Watch the clip here.

If you’ve ever doubted the wisdom behind vaccinations this will answer more than a few questions. Oh – and just so you know I’m not jumping on a bandwagon here; I’ve been seriously anti-vaccinations since day one. Another great resource is http://www.vaccination.inoz.com/.

Your thoughts?

Here they are, in no particular order:

Skinny Jeans

Acceptance

New Year, New Me?

A whole series of mini-posts in the lead-up to giving birth: thoughts, hopes, expectations, preggie sex ….

Food, Fat and Freaking Out

You’re a Mum: You Can’t Wear A Bikini!

Alyssa Rose

Selenium, Metabolism and Thyroid

And The Scales Go Up

And probably the one that riled me up the most -

The Breastfeeding Myth

Enjoy!

So I popped into work with Alyssa on Monday morning on my way to doing a bit of pre-Gold-Coast wardrobe sprucing-up. I was feeling pretty good actually. Despite the fact that the scales are still sitting firm at around 7kg over my pre-preggie weight, I’m happy with how my body is looking. I’m tightening up more each week, my body fat is holding firm between 14 and 16%, and I’m truly into my training at the moment in a way that I haven’t been for years. Matter of fact, I’m pretty sure that my fitness is at an all-time high. It could be just because I’m able to really push myself again and am loving that high after 9 months of taking it pretty easy, but I have a bit of a sneaking suspicion it’s also due to me finally having the courage to drop the cardio after realizing just how stressful and therefore fattening it can be post-pregnancy.

Anyway, long story short it was a good day. I had my beautiful girl with me, I’d done a killer circuit earlier that day, and I was feeling energized. So you can imagine my reaction when my offhand comment about heading into the center to buy a new bikini was met with the following -

“You’re a Mum – you can’t wear a bikini anymore!”

WTF?!

Ok, so 19-year old whippersnapper boys (in the form of my cheeky apprentice L) in general do not deserve to have much of what they say given serious value but this really took the cake. I mean, c’mon. If that’s the way the world thinks then no wonder most Mums out there give up before they’ve even started trying to shape up. Heck, I knew it was accepted that motherhood throws your body into at least a short-term turmoil, but nobody warned me it resulted in a new set of rules about what you can and can’t wear. Apparently regardless of the fact that you may still be a good couple sizes less than the average Aussie woman who didn’t even have a kid!

I think you’ll agree when I say that boy needs a slap. (Okay, now I really am acting like a Mum). Fortunately, my feel-good hormones held strong and I didn’t let it get to me. I left the shops with 2 beautiful new Tigerlily bikinis (and if I do say so myself my boobs look amazing in them) in what obviously had to be a larger size than previous Summer fare but – and here’s something I’d never have expected – probably feeling better about bikini shopping than I ever have before.

Gold Coast eat your heart out, cause this Mum ain’t going into hiding.

Body plus baby? Easy!*

Kat

*(We hope)

What’s the cheekiest thing somebody’s ever said to you as a Mum? Comment below!

Are you currently on your own ‘body after bump’ journey? I’d love to hear from you. One of my main reasons for starting this blog (aside from keeping myself accountable) was to form a community of like-minded women. Women who refuse to become a dowdy mother figure and instead choose to embrace their new role with the exceptional health and energy that comes from being in control of their body from the inside out. If this is you then make sure you drop me a line in the comments section below!

Want to leave a comment? If you’re reading from RSS or email you’ll have to enter the blog to do this. You can do that by clicking on the title of this piece. ‘Post a comment’ is at the article end, right under the ’share this’ and ‘related posts’ options.

If you haven’t yet subscribed to this feed, what are you waiting for? Do it now. You can choose either email at the top right of this page, or by RSS in the URL bar.

If you enjoyed this article please forward to your friends and tweet it. Thank-you!

Technorati

Yesterday was Alyssa’s first trip up the 1000 stairs in Ferntree Gully National Park (she did want to go alone with all the other kids from my family reunion, but I had to insist on accompanying her). Anyway – and apologies for the joke attempt, it’s early early early – doing that beautiful outdoor trek for perhaps what was my slowest time ever, brought home an important point for me -

Exercise doesn’t always have to be about smashing yourself. About going hard or going home. And as tough as it is to admit this, it really was very enjoyable just fast walking up the stairs rather than being the crazy person trying to elbow all the Sunday tourists out of the way as they try to better their sprint time. Not that I’ve ever done that, you understand (ok, 7:19 in case you’re wondering, although that was many moons ago!)

The funny thing was, as much as I feel generally awesome when I do punish myself with any sort of extreme workout, yesterday I noticed that I felt pretty damn fantastic as well. At first I couldn’t figure it out. And then I realised – I felt relaxed. As though my soul had been rejuvenated. And I had to wonder why I don’t make more of an effort to enjoy outdoor activity in this beautiful city. It’s probably something I’ll naturally do more of as she gets older, but in the meantime it wouldn’t hurt to remember that being in great shape does not have to begin and end at the gym with an 85% max HR.

And it’s occurred to me that the same lesson could be applied to life. I mean how often do you rush through the days, weeks, months, eyes not really on the prize, but instead focused on getting to the next thing on your list, or on feeling some sense of success based around accomplishment, or – worse – around busyness and not even necessarily productivity? I recently wrote a post about this over at Dumb Little Man, and the focus was on letting go of the rush and the must-do’s and finding ways to introduce joy into your life again. And when exercise is routinely more of a must-do (even if it is a want-to as well), and less about spontaneity and maybe even FUN then maybe it’s time to make a change. Don’t you think?

Body plus baby? Easy!*

Kat

*(We hope)

These are just my thoughts and musings, and they sure as heck make sense to me. I’ll be doing my best to find some research to back up or disprove what I’ve put forth here (and can most likely find both if I look hard enough and for long enough) but feel free to chime in if you know of any relevant science-based studies I’ve missed.

Are you currently on your own ‘body after bump’ journey? I’d love to hear from you. One of my main reasons for starting this blog (aside from keeping myself accountable) was to form a community of like-minded women. Women who refuse to become a dowdy mother figure and instead choose to embrace their new role with the exceptional health and energy that comes from being in control of their body from the inside out. If this is you then make sure you drop me a line in the comments section below!

Want to leave a comment? If you’re reading from RSS or email you’ll have to enter the blog to do this. You can do that by clicking on the title of this piece. ‘Post a comment’ is at the article end, right under the ’share this’ and ‘related posts’ options.

If you haven’t yet subscribed to this feed, what are you waiting for? Do it now. You can choose either email at the top right of this page, or by RSS in the URL bar.

If you enjoyed this article please forward to your friends and tweet it. Thank-you!

The Story Of Alyssa

My beautiful little girl arrived Friday week ago (the 6th), at 1.56 pm, with an incredibly hairy head and weighing 8 pounds 14 ounces. The birth? Not so much fun. I had the (oxytocin) pessary on Thursday night as a preparation to being induced Friday morning at 7. Induction definitely wasn’t in my birth plan, in fact I was fairly determined to do it completely natural unless absolutely forced to change plans. Of course I should have known things weren’t going to be so simple when I found out my due date was 5 days earlier than I thought. Mind you, I still think that was a clerical mix-up, but whatever. It is what it is now! Fortunately the full induction didn’t take place as I went into labour Friday at 3am. I thought it was just cramps at first and hopped in the bath, but by 4.30 I knew it was happening – and contractions were already 4 minutes apart. We got to hospital at 6am and within another half hour or so I was in agony. Apparently I could be heard groaning throughout the entire ward. The pessary speeds up the labour process (in theory!), well it did for me, so there was no gradual build up.

My doctor came to check on me at 8.30am and I was thinking I must be at least halfway. I was one cm dilated! Unbelievable. So he broke my waters after doing an internal (most excruciating thing I’ve ever survived), and she’d pooed inside me which is obviously not good. So then he decides that because I was in so much pain and not progressing, to put me on the oxytocin drip – in his words to speed it up, make the contractions come more often (they were already 1 or 2 min apart at this stage!), and to make it more painful. Awesome. He recommended the epidural, and I decided within about 15 minutes to have it, and did so at 10am. I was going to go for gas first, then maybe pethidine, but something told me I would end up still having the epi, so may as well just have only the one thing. I just didn’t see how I’d be able to make it, considering I thought I’d have so long ahead of me. The thing is, I never researched the epidural because I never thought I’d have it (pretty stupid, huh? – and very unlike me really) so I didn’t realise it would make me numb from the waist down, and not able to move! I also didn’t realise till I read it the next day that it stops the natural release of oxytocin for bonding. Luckily breastfeeding does release that as well. I probably wouldn’t have had it if I knew that (or that I wouldn’t be able to feel how to push properly!). She ended up coming 3 hours after that, at 1.56, and he used the vacuum. There’s a chance that had I avoided the epi I just wouldn’t have relaxed enough to dilate fully when I did, and a lengthy drawn out labour could well have resulted in a c-section, so although part of me regrets going down the drug path I’m also thankful that I have this gorgeous child who has arrived in full health and without my having to go through surgery or who knows what else. And thankfully (despite the vacuum) she doesn’t have any bruising, nor does she have a conehead! What’s more, when it did come time to push the epi had worn off a little and so I was able to focus on what I needed to do. Annoyingly I did still end up having an episiotimy (which the midwife saw fit to photograph, much to our horror in reviewing the camera later!)

And of course it was all worthwhile when I finally had her on my chest. So wonderful. And so very very surreal at first. I was completely overwhelmed by emotion when she came out; I couldn’t even get the words out of my mouth to make the official “it’s a girl” announcement.

Meanwhile 10 days has passed and I’ve been gradually figuring this whole thing out. As I said, in some ways it feels totally natural but at the same time every day is filled with new lessons and experiences, not to mention dozens of pooey nappies (why do they always let everything out right after you’ve changed a nappy???), and the gradual return of my breasts to something resembling human tissue and not a very badly botched lumpy DDD boob job!

And in the midst of it all I haven’t forgotten my promise to myself, which is to be pack in my ideal shape by mid February next year; approximately 12 weeks from now. There’ve been a few cautious gym and yoga visits so far, and my eating has been excellent – I totally get why everyone says breastfeeding causes weight loss, it’s because there’s now time left to eat! But more on all that another day. For now – welcome to Alyssa, and welcome officially to you to this blog. This is where it really begins!

Body plus baby? Easy!*

Kat

*(We hope)

Don’t forget to leave a comment before you go – if you’re reading from RSS or email you’ll have to enter the blog to do this. You can do that by clicking on the title of this piece. ‘Post a comment’ is at the article end, right under the ’share this’ and ‘related posts’ options.

If you haven’t yet subscribed to this feed, what are you waiting for? Do it now. You can choose either email at the top right of this page, or by RSS in the URL bar.

If you enjoyed this article please forward to your friends and tweet it. Thank-you!