one year old, Lo. Lan.
two years old, Lo. Lan.
three years old. Lo. Lan.
The rest of this is about me, postpartum. If I can even call it that (it just seems so far away?)
This was a year postpartum.
It's a funny thing being 4 years postpartum with the twins tomorrow.
I am still working out an average of 5 days a week.
I still have diastasis, but it is steadily improving.
It is nonexistent below my belly button (where it was not too much of an issue after the first year anyway) which is great and means that part is mostly healed. Above is still a 2 finger gap, which is a miracle considering what I started out looking like (like this and also like a bowl of distorted jello). I truly believe for too long that my abs would never work their way back to each other.
I want to be honest because I have been lacking in motivation to blog lately. I have been lacking motivation in a lot of aspects of my life. Sure, I get little bursts here and there, but on the whole it has been difficult. This post is one that I have been dreading posting about for awhile.
I weigh more now than I did postpartum with any of my kids. Even the twins.
A few pounds stayed on right before the move to utah, then I gained a good 10 pounds with the stress of that move, lost some of it and regained another 10 or so in the move to Indiana. All while still working out and being active the entire time. I went through half a dozen whole30s but never quite felt good enough about it to keep going eating that way because it is SO different from the way my family eats.
I got discouraged.
When I lost weight and bloat from being on the whole30, I still looked "bad". I resigned myself to thinking I would only look good when I got surgery and had to "settle" for the way I look until then.
Every meal I would make my family, regardless of its contents, was spurned. I have a husband who (bless his heart) has a limited array of vegetables he will tolerate and my kids enjoy only a fraction of that array. There's a LOT of veggie eating on whole30. That being said, some nights even making mac n cheese my kids would reject for random reasons.
I got more discouraged.
I learned about intuitive eating and tried that for a hot minute, before realizing I was not truly connected enough to my body to do it properly. Enter more discouragement.
Long story short, I feel so far behind on that journey back to my body that feels "normal". I was watching the new Netflix Beyonce Documentary and she spoke about how after she had her twins she had a hard time finding her groove, feeling like a part of her body again, I still feel so much disconnect and shame from that disconnect when it was such a relatively quick turnaround with the first two pregnancies. I also feel shame and guilt about thinking it would always be easy for anyone, and not understanding why anyone would say it was so hard.
I am so tired. All the time. And if it is not the kind of tired that comes with kids who won't go to bed at night or wake up too early it is the tired that comes from every waking moment taking care of 2-4 very demanding children, the twins who are constantly making messes (today it was dumping out an entire two laundry baskets full of folded clean clothes all over the main floor, not to mention yesterday's leftover "take everything out of A's room and dump it at the bottom of the stairs to jump into.") which I know people are going to tell me to love and enjoy and aren't they so creative but mostly I am just so sick of picking up after their messes, not to mention all the emotional pull from each of the four kids demanding time and attention from my every waking minute... it's a lot. I confessed to Drew the other night that sometimes I fantasize about working full time so that I don't have to deal with THIS all day anymore. But the fact is, I would still be dealing with much of the same, it would just be even MORE intense because it would be crammed into a smaller space in time. So... I homeschool till they get sick of me? Drew would never let me and I am sure I would go nuts. Summers and weekends and holidays are plenty for me.
I just feel like going through this whole parenting thing, I knew what to expect out of the first 2 years---it would be terrible, sleepless nights, I would feel like a cow (in more ways than one), lots of crying, etc. But I had these (obviously wild) fantasies of hitting that 3 year mark and it bringing with it a sense of freedom... I could survive the say without a desperate nap!!! (that was a HUGE milestone with the twins to be sure!) I would have free time that I wasn't pumping nursing or changing diapers and babyproofing and I could just do whatever I wanted to do because life without babies would be easier AND THAT WAS A FANTASY LIE. I don't know how to describe how they are harder but they are! Which is obscene since I spent so much of those first two years wishing they would go faster. But they get so much more complicated after the prek years and I feel so lost sometimes trying to navigate things like diaper rashes (but obviously not from a diaper) for my 6 year old, temper tantrums from my 4 year old, things that there is a WEALTH of advice in the 0-2 year old bracket and then NOTHING. At least nothing useful. There are certainly plenty of moments in my day that I am so happy and loving being at home with my kids and the things we get to do together and I feel so lucky, I don't want to diminish that, but I feel like that is ALL I heard from moms of the 2+ crowd. And radio silence on the difficult parts, the emotional and psychological and all that... probably because after 2 years old kids branch out into so many different learning and love languages and disciplines and all that, and I will say pretty much nothing I have done parenting-wise has worked for any two of my children in the same way so I guess there is something to that radio silence.
I have been dreading going to bed since we moved here, every night, just like I did when the kids were babies. But instead of dreading being woken up, it is dreading having to groundhog day my routine of wakeup-change kids clothes-get breakfast-make lunch-out the door to school-gym with twins-home with twins-big kids home-entertain 4 crying emotional rollercoasters who want to EAT ALL THE SNACKS BECAUSE NO ONE ATE THEIR LUNCHES till dinner-dinner-bedtime routine-bed. I know I need to make a change not just in that aspect of my life, but in a couple other parts (like the intentional self-care).
FAILING SPECTACULARLY.
That is how I would sum up 2019 so far.
But I am not ashamed of it. I fail every day and every day I keep trying. I am someone who has been fit and in really good shape for the majority of my adult life and I have hit a pretty low blow on that front, not that I am in bad shape, but that I don't look like I am in good shape. I have been legitimately consistently ashamed of my body for the majority of the last 3 years. I gave myself a grace period for the first year (thankfully, for my mental health!) and then I got real critical, fast.
Thankfully, about a month ago I read Girl, Stop Apologizing. It was mind blowing, more so than Girl, Wash your face. After the first book I attempted a morning routine and a running gratitude list. After the second book (my morning routine has been shot as of late) I started writing down my dreams. The hard part was writing them down and not believing them. Not believing that my body was beautiful and strong. Not believing that I could really be a financial rockstar. But something is happening, slowly but surely, and I am starting to believe. I do love my body, all 20 extra (technically no longer) postpartum pounds of it, almost all belly. I hate writing that last part but it's my truth. The thing I was so afraid of happening to me, staying "all belly" after having kids, it happened. I am trying not to live in the past and compare my post baby self to my prebaby self but I have a 35 inch waist, if you can call it that. This was right before we moved in January, and aside from the spots dissapearing, not much has changed.
"True self care is making the choice to build a life you don't need to regularly escape from"
I have had that quote on my computer for months but that is also something I have been failing at. I hide in my room, in my phone, in my pantry, in my car, in the locker room of the gym.
As an abstainer, it always seems like it needs to be all or nothing. Either I give 100% of myself to my kids or to my own self-care. It is really hard for me to split that because it feels so much like finding that balance is harder than the all or nothing, because it is. Because the percentages are always changing, and all the balls being juggled will not all be where they are supposed to be all the time. And sometimes that just needs to be okay.
Failing over and over again just means I keep changing up my approach, my gameplan. While I am discouraged for a moment (some moments longer than others), ultimately I have been blessed and guided to pick myself back up and keep going, keep trying. Much like teaching, much like being an artist, it's all the same. We are all failing, some of us more obviously than others. And I just want to share that in this space to hold that space for anyone who feels that way--to know that it is normal and it will pass. And I am right here, failing regularly alongside my kids and Drew (just kidding, he's perfect and never fails at anything) because that is part of the plan.
I am choosing to let faith overcome fear of failure, because the worst thing I could do is stop trying. It may take me a couple more failures before I am able to "find" the body I am truly comfortable with, but until then I am deciding to still love it and be proud of all it has done, especially in the last 9 years. Time to be braver then yesterday, pull myself up by the bootstraps with a plan and get to work.
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