Isn't That Something You Do To Paper?

My dieting efforts have fallen a bit by the wayside lately. I've been eating badly. And opting not to get on the scale as a result. I know I need to get myself back on track but just don't feel like it, which is the same bad attitude that landed me in this fat situation in the first place. Needless to say, I should not have eaten an entire small Boboli pizza for dinner last night, even if I did use low fat cheese on it.

Historically, I stayed fairly healthy through exercise. I enjoy exercise. Or I enjoy feeling fit and seem more capable of knowing that exercise = fit than that not eating like it might be my last meal = less fat. But I no longer have time to exercise. Or, I have time but it would mean cutting into either time with Harry or sleep, neither one of which I am really psyched to give up. So I've been pondering this issue lately.

In my pondering, I've come to feel like everyone out there is into Jillian Michael's 30 Day Shred. It's only 20 minutes a day. I can do 20 minutes a day. Maybe. I can at least try. I guess. It's available On Demand from Com.cast. At least parts 1 and 2 are. So I'll give it a whirl. 30 days seems like about the maximum amount of focus I'm capable of giving to anything these days (like, say, my dieting efforts or my Wii Fit kick).

Self-Care and Other Fun Stuff

This post has been a long time coming. When P and I got engaged, I weighed ~60 pounds less than I do now. When we started trying to conceive, I was ~45 pounds less. When the first pregnancy ended, I was ~35 pounds less. When I got pregnant with Harry, I was ~25 pounds lighter. At my six week post-partum visit, I was 15 pounds lighter. Yeah, you read that right. I've regained 15 pounds. While breastfeeding.

I do not look good. I never had cellulite before, but I have it now. I don't fit into my clothes. I used to be fit and athletic, but now I am out of shape. I am not modeling a healthy way of living for my son. And it's part of a larger problem. I haven't plucked so much as a single eyebrow hair since Harry was born. In that time, I've put on makeup once, and it was last weekend. I've had two haircuts since July 2007.

P fairly recently installed iLife 09 on his computer and spent some time using the facial recognition feature. I watched as he went through hundreds of photos from our collection and from my father's, many of which were of me at various points throughout my life. And it was really hard. Because even the ones taken during periods in which I thought myself fat or unkempt or otherwise unappealing looked great compared with how I look now. And I'm honestly not sure what happened. I could come up with a thousand intellectual/emotional/physical explanations, but they'd just be conjecture. I really don't know.

What I do know is that I need to do something about this. About my body, my hair, my general level of self-care. So...

• Last month, I started using our WiiFit to get some exercise. It's incredibly hard to find the time to get any exercise, and it's only going to get worse when I go back to work. That said, I need to do what I can to make the effort. Even just once a week is better than never.
  
• Inspired by Manda, I joined Weight Watchers last week. Aside from an overindulgence in pizza when my brother was visiting last night (followed by a chaser of granola bar-type foods), it's been going okay. I picked up some fruit and veggies at the store today, which should make it easier, as I was trying to change my diet without altering the contents of the fridge. It's going to be hard to stick to a diet, since P will continue to buy and eat foods I just can't if I want to take this weight off (and I don't want him to feel like he has to make changes in his life, though I wish he'd stop asking me if I want -- or bought, when I go to the store -- foods that aren't good for me). The reality is that he and I have very different relationships with food, relationships that are embarrassingly in line with what is expected based on our biology. And I don't think he gets that it's not as simple as 'just don't eat so damn much.' Even though it is. It's just hard.
• I am getting my hair cut and my brows waxed tomorrow. I'm part of a large mom group (500+ moms in the Boston area) that is run through meetup.com. One of the recurring events lately has been women taking turns hosting a stylist (also a member). Five-ish moms sign up, and everyone shares in watching the kids while each woman gets a haircut. The stylist also does waxing. You pay for whatever services you get. I'm going tomorrow.

Really, though? I need to change my attitude. Intellectually, I know this. But I'm still struggling. And it's a self-perpetuating problem as well. I don't feel great about myself, so I don't take good care of myself, so I feel worse, so I take worse care. And it's spilling over into my sense of self more generally. And P doesn't say much one way or the other. I get neither reassurance nor criticism from him when it comes to my appearance (or anything else, for that matter). I'd say our relalionship has changed a lot since Harry, and it has, but not on that subject -- he hasn't really ever provided much feedback on my appearance (or the contributions I make to the household, unless it's to criticize my many failings). But I suppose that ties into a variety of other things that are really another topic entirely. (Not that I'm bitter or anything :)

In short, I need to break the cycle. I'd like to feel healthy again. I'm never going to weigh what I did when we got engaged again, but I could and should get back to what I weighed two years ago. To that end, there's a ticker in the sidebar. I encourage all of you to keep on me about this.

Lessons Learned Today

A few things I learned today:

1. Apparently, I cannot look at or talk to Harry while he's nursing, as doing either one causes him to get a big grin on his face that doesn't go away until I stop looking/talking, and this causes milk to dribble everywhere and keeps him from eating.
2. I cannot unhook my nursing bra and remove the nursing pads before having the pump set up and ready to go, as apparently the unhooking alone triggers my letdown, resulting in a big, wet mess. I hate wasting milk.
3. Maybe having a cold really does affect infant weight gain. He had a cold for about ten days, starting around the 16th and ending around when I got the 9 lb 3 oz weight. I weighed him again Monday using the aforementioned method, and he weighed 10 lbs 3 oz. I did so again today -- 10 lbs 6 oz. That is 25 ounces in 28 days, which is perfectly acceptable. If I find somewhere that has an infant scale I can use, I'll probably do as Nicky suggested, though (thanks Nicky!), as I remain curious as to how much he takes in at each feeding.
   

One of the Things that Keeps Me Up at Night

So, I feel like there are 1000 things that fill me with concern. The love I feel for this little boy is fierce and all consuming. On the rare occasions I'm apart from him, my heart absolutely aches. As a result of both the overwhelming love and the total lack of experience or frame of reference, I find myself terrified of anything and everything that seems even remotely abnormal. One such thing is a constant fear that he isn't getting enough to eat.

When Harry was born, he was 8 pounds, 3 ounces and 20 inches long. In the days we were in the hospital waiting for my milk to come in, his weight declined, to 8 lbs, then 7 lbs, 12 oz, then 7 lbs, 8 oz, bottoming out at 7 lbs, 6 oz. When he had his first appointment with the pedi at 6 days, he was back up to 8 pounds and was 21 inches long. But at his two week appointment, he was only up to 8 lbs, 5 oz (but 21.5 inches long). And at his one month appointment, he was at 8 lb, 13 oz and 22 inches. He had gone from the 50th percentile weight-wise down to the 25th, while remaining in the 75th percentile length-wise. But he continued (and continues) to have a good number (8 or more) of wet diapers each day and seemed (and still seems) to be a perfectly happy and perfectly healthy boy, albeit a long, lean one.

But last week, I did the old weigh yourself holding the baby then not holding the baby to estimate his weight thing and he only weighed 9 lbs 3 oz. That's a gain of only 6 oz in 2.5 weeks. And using a tape measure, he seems to have grown another inch. This puts him in the 90+ percentile for length but only the 15th or so for weight and in the <3 percentile for weight-length ratio. This freaks me out.

His latch is good. He certainly seems to eat. My production is fine. If I pump between nursing sessions, I get 4-6 ounces; if I pump right after, I get 1-3 ounces, which seems to confirm both of the preceding sentences. So why isn't he gaining more weight? Even if the scale at home is off and the last weight is off, he still seems to be getting off whatever growth curve he might have been on based just on the doctor's weigh-ins. Our next appointment isn't until the 14th, so until then this is one of the topics that keeps me up at night.