Remember When?

Remember Tuesday when I was so motivated to start walking and changing my eating habits? Remember how I was so excited to make this pregnancy a lot easier by doing stretches?

Warning: If you have a hard time with blood or bodily malfunctions, you should probably stop reading.

Literally two hours later I was picking up my son from pre-school and I started bleeding heavily. Like  within minutes my clothes were soaked. I took all the kids to a friend and rushed over to my doctor that is luckily only blocks away from my friend. By this time I was in full on panic I could hardly cork my emotions to tell the nurses and front desk girls why I was there. I held it together until my old babysitter walked by and gave me a hug. I'm sure her shirt was soaked with tears by the time I let her go. I was scared. There have been two miscarriages on my husbands side of the family with in this year, I didn't want to have to go through that. I know this baby is supposed to be here!

We finally got into the ultrasound room and got the good and not so great news. Baby is doing awesome! He/She is kicking and moving like crazy. Heart beat is strong. And I'm not in any immediate danger. That's the good news. The not so great news,  I have a Sub-Chronic Hemorrhage right above the pregnancy that could move down and separate the placenta from the baby, which would cause a miscarriage. To try and prevent it from happening I had to be on bed rest for a couple days and pray that it worked. I also had to be on watch to make sure I didn't bleed so much that I bled to death.

So basically I went home scared that I was going to lose the baby or have to rush to the hospital and be stuck there for a while.

The two days dragged on. I always thought that being forced to sit down would be such a blessing, not having to feel guilty about the laundry or the dishes. Well... It was awful!  I had two wonderful ladies from our ward come and help with the kids, but I felt so guilty watching them change my little girl's diapers and having to pick up my kid's messes and I was just sitting there. My husband had to sternly tell me to sit there and suck up my pride. Yeah... Not so fun....

But it was all worth it when I went to my follow up and the hemorrhage was fading and moving away from the baby!

I still have to into the doctors weekly and take it really slow, meaning no exercise.... I have to sit down more than working around the house and limit picking up my baby (Which I'm still really bad at).  But the plus is, I have to drink a lot of water and I can still work on food goals.

Dropped off the planet.

I haven't posted in forever! That's mostly because I haven't done any exercise or stuck to my food plan. But I have had a pretty good excuse!

That's right! Baby number 4 is on it's way! I've been super sick and hurting a ton. I kinda dropped off the planet with my fitness plan. I've been awful with giving into my cravings of buffalo wings and chinese. BUT this baby also loves it's veggies! I am almost always craving celery or carrots. But that's not an excuse to get into my old habits. 

I am going to talk with my husband about making a food plan and tell him to not let me pull my puppy dog eyes when I want my bad cravings. We will, however, set date nights where I can give in a little. What's fun about pregnancy if you can't give in every once in a while?!

I'm going to start walking, even though I hate walking and would rather run, but I've learned with my pregnancies, I am not the type of woman who can run a 5K the day before I'm due. My body doesn't work that way... I can walk and if I start to feel lightheaded or sick, I'll sit for five minutes and try again. If the second attempt is a REAL no go, then I will do some extra stretches while sitting on the floor and call it a night.

My goal is to at least post every two weeks, so I will be accountable and hopefully get back on track!

Back on Earth

I feel like I've dropped off the face of the earth on this blog. But I'm back! Life has gone crazy with my family, and the only time I have to write is during my kids rest time and I've been joining them.

ANYWAY...Time to report. I've been doing great with my running, I'm actually going to bump up to the next step on couch to 5K tomorrow's run! I haven't been able to run 3 times a week for the last couple of weeks, because we've been out of town or doing activities, but I've been running every Tuesday and Thursday even when I really didn't want to and I've never regretted running; I'm actually glad that I did!

I've also started doing a Parent-Tot class at the pool with my two youngest while my oldest does swimming lessons! So I'm getting a little more exercise!

I love to swim, so It's been nice getting back in the water.

On the flip side, eating hasn't been that great. Actually to be completely honest, I've been really bad.... We went camping last weekend and I ate at least three cookies and didn't drink hardly any water. My food portions are awful during dinner AND I go back for seconds. When I'm home I will try to have a good lunch and I usually will have a water with me. What's been worse is, we found some chocolate bars from camping and I've had a lot of chocolate after 8... BUT I'm starting over again! I have some big life events coming up that will be announced at a later time, so I have to get control of my food habits now or I'm afraid I won't ever get control, especially after said event.

Plan:

Drink 1/2 my weight in oz. of water READ THIS!!!

NO EATING AFTER 8!!!

If I get the munchies, drink a whole glass of water and grab gum.

When camping, be apart of menu planning and bring healthy snacks.

Start with 1 cheat day every two weeks

Pre-make snacks on Sundays

Try Turkey Burger

My friend has this awesome blog that I love! She's made so many changes in her life and she does it without her husband and kids eating the same as her. http://www.livylove.com/ tells her story of her weight loss and she has some great tips on how she did it. I look at her story and know I can do this! Wish me luck!

Extra Info:

 People keep asking me what muscle I damaged in my back and I couldn't remember the name, and for good reason, it's a hard one! It's the Thoracolumbar Fascia. Basically it's a three layer muscle that connects to everything. So now I have to do extra stretches to help loosen it before my runs (which I still have to take slow... I'm running 1 minute and walking 1.5 for 1.3 miles). I've found some new stretches that I used to do in dance class and they work really well!

 These pictures aren't the best, but I was working with my computer camera and timer, so I did my best.

This stretch is a swastika stretch. It is the best stretch for my injury, it works the inside of my legs, my gluts, and lower back. 

I shift around and find the tight spots on my body.

I make sure I sink my belly button to my spine and use my abs instead of using my arms for support,

then pull my leg to the side to stretch the inside tendon.

After bringing my legs to my chest I stretch them out to a forty five degree angle, again couldn't make it work with the camera timer.

This is a good stretch for my shins and arches. I get shin splints and cramps in my arches really easy (I know, "This girl has issues!").

I never knew how stupid this looks, but it's really good for stretching my sides and lower back.

Again I sink my belly button to my spine, cross my ankles, and pump my arms. All sorts of muscles get worked here.

One last stretch before my run.

I cut in some random stretches changing it up every time I run, but these are the basic stretches that I do every time.

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!