Knocked Up – Knocked Over

my journey through pregnancy and hyperemesis gravidarum

Monthly Archives: June 2012


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Being Kind to Ourselves for our Childrens’ Sakes

A few years ago, Juan and I went through a rough patch.  We saw a marriage counselor, and one of the things he told us really stuck out to me:  We are often kinder to strangers than we are to our spouses.

I hadn’t thought about that in a while, but a few months ago, a mom on a breastfeeding board posted that she wanted to lose weight saying, “I feel like such a fatty.”

At that moment, our counselor’s words popped into my head and I realized something that he hadn’t said:  Not only are we kinder to strangers than we are to our spouses, but we are kinder to strangers than we are to ourselves.

The more I thought about it, the sadder I felt.  You would never call someone at the grocery store such an ugly name, but women say things like that to themselves all the time.  Horrible names like fatty, cow, bitch, ugly, and so forth.  When women say those things to themselves over and over, they must believe it.  How horrible that society tells us it’s okay to treat ourselves that way.  And Magazines feed this by promising miracle diets, exercises to get your body “swimsuit ready,” and photoshopped pictures of models with body shapes that most people will never have, flawless skin, flowing locks of hair, and clothing that reveals nary a bulge or a wrinkle.  We’re bombarded with this all day every day.

Then, this week at work, I realized that I was just as guilty as other women.  As I walked to the lunch room at the office to heat my leftover pork chop, I realized that I had forgotten my fork back at my desk.  I thought to myself:

“I’m such a dummy.”

And then I stopped dead in my tracks.

It was one of those moments where images and moments flicker into your mind in rapid fire succession.  Images of me right before our recent vacation trying on my swimsuit and rubbing the stretch marks on my belly and frowning.  Images of me calling myself stupid for forgetting to pre-heat the oven before roasting the previous night’s asparagus.  Images of me climbing out of the shower, turning around to look at my butt and saying, “Ugh.”

And in the background of all of those images are my daughters.  Watching.  Listening.  Learning.

I am teaching my girls that it’s okay to hate themselves.  I am teaching them to be kinder to strangers than to themselves.

That is not okay.

And in that moment in the hall at my office, I made a promise to myself:  Any time I caught myself calling myself an ugly name or saying something rude about myself, something I wouldn’t tolerate from a stranger, I will stop myself and remind myself that it’s not true.  I’m not dumb.  I’m not stupid.  I’m a person who sometimes makes mistakes.  I won’t tolerate someone calling my family members names, and I’m ready to stop tolerating that behavior from myself.

Yes.  I have stretch marks and the skin on my belly is loose.  Every single mark on my belly is a reminder of the victory I won over HG.  That loose skin?  That’s skin may be loose, but it’s special.  That’s where I held my two precious daughters.  My body will never be the same as it was before I had kids, but really, is anyone’s?  I’m finding myself being more and more okay with that as time passes. 

I follow a page on Facebook called The Body Is Not An Apology, and I’m ready to stop apologizing to myself and the rest of the world for the changes my life experience has left on my body.  By the way, this group has a website  that I just now discovered, so I’m pleased to share that with you as well.

I hope this will not only bring a sense of peace and confidence to myself, but will teach my girls to love themselves and their bodies.

And yes.  I wore that purple bikini on my vacation.  Stretch marks and all.


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Packing My Lunch

I’ve been analyzing our family’s finances lately.  Gosh, doesn’t that sound fancy!  At any rate, I got curious about how our food budget plays out over the course of a month, and as it turns out, we spend way too much money eating out.

Mostly, this is because my husband and I grew accustomed to eating lunch in the very reasonably priced corporate cafeteria before we moved out here to California.  Out here, there is no corporate cafeteria with healthy, fresh food, so we got into the habit that so many very busy people do of eating out in the nearby restaurants.

When I was sick, restaurant fare became even more of a deeply ingrained habit because for some reason that other HGers will probably understand, homemade food just did not sit well on my poor stomach.

Frankly, I was pretty appalled when I looked at what we were spending on food.  I knew it was bad, but I didn’t know how bad.  I am a little terrified to confess to my readers that 30% of our food budget had been going to groceries and the remaining 70% went to eating out. At lunch, on weekends, and on and on and on.

That is not okay.

It’s an easy decision to make: Take my lunch to work.  But I will admit, eating out is a tough habit to break.  What do I take?  What do I pack?  How do I keep things interesting and avoid a ham sandwich every day?

I started easy.  I visited Trader Joe’s and purchased a few of their prepared lunches.  Is this cheating?  A little bit, but if you can get a salad for $3, that’s a darn sight better than $9 for a meal out. 

That first week, I ate TJ’s salads.  I immediately learned that a single salad does not contain enough calories to make a meal for me.  I learned to pack sides.  A string cheese here, an apple there.  By Thursday of that week, I felt brave enough to slice some leftover meat and augment my store-bought salad.

Giving myself a week of TJ’s salads helped me to learn how and what to pack to make up a lunch for myself.  That following weekend, I didn’t have time to go to TJ’s and the regular grocery, so I decided to make my own “TJ’s” salads.  I took their ideas of multiple, fresh ingredients and made it work for me.  I haven’t looked back since.

Here’s an example of a lunch.  This is what I had today in fact:

Layered Thai Rice Salad Bowl (layers listed from bottom to top)

  • Leftover Trader Joe’s microwaveable brown rice
  • Dollop of leftover homemade Thai Peanut Sauce
  • Lettuce
  • sliced mushrooms and sliced yellow squash from my garden
  • Sliced leftover Coconut Crusted Chicken (basically just breaded, baked chicken, but instead of bread crumbs I used unsweetened coconut)
  • limes and Asian salad dressing

It was easy and filling.  Plenty of protein and calories in the chicken and peanut sauce, and packed with interesting and delicious flavor.  I ate it with an apple and a piece of string cheese.

It’s so easy to do variations on this theme.  Salads don’t have to be boring.  Mixing in things like rice, quinoa, and other non-standard ingredients keeps things interesting and appeals to my creative spirit. 

I’ve also been saving money!  We’re on track right now to cut our food budget by $400!

It may seem like a simple step, but it’s a change that’s made a big and positive impact on our family.

Do you pack your lunch for work?  What goes into your lunch box?


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No, really. I’m sleep deprived.

It is amazing how completely different my two girls are.  Their personalities, their likes and dislikes, and their habits.

Right now those differences are most apparent in the realm of sleep.  Gabi was such an easy sleeper.  She had her moments.  Like with all babies, sleep comes and goes.  In retrospect, it was predictably cyclical, though.

We (and if you’re a new parent take notes) expect to see sleep regressions around the time of growth spurts and milestones.  Four months and eight months are a very big deal.  Milestones and growth spurts all converge during those times and sleep takes a hit.  A big hit.

But it passes.  I remember with Gabi wondering if I was doing something wrong.  I remember thinking, “Gosh, do I have to sleep train her?”  I wondered if she just wasn’t able to sleep because I never taught her to do those things that my coworkers were talking about.  I remember words like “self soothe,” “bad habits,” and others whirling around my brain.

Thank heavens for the Kellymom.com forums.  They stay absolutely on message and make it very clear that you can no more “train” a baby to sleep than you can “train” a baby to walk and talk.  Sleep, Kelly says, is a milestone that many kids don’t reach for several years.

From Kelly’s article Sleeping Through the Night:

Your baby will begin to comfort herself and to sleep for longer stretches at her own developmental pace. If your baby wants to nurse at night, it is because she DOES need this, whether it’s because she is hungry or because she wants to be close to mom. Sleeping through the night is a developmental milestone (like walking or toilet training) that your baby will reach when she is ready to. Trying to force baby to reach this before her time may result in other problems later on.

I’m so glad that the Kellymom forum moderators take such a strong stand on this issue.  It’s coming out more and more that leaving a child alone to “cry it out” (cry what out exactly?) can actually cause brain damage.

So I just plugged along through those mercifully short sleep regressions with Gabi, and, just like Kelly promised, the constant waking passed.

Thank goodness I know that now.  Katie is really giving me a run for my money.  Her 4 month sleep regression merged into a 6 month sleep regression and when we hit 8 months last week, all bets were off.  We are deep into the 8 month sleep regression with no end in sight.

Nursing to sleep. No longer the magic trick it used to be.

She’ll take an hour to nurse herself to sleep at night.  She wakes hourly to nurse.  This week we’ve added a new element to the mix.  She’ll nurse to sleep starting around 8:30 PM, but then when she’s finally asleep and letting go and I’m thinking I can drop off to sleep too, those little eyes pop open, and now YAY!  It’s happy baby fun time!  She crawls all around, practices pulling up on the side of the crib we have Macgyvered to our bed, climbs over me to try to get to the exciting looking alarm clock, chews on my shoulders, sticks her fingers up my nose and in my ears, and just generally has a cheerful and noisy time. 

Happy Baby Fun Time! Standing rules!

This went on from 9:45 last night to 11.  Finally, she went to sleep.  And then woke up every hour afterwards to sit up and crawl in a circle and then nurse again.  At 5:30 AM, she decided it was time to greet the morning.  So up she got.

No point in going back to bed.  I had work to get ready for.  So up I got, too.

I fantasize about a 4 hour stretch of sleep.  I can’t remember what that’s like.

Thank goodness for Gabi.  Thank goodness she taught me that this will pass and things will get easier.  Thank goodness for cosleeping!  Right now I can nurse her and then just roll over and fall back asleep.  Imagine if I had to get my tired self up, haul my carcass down the hall, try unsuccessfully multiple times to put her down in the crib without waking her, haul my carcass back down the hall to my bedroom, and then try to fall asleep?  Good lord!  That sounds like a nightmare!

I didn’t talk much about it when Gabi went through her wakeful cycles.  I didn’t have the same kind of supportive community, and I wanted to avoid the inevitable, “Well, maybe it’s just time to let her cry. I let my kids cry and they turned out just fine.” 

I’m more confident now, and I know from experience that this isn’t a forever thing.  So now, when people ask, I’m open about it.  I say, “We’re smack in the middle of the 8 month wakeful period.  It’s really hard, but I know it will pass, and I know that she needs me right now.”  Sometimes I follow with an, “I’m so glad we’re cosleeping.  It makes things so much easier for all of us.”

At any rate, I am seriously sleep deprived now.  I think I’m handling things pretty gracefully, but wow.  I’m tired.

Which is probably why this post is so disjointed.  Maybe tonight will be the night that she sleeps.

Sweet dreams are bound to come soon, right?

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