• Being able to see lots of my extended family for a day or two. I’d never met some of my cousin’s kids before and it was nice seeing everyone, despite the reason we were all together.
  
  

  My paternal grandparents: Vernon and Harriet, July 1944

• Non-coin-operated laundry. I’ve only had a washer and dryer in my apartment unit once before, but it was my first time living away from home so I didn’t fully appreciate it. Since then, after spending years scrounging up quarters and lamenting the cost of each load of laundry, it’s a huge thing to be able to toss in a load of diaper laundry right when I think about it. (Our landlord pays for water costs too, which is one less thing to worry about!)
• Wesley learning to say “whale.” It sounds like “wee-oh.”
• My dad, for putting snow tires on my car free of charge last Sunday, and then texting and calling me this morning to warn me that the rear passenger side tire was flat. Sure, I was 20 minutes late to my LLL meeting, but I wouldn’t have noticed the flat on my hurried exit and it would have been a big disaster. I simply drove the couple of blocks to his work, he opened the garage door, aired up my tire, and I was on my way! Thanks, Dad!
• The Le Leche League group I attend once a month, for listening to me talk about my suspicions that Wesley has a maxillary lip tie (NSFW: page has a boob if you scroll down and some photos of gums and teeth, which can be surprisingly “medical” if you’re not expecting it). One of the girls from the LLL meeting gave me the name of an ENT to look up to see if I can get Wesley evaluated and possibly have the lip tie snipped. Perhaps this will solve our nursing problems? WE SHALL SEE. I’m just glad I have support!

• I haven’t talked about this much yet, but my grandpa passed away October 27th, so I’m thankful to have lived to the age of 26 without having lost a grandparent before. He was a very quiet man and I didn’t know a lot about him until very recently, but I’m glad for having known him. I’m also thankful that he died naturally in his sleep instead of, say, after a lengthy hospital stay or debilitating illness. Going peacefully in your sleep is about as good as it can get, I think.
• I’m thankful that I get to see my other brother for a few days. He is fun to talk to, and I think we’d hang out if he lived here and not Boise.
• I’m thankful that Daniel, Wesley and I were able to visit Portland recently. I got to see so many friends! We like living here a lot, but we miss our Portland friends so it was nice being able to catch up. (If we missed seeing you, ACK! I am sorry! Hopefully we’ll be back soon. Or you could come visit.)
• I’m thankful for the freelance projects I’ve gotten recently.
• I’m thankful we’re making it work so I can stay at home with Wesley. It might not last forever, but I’m doing my best to enjoy it while it lasts.

I started Weight Watchers in February and have slowly but surely lost about twenty pounds. (!!!) I am still a few pounds over my pre-pregnancy weight, but I am just so shocked that this appears to have worked that I almost don’t care.

Weight Watchers seems to work for me because calories themselves are somewhat meaningless to me, and the numbers are too big and I never know what number I’m supposed to be hitting anyway. WW is different in that it comes up with an arbitrary number of points for you (mine is 29) and you just track what you eat, making note of the point values, and hit that number. In theory, you can also eat all of your weekly points (I have 49 available) and still lose weight, but I find that if I dip too far into my weekly points, my weight goes up instead of down.

I started out with a much higher point goal (36), because WW helpfully offers an “Are you breastfeeding?” option and I checked it when I signed up. However, even though I was (and still am!) breastfeeding, I don’t think my body needed the extra calories WW was allotting me. I joke about “lying” to WW about breastfeeding, but it’s true! I had to lie to get an accurate point goal. You can see exactly when I changed my settings, too:

(Click to enlarge)

Pre-May is when I had it set at the higher limit, and once I changed the settings I started losing about a pound per week.

I’ve slacked off a bit the past month but have managed to maintain my weight, which is a good sign. Now that I’ve started Operation: VBAC, I’m excited to kick it into gear again and really watch what I put in my mouth.

My next goal is my pre-pregnancy weight, and the goal after that will be the 10lb marker that will mean my BMI merely classifies me as “overweight” and not “obese.”

Just so no one is confused, WW has not paid me to talk about them or anything. I have just had the good fortune to have some success on their program.

Before/after photos after the jump.

From the side, 157lbs, October 2011:

From the front, 157lbs, October 2011:

Comparison photos! This was hard, because I don’t really have any good photos of me/my body post-baby. Not on purpose, really, but I am usually the one with the camera so I’m not in a lot of photos. I picked some that kind of illustrate the round tummy and chubby cheeks that have HOPEFULLY diminished a bit. (It’s always hard to tell with yourself.)

Mostly, I am pleased that my boobs finally stick out farther than my stomach again (having such gigantic boobs and STILL having your stomach dwarf them is one of my most horrible body-image memories) and that when I really suck in, the dreaded c-section flap nearly disappears. Mine is not as bad as a lot of people’s, I think, but surgery does weird things and your skin and muscles adhere differently and you get this weird flub above your scar that’s hard to ditch.

Again, I still have quite a ways to go – my recommended weight is closer to about 120lbs – but I am very pleased with the progress I’ve made so far.

There are no words to explain how disappointed I am that my first pregnancy ended in a c-section, primarily because it closes so many doors. My local hospital formally bans VBACs. My mom, who is a Labor & Delivery nurse, says that it’s because of liability with regard to anesthesia – in order for the hospital (and their insurance company) to endorse VBACs, they need to have an anesthesiologist on staff at all times to cope with an emergency c-section if the VBAC is not successful.

I am having a hard time wrapping my head around this, because wouldn’t not having an anesthesiologist on staff be a problem for any emergency complications? Let’s say it’s 2am and a mom having a textbook pregnancy has been laboring for a few hours. Her water breaks! Whoosh! And… she has a (NSFW illustration) cord prolapse. Emergency! C-section! Go! But wait – it’s 2am and the anesthesiologist is on call at home.

HOW IS THIS ANY LESS BAD? It’s a liability regardless of the emergency happening. I am not allowed to try for a normal birth because the hospital is ill-prepared to cope with an adverse outcome to any pregnancy.

My best chance for having a hospital VBAC is if I make sure to plan my labor so that the anesthetist will be physically in the hospital while I am laboring, and to make sure I deliver before he or she leaves.

Right.

My best chance for having a VBAC would be a homebirth or delivering in a birth center, attended by midwives.

Earlier this summer, my aunt (who is also a L&D nurse) told me I am going to have a “gorked baby” (her words) because I stated the above. She and my mom conceded that I would have a hard time being allowed to deliver in a hospital setting and may have to labor in the operating room (can you IMAGINE anything more uncomfortable? Steel table and bright surgical lights? No thank you.) but would not agree that it would be a better choice for me.

If you have a healthy pregnancy, have a low horizontal scar on the uterus and go into labor on your own at term you have about a 70% to 75% chance that you and your baby will have a safe normal birth. – VBAC.com

The problem I start running into is the “healthy pregnancy” part. I had preeclampsia. That is most emphatically not healthy. If I do come down with preeclampsia, my chances for a VBAC drop dramatically, since I will likely have to be induced and that carries a much greater risk of uterine rupture.

Out of the eleven most significant risk factors for developing preeclampsia, I have two:

• Previous history of preeclampsia
• Obesity, particularly with Body Mass Index (BMI) of 30 or greater.

Clearly, I can’t control the fact that I have a previous history of preeclampsia, but the obesity is something I can control.

I haven’t mentioned it here for fear of being embarrassed should I have failed, but I have lost twenty pounds since February. This is an amazing accomplishment, especially for me given my history of weight-loss struggles, and one that I am incredibly proud of. However, I need to lose another 10lbs before I am merely “overweight” and not “obese.” This leads me to my new plan:

Operation: VBAC

I would like to get my body and mind ready to be a good candidate for a subsequent pregnancy and VBAC. This does not mean I am going to become an Olympic athlete or compete in CrossFit or something, but it does mean I am going to lose those ten pounds. Hopefully more. (I’m taking a bit of inspiration from Theresa’s Get Body Ready For VBAC series, since I think it’s a great idea to prep your body for the outcome you want.) The further away I can get from being obese, the better.

I’m going to look into HypnoBabies, because I’ve read so many great birth stories in which HypnoBabies seemed to help tremendously. I have a Hypnobirthing book, but didn’t bother getting any kind of CDs – I’m now going to consider doing so.

I will make sure my healthcare providers are on board with my plan.

——

Since nobody knows what causes preeclampsia for sure, it’s hard to find things to do to “prevent” it. But if I can lower my chances, even a little bit, and up my chances for having a successful VBAC in the future, I’m willing to do it.

Ready?

I have given my notice at my job, and we are moving back home to Idaho.

This is one of those times I wish I felt comfortable talking about my workplace on my blog, but I do not. Suffice to say, things got weird, people I admire and respect either have left or are leaving, and it became increasingly obvious to me that it was time for me to move on. My last day is next Friday, March 18, and I will be a stay-at-home-mom to Wesley for the next few weeks or month or however long it takes us to put a deposit on a place in our hometown and give our notice at our place here in Portland.

I am so, so excited. It sounds weird, but living in a much smaller town with family nearby actually gives me infinitely more options than what I’m doing now. I might not have to work! If I do, I can work part-time! I don’t necessarily have to put Wesley in daycare! I could open an Etsy shop! Daniel is finishing up writing a business plan to open his own coffeeshop, so we might be small business owners! It is all very new and different.

I expect there to be a pretty hefty learning curve – I haven’t had any extended time alone with Wesley for nine months. I will shamefully admit that I don’t actually know what to do with him every day beyond feeding him and playing with him, but hey! I will learn.

I also need to learn to cook. I can bake just fine, and there are a few meals I can reliably make myself, but Daniel does the vast majority of cooking in our household. If he is bringing home the bacon (metaphorically, of course – he is vegetarian!) then by all means, I can figure out how to make dinner. Plus, Wesley needs to eat during the day, and while I am more than happy to exist on cold cereal I expect that he needs more balanced meals. We have a crock pot I’ve never used because I was scared to leave it on all day while I was at work, and I am going to experiment with it. (If you know of any “Vegetarian Recipes for Dummies,” crockpot-friendly or not, I am all ears.)

I am incredibly bummed about leaving the place I’ve worked for the last four and a half years, especially since I truly liked what I did (web development) and loved my co-workers, but here’s to new beginnings!

Hurrah!