On My Day

My first official Mother's day! This brings up the question, how is mom? Mom is happy. So very happy.  Time with my baby girl is wonderful.  It's amazing that nearly 5 months have gone by and at the same time it feels like just yesterday that she was a newborn.

My favorite moments are when she laughs. It just melts my heart.  Or when she gives her happy wiggle at seeing me.  Or when she lets me know she wants my attention.  The other day I fell asleep while nursing and woke to a growling noise.  Turns out that growling was my daughter.  She was looking up at me and growling a deep chest, abs engaged kind of growl.  I took it to mean "hey mom, wake up and pay attention to me."  So I smiled and growled back at her.  We growled at each other a few times, then she grinned and resumed nursing.  Guess she just wanted some attention while she ate.  She is very much a mommy's girl.

Mom is happy because Dad is amazing.  Ken is an amazing father.  He is so patient and sweet both to her and to me.  He takes such good care of us both.  For mother's day he got me 3 extra hours of sleep, an awesome new camera, and gave me the big T-bone.  And he cooked dinner AND did the dishes (usually we each do one of those)  And it's not just mother's day.  He helps out all the time, steps in when and where he is needed and is loving and supportive.  And he's a great dad.  E loves him so very much.  She gives him a special daddy smile and a happy shimmy.  Her eyes follow him when he leaves a room.  She is very much a daddy's girl too.

this picture has nothing to
do with the text.  it's just
a random picture of E with
an octopus on her head

Mom is also very tired.  Working 10+ hour days at school, being mom in the other 14 hours of the day, getting up at 4:30 (usually after getting up around 2-3 for a feeding) and going to bed at 1030 is hard on the sleep, the body and mind.  I've had a few times while driving where I've semi-zoned out, gotten tunnel vision or realized I was on auto pilot.  It scares me every time.  I'm getting better about pulling over and stretching, getting a drink or doing something to wake me up but it's hard. 

Mom is also tired because of poor eating habits.  I'm constantly hungry, ravenous sometimes.  All the things I've read say it's normal for breastfeeding moms to be super hungry.  But often I grab a sugary
quick high carb snack instead of something better for me, and better for E too.  This often leads to a sugar crash, which makes me even more tired.

No caffeine for this baby!

Mom is also tired because of good eating choices.  Except for a small green tea incident while on vacation in California last year I've been caffeine free (I make an exception for chocolate) since finding out I was pregnant.  Going from 3-4 caffeinated drinks a day to zero has been tough and I really, really miss caffeine some days but for the most part I'm glad to have kicked that addiction.  But not having caffeine does contributed to the tired factor, or at least to the not able to do something about the tired factor.

So, to try to help with the tired I'm going to start eating better.  My friend Sean does a healthy eating challenge.  One of the parts of the challenge is the sugar points.  He's not allowed to eat any processed foods that contain more than 6 grams of sugar.  I'm not entering into the challenge, I don't have the mental capacity to keep track of points and such but I am going to try to do the sugar points during weekdays.

I'm also going to try to exercise at home.  I'd love to get a gym membership but there is no more time in the day for me to go to a gym and work out.  At least at home I can do some push ups or ab work while playing with the baby.  I can do squats with her (she actually thinks it's pretty funny we we do squats together)  and of course I can take her out for walks.  My goal is 30 mins of some form of exercise a day.  I really want to get back to my pre-baby strength.  My shape is the same (actually I lost 2 lbs while pregnant) but my strength is so much less and I pride myself on being strong enough to not need help for most tasks.  I also want to be in better shape for our July vacation where we will be doing some hiking in the high alpine part of Yosemite.  I don't want to be the wuss of the trip, I want to be able to enjoy the hike, some of the hikes will be the same ones I took with Ken and E when she was 4 months in utero, so I want to be able to do just as well, if not better than, as I did the first time.

So here's to my first mommy's day, and here's to getting healthy so I can celebrate many a mommy's day more!