This is going to be one of those brutally honest posts, because I need that kind of clarity right now.
Saturday we will be at 10 weeks post-partum.
My hair started shedding this morning for the first time since mid-pregnancy.
My stitches don't bother me anymore. I can even squat with ease.
My last midwives appointment is this afternoon.
I'm getting a diap.hragm in a week and a half.
I took a pregnancy test this morning, just in case there was anything I needed to know before going to the midwives.
There wasn't. Blank as a sheet of paper.
I'm kind of disappointed. I've enjoyed the Russian roulette-ness of the last month. There is something exciting about thinking you might get pregnant spontaneously.
I feel like I don't want my kids spaced as much as my husband, which has always been the case, but I look back on my pregnancy with Abigail (when I said, "I would never space them this close again!") and I think that maybe it wasn't so bad.
Having two kids 20 months apart is actually not that hard.
And have I mentioned I don't want to use a diap.hragm?
I will, don't worry. I know that decisions like when to have kids are to be made by the wife AND the husband (well, and Heavenly Father too) and I will completely respect Matt's wishes.
It was just kind of nice for the last month or so to know we were both on the same Russian roulette page, because we just didn't want to wait to resume relations and would face the consequences accordingly.
Am I making sense?
Do I seem like a terrible wife?
Part of me worries I wanted for so long to be pregnant that I don't know how to NOT want to be pregnant, even when it'd be better for our family for me to not be. It's like this wickedly strong yearning that never goes away.
Where did this desire come from?
So anyway.
Today I'm going to be fitted for a diap.hragm, and tomorrow I'm going to order it. It'll be here in about a week, maybe a little more or less.
The plan from then on is to...well, use it.
Once Abigail is 1.5 years old, we'll start considering another baby. At least, considering in terms of me starting to use OPK's and maybe even temping.
Otherwise, we're diap.hragming it until Abigail is 1 year and 9 months old.
At which point, we're hoping to get pregnant in the following 6 months.
Ridiculous to have it that planned, right?
But I figure we need a jumping off point, and that's it. For now.
In the meantime, I'm on a new journey.
See, apart from the amazingness that it is to be a stay-at-home-mom to my beloved children, I need something to be working on and thinking about.
No, I don't mean a hobby, or a job, or a course in university.
My comparison is how I learned so much about infertility, and spent much of my time obsessing over becoming pregnant and having a baby. I need something to buy books about and get good at.
So what I'm working on right now is getting in shape and eating healthy (she says as she eats a baked potato chip, and thinks ahead to bacon chowder for lunch, and lasagna for dinner...)
Really, though.
I could find healthy recipes and get good at cooking just like I how I learned about using OPK's and checking my basal body temperature. I could do it.
So here's where we stand (or sit, at this precise moment in time.)
The most I've ever weighed is 175 lb's, which is the number I started my pregnancy with Abigail at. I gained 28 lb's (up to 203#) then lost down to 177. I've since whittled down my weight to 169#, which I feel good about.
Not as an end weight, but as a half-way decent starting off point.
When I lost weight before I got pregnant with Elijah, I started at 170#, went down to 150#, then tapered of in my dedication, and gained back up to 155 before hovering there for 5 months, at which point I got pregnant.
I feel like I just need to do it again, and I feel much less overwhelmed, starting at essentially the same weight as then.
I CAN get down to 150. It'll take some work, but it's not impossible.
Neither is 140, for that matter, which is where I'd like to be, but my first goal is 150. I'd be happy to stay there. I felt like, even at 155, I looked good in photos, which to me is the biggest indicator.
I feel like I haven't looked good in photos since the few months after I had Elijah, when my weight was starting to crawl back upwards (when I had Elijah I lost down to 158, and somehow allowed my weight to creep up to 175 over the course of his first year. I entirely blame my addiction to Junior Mints.)
Anyway, I'm starting to go in circles. Suffice it to say that I'm going to start making healthier recipes, and eating smaller portions. No more buying junk food, no Christmas baking except for 1 fudge wreath for my family dinner, and no fast food.
I'm interested to see what 2012 holds for me and my family. I think it's going to be a good year, and I'm actually excited to lose weight and feel good about myself again.
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