I love this Quote

And The Answer Is....

New Mommy-itis!!! (AKA Minor Muscle Damage)

Saturday I was finally able to go into a family friend Massage Therapist and have her look at my back. I showed her where the pain was coming from and she knew exactly what was going on! She even described some of the other random pains I would have too.  She pulled out a muscle chart and showed me a little tiny muscle that connects to basically every muscle in the torso and the buttocks. Lucky me, I messed mine up, so it makes everything hurt. She says she sees it a lot in moms with lots of young kids, with all the putting in carseats, high chairs, twisting, being pulled in every direction, ect. The bad news is, the pain won't totally go away until I'm done with picking up kids and let the muscles heal. And that's not going to happen for a while.

The big thing that will help me not to make the damage worse is to start rebuilding my core muscles. I was so relieved it wasn't, you can't do any exercise! So I'm going to start going back to my dance warm ups and building up the tummy I used to have before my babies. I will do this Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday when Jon does his runs. I might try to convince him to take pictures of me doing the core exercise, so I won't be pulling so many pictures off the internet. And it'll help me see my progress.

 I'm going to be starting running tonight (Last post when I said I was going to do it, I had a major pain attack and couldn't even stand...), take it slow so I don't put too much stress on the muscles.

 I was taught some stretches that will help:

The Frog leg stretch helps basically everywhere. When I first did it, I realized how much flexibility I have lost since my dance classes. And I wasn't that flexible to begin with. Anyway... I felt it everywhere and it was wonderful!!!

Swing Stretch is grabbing my knees and slowly lowering my legs to one side and then the other with my shoulders still flat on the ground. When I feel the pull on the knots, pause and stretch it out and then move on. I struggle to not roll over, but it'll come with my core muscles.

The basic lunge. I honestly don't know why I didn't think of this before my appointment, but this helps the most out of all of them.

In addition to these stretches I need to ice and hot pad my back as soon as I feel the twing coming. 

Another tip she gave me was to get a massage during my next pregnancy to make sure my muscles are moving to where they need to be and get one six weeks after the birth. I wish I had know this with my other pregnancies, especially with how close I had our three kids.

I'm so ready to get life back in gear and slowly taking care of this problem while getting fit.

Food Portions

I was skimming through Pintrest and found this! I love it, because I'm always looking at portions and not wanting to measure out everything in a cup. How do you measure a chicken breast in a cup anyways? What I love about this, is it even shows servings for icecream. Perfect!!!


Just an update on my back. Still hurts, but not as bad. I'm actually going to try to go running tonight and see how far I can go, before the pain kicks in.

And just with trying to control my food intake, I've lost 8 lbs this week!!! YAY!