, I put it off. I wasn't sure what the definite beginning, middle or end would be but like most of my blogs I simply let the thoughts spill out and leave it just how my stream of conciousness comes.

There are moments in your life that forever change it and that you will never forget. I was in the front row of Mr. Schultz's Freshman English class when the planes hit the Twin Towers. I was sitting on a curb at a gas station when I knew my marriage was over. And I was laying in bed in a bathroom watching Melissa and Joey when I recieved the two consecutive phone calls of siblings announcing to me the passing of my Grammy. I'm not sure what created worse pain in that moment, hearing the words from my sister-in-law or knowing that I had to call my sister and break the news to her I knew she would never be prepared to hear. In reality, none of us were prepared to hear that news.

Grandma was 95 and all of us had been bracing especially for the last few months that this day was drawing nearer. As much as you prepare yourself and tell yourself every cliche in the book, you're never ready for that final phone call. For some of us we think about the last visit, how it was just days ago or how it was much too long ago, while others of us truly believe that she is in a better place. I want to have the strength to say the unselfish things and say, she's out of pain now and it's for the best, but that's not how I feel at all. For some reason, it hits me especially when I'm driving in the car that she's no longer here. My words have failed me thus far in any compacity to say what I think or how I feel. I have resorted mostly to a silence that has been tearing me apart inside. So here I am going to try to sum up the Grandma that I knew until the end.

I think that my brother said it best during his eulogy that it was hard to point out one story about my Grandma because every time you saw her or talk to her was the same. It was special but ordinary in every way. With her, your time together never had to be about some big event but it was about the love in the room. From the moment you walked in there was a glow on her face and although you'd ask her house she was, she always  made it about you or the next big thing that was going on in the family. There was something magical about the way even in a hospital bed how she could make it seem like she was always doing well and that what you were doing was more important, even if it was just working. I remember the day that she finally said to me "I'm not okay and I'm sorry that you have to see me like this and go through it." It was the most I had ever heard from my Grandma in the way of negativity or bringing a conversation back to herself. It was the only thing I ever heard her say like that and just moments later she was already on to how my marathon training was going.

It was hard when Grandma moved out of her home, where I had half grown up, and into an assisted living facility. In hindsight, I think that it gave me the extra blessing that the end was near. It made me ask her about events in her young life that otherwise I might not have thought to ask. I learned more about my Grandparents in the time she spent there than I did when I spent time with her at her house. Growing up my grandparents had always had gardens and hunted. It's where I got my love of nature and gardening. One of my grandma's favorite stories to tell about me was that when I was a young girl, my Grandpa and I would pick vegetables from the garden and I would run each and every one in seperately for my Grandma to wash. I told my sister the other day that it was so clear that even when she mentally didn't seem like she was with us, she really was. When my sister visited she was always sure to explain to her how to be a strong, fair leader and in between bouts of sleep she would give me her chicken soup recipe or try to explain why my vegetables didn't grow right last year. I'm glad that I spent the last year gleaning and writing down her advice on cooking and gardening. In a way, I'll know I can always find her when my hands are dirty and I'm sweating in the hot summer sun.

I know we all have different opinions about religion and Christians even differ so much within their beliefs of what a Christ follower looks like. To me, my Grandma will always be my perfect image of a Christian. It wasn't that she always had the Bible within a few inches of her to read (at the end with a magnifying glass) or that she was quick to offer a prayer for even the most minor of problems (usually without even mentioning she was about to pray). It was in the way that she loved. She was empethetic and non-judgemental. Trust me when I say there were times my siblings and I have had to lay some things on her that you wouldn't think a 90-year-old Christian woman would take well but she never questioned or made you feel bad for a slip up. She never forced you to talk about a topic that she saw as difficult but would gentle offer advice. There was something so genuine about her joy and love. In all my time of thinking what the source of that kind of love comes from the only solution I can come up with is a love and relationship with who she believed so strongly in.

This week as I said goodbye to one heartbeat, I heard a new one for the first time. Although there is nothing like hearing your son's heartbeat for the first time, it was a bittersweet experience for me. I know you can't have regrets when it comes to the things you do or don't do but I wish that I had told my Grandma that I was expecting. Even though this was a planned event according to when me and Jim wanted to start our family, there is a part of my family who makes it seem like I'm a 16-year-old who never learned how to use contraception or those who gossip and say that we were lying about trying in the first place. I made the unfortunate mistake of taking those people's burdens on as my own and even as others encouraged me to tell her I refused to. It was in this lapse of judgement that I forgot exactly who my Grandma was and that she would have nothing but pure joy.

My mom always says that you celebrate the good as it comes or it makes the bad unbearable. I just haven't felt like I've had to will to overcome my mourning and start to celebrate my little bundle. There are nights I feel so far removed from my current circumstances and caught in a cloud of confusion. As my sister told me today, you don't get over the ending of a lifetime of love in a week. It's not a matter of if I will heal, it is simple a question of when. Today I'll just try to concentrate on the good I've been given.

the most important thing i'll ever do.

I've been told in Health class you were forced to watch a movie about the miracle of birth. However, one of my mothers crazier rules was that we were not allowed to watch it. She wrote a note to the Health teacher to get us sent to the library during this viewing. Obviously, since Sophomore year Health class, I've watched enough R-rated movies to understand  that in six short months I am in for a lot of screaming, pain and possibly pooping in front of several strangers. I'm pretty sure if I'd ever seen the Miracle of Life, the following story would just say "I never tried to have kids. They're not for me. A kid is not coming out of me…ever." Thankfully, my  mother kept me in the dark so although I'm scared of birth, I don't really know what I'm in for, so this story goes in a beautifully different direction.

                                                                                                                                  

When trying for kids, you get used to certain level of disappointment. Month after month you see negatives and you pretend that it doesn't bother you. You continue telling yourself that age old lie that "it will happen when it's meant to be". In reality at some point it almost becomes a crippling question in the back of your mind if you were just meant to love other peoples kids and never have any of your own. You stop getting your hopes up and never get a chance to learn the emotion that comes with the words 'Pregnant 2-4 weeks'. I had a thousand words for the way it felt when you saw a negative; painful, sad, disappointing, heartbreaking… But for me, the emotion I felt when I saw 'Pregnant 2-4 weeks' I can't exactly put a finger on. It felt like a mix of excitement, relief, and shock all at once. The type of news you can't wait to share with your other half and celebrate.

In my moment of overwhelmingly positive emotion I forgot that Jim had just left for a week long trip the previous morning. Meaning that I, the girl who shares every mundane detail of my life with the man I love, had to keep a secret for six. whole. days. Well let's just say the moment that Jim saw my face on FaceTime he knew that there was something up. Although, he assumed that I was up to something such as rearranging our bedroom or hanging up some new piece of artwork in the house. Ha! The look on his face when I flipped the screen onto two positive pregnancy tests instead of something small and insignificant. Not the ideal way to tell him but in this moment we both understood that our biggest dream was coming true and our little family was beginning.

Well I was at home just trying to pick out the right prenatal vitamins and make doctors appointments, Jim was trapped in Chicago for four days thinking about the next twenty years of our child's life, the college funds we would need to pile away, and if we'd have to cancel our trip to Portland this October (the answers no. it will just be baby Simon's first trip). I think blissful ignorance fueled his thoughts of the distant future while I was worried about just making it through the first doctors appointment with good news. Good news was not what we received.

The doctors and us had come up with a guesstimation of how far along I should have been. By the calculations we should have been around 8 weeks. However, when we did our sonogram there was only a gestational sac and no fetus present. This means one of two things, we were earlier than they thought or it was what they call a blighted ovum and I would eventually miscarry on my own. The plan was to wait a week and then have a more high-powered sonogram taken at the hospital. I can say that I have never felt a week that was so long. It consisted of a lot of debbie downer thoughts and tears. Jim held it together for me while I continued to think the worst. I usually don't resort to the worst thoughts but when you think of getting a pregnancy confirmation at a doctors, you expect them to congratulate you and show you your baby, not tell you that there's something wrong and refuse to actual confirm the pregnancy.

Early the next Friday morning we found ourselves at the hospital, where I may or may not have been shaking with nervousness. Our horrible technician, who told me things were wrong with me that were totally normal according to the doctor, did nothing to help. Maybe she didn't understand why I had come to her but she faced the screen away from me the whole time she did the sonogram and never announced to me that she had found the baby until several minutes into the sonogram. Jim was sitting where he could see the screen but he wasn't giving me any kind of signal that things were going in the right direction. The moment that she did turn the screen to me and I saw that little heart beating 153 BPM, I knew that this was real, this was my little Ginger Snap (this is what we call the baby since they are fated to have red hair like us).

I think your whole opinion of yourself and life changes when you see a second heartbeat inside of you. It's not just that you have something living in you but that an act of love and dedication is what brought it about. To me, no matter what else we accomplish as a family, this is the most important thing we will do. I will take all the hours I'm up sick instead of sleeping (I get night sickness instead of morning sickness), the awful acne, getting fat, and not being able to run knowing what is coming at the end of these next six months. Sure, I am petrified of actually giving birth, gaining weight, and letting a baby anywhere near my boobs, but the adventure has just begun and it's already the best of my life.

balance.

Balance. 

It seems like such a simple word and I don't think there is a single one of us that doesn't understand how to achieve balance. We know in theory that we should be spending equal amounts of energy on the things that mean the most to us--usually that means ourselves, those we love, work and adventure. What happens in reality? Despite the ease of the equation, we so easily concentrate unevenly on one area of our life and we get caught in a cycle of just merely surviving. 

I thought for the longest time that my running was the excuse. I couldn't find the right combination of balance in my life because I was training or working 90% of the time. But as that usual mask and excuse has faded away, I'm left realizing that I'm just not good at balancing or prioritizing. Most of the time when I could be doing something productive, I find myself giving it up to go to sleep hours early. I've now started using exhaustion as my excuse but that's just what it is, an excuse. The lack of balance that I create is what makes me so exhausted. There are a lot of instances in life that I would never dream of making an excuse. I'm the girl, when pulled over, who says to the cop "I know, I know, I was speeding. I think it was 10 over" and gladly accepts responsiblity. But in this area, all I find is excuses.

This single area though may be my greatest struggle. I find it difficult to prioritize within the things that are important to me because I find myself with so little time to try to create a life outside of work that I end up flustered and frustrated. Is there some sort of key to this work/life balance that I am missing? I can't remember the last time I cooked a meal or didn't rely on one of the men I live with to switch over my laundry because I can never find enough time to be at home through a whole wash/dry cycle. Or maybe I have been but my day faded into some kind of Scandal watching marathon. 

I have always been the girl who flakes on plans. It's never out of malice or not thinking that someone or something is important. It's always been rooted in being overbooked, overstressed and if I admit it, a little lazy. There are people out there with much more important and hectic lives than me so please don't register this as a complaint. It's just the opposite. It's the tale of someone who has been overly blessed with a hectic but rewarding job, beautiful friends and family, healthy habits that keep me at the gym and a church that I look forward to attending. It's me saying, I've been blessed beyond what I deserve and can sometimes seem to handle. 

For the last few weeks, the healthy habits have seemed to have gone by the waist-side. I knew without the goal of a marathon it would be difficult to keep my ambition up. I have now gone two days in a row without going to the gym, which is unheard of for me. I ate a handful of Hersey kisses yesterday at a wedding shower. All this could lead me to be angry and feel like a failure, as only someone who has worked for over a year to just look normal, not even fi,t could understand but the one thing I know for sure about my experience with cultivating healthy practices in my life, is that no amount of shame would have brought me here. In fact; shame, guilt, feeling bullied by myself, hating my body, comparing myself to others... all of those were things I had to work through to even begin thinking about my health. The best way to be a health advocate is to live it. A positive example does more good than a judgmental voice.

Part of my positive example is always being honest. And honestly, I don't think that my equation will ever be balanced. I think I will always find it difficult to not be overwhelmed by the process of prioritizing. What I do know is that I need to find a healthy way to juggle it all because the relationships and obligations in my life can only be as healthy as my mind and body. Identifying any problem in your life is always the first step to solve it, so for now, starting this dialogue with myself puts me on the right track.

marathon: a dream put on hold.

As most of you know, for the last six months I have been training for my first marathon. I started by running a half in October and decided that I would just follow right through to the Myrtle Beach Marathon coming up in February. I think when people hear that you are training for a marathon they think that you're crazy for wanting to run 26 miles or have respect for you being able to run that far. The thing that has been most difficult for me has not been running that far or long but the time commitment. Already working a hectic job that can keep me anywhere from 40-60 hours a week, with sometimes 13 hours of my day (minus travel) taken by work. To know that on a Sunday, my one day to relax, I would then have to run for 3 hours after church is at times overwhelming. I had made a goal though and I wasn't going to let myself down. I have cried through runs, I have swore through runs and I have gotten lost in the beauty of observing things around me on runs. My sole dream for now has been to run an ultramarathon.

A few weeks ago, I was in the shampoo isle of Wegmans with Siena when I got a phone call from my doctor. At the end of a length explination the blow came that I can no longer run my marathon or for that matter any other type of "competetive race" as she calls it. For the few minutes that the phone call lasted, I felt like it was all okay. But somewhere during my search for Aussie shampoo, it took everything I had to hold my composure in front of a 3-year-old. I am not the type of person who usually gets my hopes up about many things in life. My goals are simple. This marathon is one of the few that I am working on now.  I had come to look at running as a sort of job, or so I thought. My reaction quickly told me that running was more than a job or a hobby. It was something that had been engrained on my heart and turned into a passion. As my mine flashed over the past few months of work, I felt like a part of me had died. It wasn't that I needed to get some medal at the end of a race but I did need the fulfillment of keeping my word to myself.

I don't know if you've ever spent months and months working towards a goal just to be turned away. It made me feel like I had wasted so much time and effort. I could've been spending time with friends or with Jim but instead I was at the gym hitting the treadmill. I believe heavily in faith and I really believe that the goals you have are formed because they are part of your destiny. Was I wrong in thinking running was something made for me? Did I form a goal and spend my time selfishly? Or was this just a case of bad timing and overworking? 

I know that I can always run another marathon... I know that I can find new goals that are more at a level that my body can handle... I know that as much as running has become my passion, it's not my only identity... Most days I wonder if my doctor even knows what she is talking about. I can't seem to let go and admit to myself that I'm not running the race. We are still planning on going down for vacation and I keep telling myself what the doctor doesn't know doesn't count.  I have broken up with boys, I have lost friends, I have been told off on more than one occasion but I will say, this is the biggest heartbreak I have ever suffered. The only way through this is being realistic and just figuring out how to handle a dream that has been put on hold.

starting the new year with a blog about depression...

In the last few months people have been using the word "inspiring" to describe me. I don't feel very inspiring. I don't point this out because of a non-belief that I have made worthy strides that are noticeable to people. I can't accept the word inspiring because it is based on people's perceptions of me based on what they see on social media or in short conversations that we have while catching up. I think there is a big part of me that people are missing and it is not something that I am ashamed of but a big part of my genetic make-up. I battle depression. I have since I was 13-years-old. Some days, some years, are better than others.

If you've never dealt with depression yourself than you might not understand how life altering it is. I can say that the last year has been one of the happiest seasons of my life but it is also the year that I have most heavily felt the effects of depression. If you don't deal with depression, I think some of the misunderstandings about it are that people with depression are lost and without directions, that it's an inability to let go of sadness, or that it's just one more excuse to complain and ask people to take care of you. I am not sad. I am not lost. I am planted in life, faith, health and happiness and still I have never escaped my mental health issues.

Have you ever found yourself thrown overboard and trapped under a canoe, struggling to come up for air and not knowing if this breath might be your very last? Literally, I have. Figuratively, this is sometimes how I feel for weeks on end. Some days I would love to get out of bed but I feel like I dropped the weight on myself while bench pressing. There is nothing glamorous or beneficial about having such a constant ailment that can come out of nowhere. Some moments I find myself out of breath and slurring my words because even the simple task of speaking and saying good morning feels like it's too much.

I don't think that depression and happiness are mutually exclusive. There are whole days, like the day I got engaged, where the world is absolutely perfect but some glitch in my mental make-up tells me that the world is falling down around me. I can find myself breaking up with my fiance (or trying to), throwing things across the room or on the floor crying hysterically with absolutely no excuse or explanation why. I find myself overwhelmed often and in an entirely different universe. I shut down in order to not hurt anyone else in the fall from high to low.

I am so glad that over the last few years celebrities and magazines have made it okay to admit that we are less than perfect humans. That people have mental health issues and that talking about it is one of the best things we can do. I found myself several months ago in a meeting with a friend and as we discussed my mental health issues, she suggested that if I was working with a child who suffered with these types of issues that I step up and help them channel those funks and emotions to something else. I know she meant it as advice to help others but really it helped me. Since that meeting I have been channeling any negative energy that I can in another direction. I'll say that running saved me but the truth is lots of things save me. Cooking, running, blogging, drawing, writing, pilates... Anything that I can channel the negative in my life out into changes my whole mental landscape. By planning my workouts by the week and doing them in the morning, I never get the chance to wallow in whatever negative emotion I might wake up to.

Not a lot of great stuff came out of my first marriage but one of the things that did was that my ex-husband did not think it was appropriate for me to go on medication for my depression. There were times that I hated him for that. As I have become more blessed and overwhelmed with happiness on a daily basis, I couldn't imagine being on anti-depressants (and this is just for me. I'm not speaking to anyone else here). I get to have these amazing highs in life and it's true, they are spiked with extreme lows. I want to experience all of who I am and my range of emotions. I wouldn't have the strength that I do if I did not have to find a way to make it through the most difficult numbness and pain several times a month. I probably wouldn't have the strength to pour out real emotions on this blog as often as I do.

I think that calling someone inspiring is one of the biggest compliments that you can pay someone. I  know if people are going to use the word inspiring to describe me, I don't want them to have the romantic, goal setting, running maniac version of me in their head but the whole me. And if in the process of introducing the full me, I make someone feel like they're not alone in their struggle, it's worth completely worth opening up.