Well. You thought I sucked at blogging while pregnant…it’s even worse now that Andy has arrived! It’s not even just not having free continuous moments to sit and type, it’s actually more of “what do I blog about?”

When I started this blog in 2013, it was about running, Disney and my dad. I was raising money for American Heart Assoication and Heart & Stroke Fiundation in memory of my dad, and preparing for my big race in January 2014-The RunDisney Dopey Challenge.

Fast forward five years since starting this blog and now my husband and I have a 3.5 month old. So does that mean I need to turn this into a mommy blog? Thing is, I don’t know what to write about or share, or even if anyone wants to listen to my input on “mom stuff.” When I was pregnant, I was very happy I didn’t get much, of any, unsolicited advice. So I am not sure if anyone really wants to hear my “advice” on motherhood. But really, I know I had trouble with my first blog posts back in 2013. What do I talk about? If I talk about running, do I just blog about my training? Treat this like a journal? And I guess that’s what this blog has become. I journaled my way through my Disney race training and then onto my Boston Marathon qualifying attempts, including the failures. Then onto Boston itself. I reflected on past vacations with my family, memories with my dad, our trip to Quebec City in search of more information about his family history. Then onto my foot surgery, my miscarriage, my pregnancy, my running while pregnant. The blog started as one thing, and now it’s transformed into just everything that makes me “me.”

So, since January had no races to report on, I think I’m just going to talk about the month itself. I’ll break it into two parts. Part 1 will be “Mom Stuff” and Part 2 will be “Running & etc”. And in some cases, there’s two parts will overlap.

Part 1-Diapers and Feeding and Sleeping, oh my!

So in my attempt to talk about mom stuff, I figure I’ll touch on the big three. Starting with diapers, I am by no means an expert or trying to push an agenda, but we have opted to use cloth diapers with Andy. But there’s a catch—we are only using them about 65% of the time. At night, Andy wears disposables. We also use disposables when we travel away from home, and for instance, I plan on ordering diapers to get delivered to our hotel when we go to Walt Disney World (Garden Grocer for the win!). They serve their purpose at that time as he can go longer stretches between changes. But during the day and early evening he is rocking the cloth.

I’ve actually had people use the term “brave” when they hear we are doing cloth. Ummmmm, that’s not a word that should be tossed around lightly. And really, cloth diapers aren’t that scary! We bought a bidet sprayer to attach to the toilet and we have our change table set up in the bathroom next to it. It make its super convenient when changing Andy as we can then just spray off the cloth inserts and then put them in the wet bag. We have a variety of cloth diapers that we got second hand from a friend, but we really like the Flip diaper covers with the inserts. As long as Andy doesn’t leak onto the outer cover, you can use the cover a few times before putting it in the wet bag. We end up doing the wash every three days or so, and no our washer isn’t getting ruined!

Food. It’s an interesting topic, as I have never talked about my boobs to my husband more than I have in the past 3.5 months. We are still breastfeeding, and I’d say that I’m pumping about 95% of the time. This month was a bit stressful though, because I came down with a little bit of a sickness. While I was still pumping, I started to get lazy about it….I was doing less pumping sessions per day and my daily output dipped a bit lower. We still had backup bottles in the fridge so there was no major worry. Until a Sunday rolled around and I pumped only around 600 ml. I freaked out.

After talking with my lactation consultant friend, we devised a plan to get those numbers back up. Basically, I couldn’t be lazy that week. I did about 7-8 sessions a day with the pump and slowly the daily amounts got back up. The bottle lineup in the fridge is starting to grow again. But, I do have to say that my husband kept me as calm as he could during this. He kept reminding me that worse comes to worse, we have a freezer stash to dip into. We did use about five bags of frozen milk, but there are still sixty or so left. And once I feel confident enough in the fridge bottles, I’ll try to add a bag a day back to the freezer. And he also stressed to me that if we have to supplement with formula, it’s not the end of the world.

I think that’s the biggest mom thing I want to talk about—formula is perfectly fine! The baby is getting fed, that’s what matters. Yes, the research concludes breast milk is best. The benefits to baby are fantastic. But new moms need to do what works for them. Want to exclusively breastfeed? You go girl. Want to pump a lot? I got your back! Want to use formula, or maybe you have to use formula? Totally cool. No one should judge parents for what choice they make in feeding their babies.

Now on to sleep. I feel like the most common small talk people make with my husband and I is “are you getting enough sleep?” Short answer is “yes.” This is why I chose to predominantly pump, because Dan and I can alternate bottle feedings in the middle of the night. Huge advantage!

Andy has been sleeping longer stretches at night, but not necessarily consistently. His longest stretch was a six hour one from 10pm-4am. Awesome! But then the little stinker still reverts back to three hour stretches at times. Mostly though, when he wakes up in the middle of the night, he takes care of business with his bottle and then falls asleep rather quick.

Andy is currently sleeping in his pack and play bassinet attachment which is located on the main floor of our house. Our bedroom is six steps away, and we have an audio monitor plugged in so we can hear him if the door is shut. We moved him down here shortly after Christmas because we needed better sleep ourselves! Having him out of our room, but still close by, allows whoever isn’t up to feed him to keep sleeping. When he was in our room we found that whoever’s turn it was with him stayed up quite a bit longer, as we needed to take him out of the cradle, then down to the main floor. Feed, burp, change, rock to sleep, bring back in room to cradle….and then sometimes he’d fuss a bit more and that would just wake the other person up. We will eventually move him up to his nursery, but we are mainly waiting for him to have consistent long stretches of sleep at night. Hopefully when I write about a February recap I can say we are transitioning him up there!

Part 2-Getting my Groove Back

I did start my training back up once January hit. I knew my appendectomy had been healed, and I was ready to go. I made a reasonable training calendar (all the way through May) that includes my boot camp classes and running workouts. Marathon club would be starting part way into the month, so I would have my long run on the weekend to look forward to. I also made some goals; some to do with running times and some to do with weight.

I know losing weight after baby has to probably be one of the top concerns many women have. I’m trying to be reasonable about the process, and I also recognize that the number on the scale doesn’t fully represent where you are at. I have always felt like the number on the scale for me was higher than I believe I look. Maybe it’s partly to do with muscle mass, maybe a little to do with my short stature. Regardless, I would be using the scale just to monitor where I’m at but what I would care more about is how I am fitting into my clothes.

To give you an idea of where I was at before pregnancy, I was around 135 pounds in the summer of 2016. This was after my foot surgery. When I am hardcore into marathon training, like when I did Vancouver and Boston, I’m usually in the low 130s. On February 26th 2017, about a month and a half post miscarriage, I was 142 pounds. I wrote his down in a journal because this was when I had a positive pregnancy test! I also wrote that my goal after pregnancy was to get back under 140 pounds.

I’m on the right track. I gained about 30 pounds while pregnant with Andy. The last I weighed myself while pregnant was at my 37 week appointment and I was 170 pounds. Andy was born at 38 weeks. By December, I had gotten down to 147 pounds. But then my appendix surgery occurred. I was worried what that next month would look like.

On January 2nd, I weighed 147.3 pounds. Not bad considering 1.) I couldn’t work out in December and 2.) it was the holidays! I wrote down a plan for the next two months. I would start my exercise/training plan and not change anything with my diet. I hate dieting. It’s stupid and it’s stressful. I just wanted to see what I could do with exercise alone. So my goal is that by March 1st I get down to 140 pounds. On February 1st, I weighed myself and was 143.1 pounds—down four pounds! Three to go!

Dan already told me not to beat myself up over if I don’t get those last three pounds off this month. My body composition is going to be changing all month long. As I keep working out, I’ll gain more muscle mass back. This will weigh more. But at least I’m on the right track.

Running is taking time too. Yes, I am running and doing the distances. But my paces are way off from what they were pre pregnancy. My first race of 2018 is the Moonlight Run 10km on St. Patrick’s Day. I’ve set a goal time for between 46-48 minutes. I am not sure if that is too lofty or just right. Only time will tell.

Well. That’s it for now. Not sure if I’ll have anything exciting to write about this month, but I may do a post in regards to my running as we get into more challenging marathon club routes.