Wedding Clothes

Today we had our friends over to play. Nickii who brought her children Tayen (3) and Crewe (11 months). Were were talking about getting family pictures (we had just gone to JC Penny's and gotten pictures of our family) and Nickii saw the smocked light blue romper that I bought and just loved it. She said she was looking for an outfit for Crewe to wear for his one year old pictures and I had decided to let her borrow the outfit. Hannah heard our conversation and suddenly got upset. She started crying loudly muffling her words as she spoke. I told held her close and asked her what was wrong. She said "Nickii can't take Noah's clothes! What will he wear to my wedding?" I had to explain that when she gets married Noah will be a big tall man like daddy and he won't fit into it anymore. I think that she got confused because the dress she wore in our family pictures was the same dress she wore as a flower girl in a friend's wedding last summer.

5.23.09 Scales, Knees & Sleep

I've been counting calories for over a week. If you can believe it the scale says that I've already lost 5 pounds! It hasn't been easy. There are days when I feel so hungry I don't know what I'll do with myself. Then I realize that I haven't drunk enough water. I had no idea how water helps with hunger but in my case if I skimp on the water I feel starved.

Today Hannah fell for the first time and skinned up her knees pretty badly. It's not that she hasn't fallen before, especially when she was learning how to walk and then running. This was the bloodiest falls she's had. She was outside in her church dress running down our lane when I realized she was wearing some dress up sandals that she always trips in. I was saying "Hannah be careful" as soon as careful came out of my mouth she tripped and fell on her knees and rolled all the way up to her face. I was sure that she would have a bloody face. But she didn't just bloody knees. She cried very hard. Robert heard her cry and came running out too. I brought her in and looked at her bloody knees. Cleaned them up and put Neosporin on each with large band aids. She felt so badly that she got a little woozy and said she had to poop. Robert helped her to the toilet. She sat in the bathroom, her little lips were pale and I could see her eyes going vacant. She was on the verge of fainting. Robert put his arms around her and I ran to get her some juice to drink. She pulled out of it pretty well after that. Poor little girl. Now she's walking funny because it hurts to stand straight.

We are allowing Noah to cry to sleep. Every time we allow for variability Noah sleeps worse and worse. Robert's been encouraging me to let him cry again at night. I hasn't stuck the last times we've tried to let him cry, but I know he's right . I just lose so much sleep over it and he's so random with his wake ups that it'll often take me by surprise when he starts to wake up after sleeping for an hour. We reviewed parts of Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child and I realized that on a good night he wakes up every 2 hours all night long and on a bad night every 45 minutes or less. He's not an infant and he should be going back to sleep. So we are letting him cry but this time I'll turn off the monitor between feedings so that I can sleep and wake up every 4 hours, check on him and turn on the monitor again until he wakes up. I realize it seems cruel but he can sleep and he needs to learn how to do it more consistently. He's seven months old. I love him so much. This is soooo hard to do. But I refuse to let him continue sleeping poorly. I will not drive him around in the car to sleep or cosleep or hold him all day. I don't have that luxury and or maybe the patience to wait until he's three to sleep well.

Hunger not Sleep

I could once again write about how I coslept with Noah last night from midnight on and how he woke me up from 5am on... but I'm too hungry to go on and on about that one. I'm eating only 2000 calories a day which in the days I did the Prism Diet (PD) seem like a whole lot of calories. On the PD I ate only 1200 calories and I remember being hungry most of the time, but I did lose 30 pounds in about 10 or 12 weeks.

I figured out how many calories I'm probably expending and trying to eat less that. I burn 2864 calories a day! Wow no wonder I eat all day long while I'm nursing! I get to eat an extra 600 calories because of my little night waker.

Originally I thought that eating 2000 calories would make me not so hungry, but I'm oh so wrong. You see about 2 1/2 years ago I ate only 1700 calories a day and lot 10 pounds in a month. I only quit because I was soooooooo hungry all the time. Then after I weaned Hannah I tried to lose weight by exercising for hours and hours, but it was actually harder to lose weight after I weaned her by exercising. Hence the reason I'm doing this now. I must get ride of my maternity clothes and my pot belly. I don't want to resemble a lolly pop but I'd much rather not look like a frumpy mommy for the rest of my life. Also at the same time, Noah's (my little night waker) upper front tooth has a very nice bubblely blister where it's trying to wittle it's way through and they only thing that will stop the crabbing (and the night waking) is to have my breast in his mouth. Which means he's put on the feed bag but I'm not eating any more!! So for example I normally just breastfeed him (it takes less than 5 minutes when he's not teething) bounce him on the exercise ball until his eyes get droopy and put him in bed. Tonight he was wiggeling all around like crazy so I just let him stay on and suck away.

Another strange phenomenon is when I weighed myself today I weighed 176 pounds. I don't know what happened. I just started this calorie restriction yesterday. So I'll try not to seem like I'm complaining. My goal weight is 160 but what every weight I am by July 4th I'll just be happy with. And I'll take a little break after that...

Weighty Issues

Oh! I don't really want to write any of this down but I feel if I do it'll keep me in line a bit better. No!I don't want to write about sleep, which I never get enough of. I am feeling frumpy. I weight 180 right now which is a lot better than weighing 190. That's where I was stuck for many many months after Hannah was born. You see I normally gain about 40 lbs when I'm pregnant. I gain five the first trimester- even though I have a really tough time eating (especially with Hannah). I gain maybe five-ish pounds the second trimester and then the last couple of months it's as if my metabolism crashes and I gain all the rest then. With Hannah's pregnancy I was 214 at my highest weight. With Noah I was just about 220. I started out five pounds heavier at the beginning of Noah's pregnancy. Right after I gave birth to Hannah I weighed 190 and stayed there for over a year. Right after Noah's birth I weighed 204. I had only lost 16 pounds. However I wasn't in labor for four days with him. It took less than 4 hours (really two if you're counting). In being totally transparent I must say that I'm a foodie. I run to food for comfort. I'm lucky I don't weigh a lot more than I do. I don't like the feeling of hunger because that means that I'm a half hour away from feeling like I could crumble to pieces if I don't eat. I must eat to feel good. I've always liked food but food became more of a comfort for me when my parents divorced when I was 12. I over eat. I don't binge (not that I havent eaten a lot of a junky food before) and I could never throw up on purpose. If there is something wrong at all, especially emotionally, I start to think about eating so that I don't have to think about what's wrong. The silly part about that is that it's not as if I'm not emotionally healthy. I am. I deal with my issues but I delay dealing with issues by thinking about food. I call this my root beer float rut. About 11 years ago I was very unhappy with my life. I was living int he Bay Aread working as a nanny and eventhough I had a very sweet, nice roommate, I was lonely. I needed to have a bigger circle of friends to hang out with and someone I could shoot the breeze with someone I really connected with. I didn't have it at the time so I just thought about what would taste good on my tongue. One day I was driving over the San Rafael/Richmond bridge and I was thinking about eating a root beer float like I had been for days, when it dawned on me. Hey I'm trying to avoid all this pain and insecurity I feel inside by thinking about food. Now it's not as if I suddenly was able to think about something else, hence the reason I call it a 'rut', but I realized I was using my foodie thoughts to buffer the pain I felt inside. Something I had done for years and years by this point. Well, back to weight gain and pregnancy, I counted calories for one month and lost ten pounds. I didn't exercise a smidgen but I was breast feeding and the pounds flew off. It was one of the most difficult times of my life. As I said before I HATE being hungry. So now my plan is to count calories for six weeks. What's so magical about six weeks. Well, not much but I think that I need to work at eating less for at least six weeks. The nice part is that since I'm breastfeeding I actually don't gain weight easily so what ever weight I end up at by the 4th of July I'll be able to maintain with ease since I've still feeding Noah.

These are my goals in the next 6 weeks:
-eat under 2000 calories a day
-plan my food daily
-prepare as much food as I can the night before and the morning of
-be mindful of what I'm eating
-keep track of every calorie no matter how much I've eaten

In doing the above I hope to attain the following:
-my old wordrobe back
-more self confidence
-NO MORE WEARING MATERNITY CLOTHING
-LOSE THE BELLY

5.9.09 Sleep and More Sleep

I'm humbled everyday as a mother. I think that I know how things should go but they don't go the way I planned them or even the way I think I need them. Once again I am talking about sleep. Oh wonderfully precious sleep. In the last ten days both kids and I were sick. Again. Noah was sleeping very poorly so we decided to let him cry. Again. It worked for a while but I think it was only because Noah was sick. I tried letting him cry during nap time. He normally sleeps forty minutes at nap time so I was trying to lengthen them by leaving him up there until his total in bed time was one hour. All he did was cry and a cry. I didn't accomplish anything except for having a very up set baby. I felt terrible but I allowed the crying to continue for three days. Then he was getting so hoarse from all the screaming it was obviously not working. It turns out that he was getting sick. The day after I stopped leaving him in his crib for one hour he started to sleep double naps once a day. I really didn't believe it was because of anything that I had done. I was right. He slept better because he was sick. Now he's well and sleeping very very badly. He is getting an upper front tooth and with out ibuprofen he is a wretched wreck. Biting and crying and crabbing all the time until a half hour after I give him the medicine and then he's just biting and crabbing and not usually crying.

Last night was terrible. I put him down to sleep like I always do. He immediately popped his head up and started complaining. He was so very much on his way to dreamland that I was totally taken off guard by his waking. I let him cry for about twenty minutes and then went in to check on him to see if he had flipped himself over and couldn't get comfy. No he was on his tummy just screaming. I put in his pacifier and shushed and patted him until he was asleep. He woke up as soon as I stopped patting. I did it again. He woke up again. So I let him cry himself to sleep. He slept until 11:30. Pretty good. Then woke again at 1am. Not so good. I let him cry and turned off the monitor. I could still hear him, as I was sleeping in the guest bedroom. I slept on and off. I then went into him around 2:30am. I nursed him and rocked him and put him back down. He fussed for a while and I finally picked him up gave him some ibuprofen messaged his legs and tummy. He fell asleep so I laid him in his crib and continued to message him. He slept until 4am. I was totally done. So I laid down with him on the double bed in his room and gave him more milk then held him close. He slept until 6:20. Poor baby. He is in so much pain. What else can I do. I know this.
Crying it out helps Noah to sleep longer.
His weight has nothing to do with how long he will sleep
Teething does interfere with his sleep.
He doesn't know how to self soothe.
Sleeping with Noah doesn't help him or I to sleep any longer. It only works for a day or two and then he wakes every hour or 15 minutes as it gets closer to morning.
Solid food doesn't help him sleep more
Sleeping on his tummy doesn't help him sleep more.