3 Weeks into recovery.

I am now 3 weeks through my recovery period with 3 more left. I feel that I am doing good with the grieving process. I no longer seem to have outbursts of uncontrollable sadness and despair. I still get very sad and cry, but it is no longer totally uncontrollable (meaning I can contain my tears until there is no one to see and I can cry in peace). We have plans to make a plaque of sorts in memory of the baby and possibly name the baby as well. We haven't had time to sit and discuss this much, but I hope to do it soon.

I seem to think about having another baby quite a lot. I would say that I think about having a baby at least a handful of times every day. I think of all the things I'd like to make for my baby, and all the sweet smiles and baby laughter. I am getting fairly depressed that I am not losing weight like I had wanted to. The longer it takes me to lose the weight, the longer it will be until I can try for another baby. I eat really well for several days, then collapse emotionally and end up eating junk that I shouldn't. I seem to be stuck in a yo-yo-ing pattern that is driving me crazy.

The recovery has been really slow physically. I have been having a worrisome pain in my right side (my left ovary was removed) and I have been worrying about ovarian cysts and random other problems. I have only started to feel better in the past couple days, and I am more than a little bit worried that recovering from a laproscopic surgery is taking longer than a full blown c-section did. I decided not to go to the clinic since I started feeling better, but I will be sure to mention my concerns with the OB/GYN when I have my post-op appointment on the 11th. I am hoping it all turns out to be normal, but I have this bad feeling that my one surviving ovary is having issues.

It is very late as I am writing this. Everyone else in the house is asleep and it is quiet and peaceful. I am pretty tired, but I have really enjoyed some time to myself. There are times when a person just gets tired of being around small children all day and needs a break. I will be staying up for another 20 minutes or so. I have been sick or recovering for quite a while now and tomorrow I plan on getting started back with school. We have book work all done for the year, but there is some reading that I would like to do with the kids and pick up some extra science over the summer. I am enjoying the alone time tonight because I know I won't get anymore for a couple days.

That's all for now. I hope to get my weight back on track tomorrow, so maybe I'll have something positive to report in the next few days.

Greiving for my third baby.

I had an unplanned pregnancy that ended just two weeks ago. It was an ectopic pregnancy that ended after two and a half weeks of bleeding and more pain than I would care to ever experience again. I had surgery two weeks ago today (I was 7 weeks pregnant at the time). Besides losing the baby I had grown to love, I also lost my left fallopian tube and ovary. The problem was caused by scar tissue from my two previous cesarean deliveries which had fused several of my organs together. My fallopian tube and ovary were fused together in a tangled mess, so the baby never had a chance to make its way into my uterus where it could be nurtured and grown the way God intended.

I know miscarriage is pretty common, and several women experience ectopic pregnancies, but I never fully realized how heart breaking it was until it happened to me. My brain understood what was going on, but my heart has had a hard time with it. The physical pain was the worst I have ever experienced, but it has been nothing next to the emotional pain of losing a baby. The only consolation there has been for me during this time is the belief that a baby is a baby with a soul at conception, and that children belong to God. I believe my very tiny baby has went to be with God and someday I will get to meet the baby that I love so dearly and miss so much. I can't even imagine how I would make it through this if I didn't have Jesus to lean on and pray to.

I should be able to have another baby after I am healed, but that doesn't fill the void left inside of me. It will take time to heal from this, and I know that a part of my heart will always ache for the tiny baby that I lost. I didn't know how much I wanted a third child until I found out I was pregnant. I will try for another baby after I have my weight down to an acceptable amount. Right now I am healing physically and emotionally. I am trying to lose weight by eliminating as many simple carbs as I can from my diet, and I am focusing more on the two children that I do have. I am trying to spend more quality time with my kids apart from the normal daily grind and school based activities. There have been more hugs and kisses in our house of late as well. My whole family is hurting from our recent loss, and we are all working on healing.

I hope to post again in about a week. I have so much updating to do on my knitting blog that I don't even know where to begin, but I need to get that done. Hopefully I will get at least one post done over there by the end of today, it all depends on how strong I feel.

P90X day #2

Just a quick update about the P90X workouts so far. Yesterday was "Chest and Back" and we only did half of the workout plus "Ab Ripper X" afterwards. I was completely worn out from just half the workout, but wasn't all that sore. This morning my muscles were very sore, and they still are. I can feel the pain in my back muscles some, but my chest and shoulders are very sore.

"Plyometrics" (jump training) was this morning and we only managed half a workout again. My legs are sore today, so tomorrow I may not be able to drag myself up the stairs! I am really hoping that I adjust soon and get stronger quickly. This "feeling the burn" is kinda sucky. It will be really nice to be stronger so the workouts are challenging but not totally butt-kicking. I look forward to not feeling so weak.

I have gained some weight since stopping the HCG Protocol. I was 198 lbs when I stopped that and went up to 201.6 lbs after I stopped. I should not have weighed myself after starting P90X before my rest day, but I did anyway. I have gained another pound since starting P90X, so today I was at 202.4 lbs. I have noticed that working out has made me ravenously hungry and very tired, so I really don't expect to lose any weight for a few weeks.

That's all for now. I need to do my nails tonight so I don't end up destroying them during tomorrow's workout.

P90X day #0

Today is officially day 0 of P90X. Sundays are our rest and weigh-in days. The first Sunday of each month is also our picture and measurements day. I am glad to have the "before" pictures done and over with. These had better be the last "before" pictures that I ever take. The idea with doing the P90X is that it will just be part of our new healthier lifestyle, so I am hoping for only taking "after" pictures from here on out.

I am a little worried about doing the intense workout tomorrow morning, but I am really pumped up for it as well. I don't like sweating and being sore, but I know a lot of that is because I don't feel very strong. As time goes on working out should get more enjoyable (though never easy). I am fully prepared for the first week to be very hard. I have no delusions of making it through the workouts, and will be very pleased with myself if I manage to make it through half of the workouts during the first week. I did decide to buy 8lb weights instead of the 5lb, so I am not quite as weak as I thought I was (not that I am pretending using 8lb weights isn't pathetic, lol).

The basement still isn't quite ready for tomorrow morning (and I have been super stressed out about it too). Thankfully the room is nearly done. All the boxes and smaller stuff has been moved, so now just the bigger things need moved. We will need to put down the interlocking floor mat tonight and get the weights and bands set out. We need to take a door off the hinge so we can install the pull-up bar for my husband, but after that we will be all ready for tomorrow morning. If I survive the workout tomorrow, I'll post how it went!

Diet change!

I am no longer doing the hHCG diet. Almost immediately after my last post I got to talk to my husband about his exercising goals, and we decided to start exercising together the 2nd of April. Since that didn't give me much time to prepare I stopped taking the hHCG pellets and switched to Atkins Induction.

Today is my second day of low-carbing it, and I feel a sense of relief. I don't want to make it sound like the HCG diet is bad, because it really is a lot better than I was expecting it to be, but my mood was suffering pretty badly towards the end. I already feel a tiny bit better emotionally, but that is most likely due to the planning part and not the actual dietary part. I did the HCG Protocol for 30 days, and when I can get my husband into taking my "after" photo, I will post my totals.

The exercise part of our lifestyle change is scary, intimidating, and just flat daunting. There is only one workout my husband is interested in doing, and that is P90X. P90X is a Beach Body workout series by Tony Horton, and if you've ever stayed up late watching tv during the dreaded infomercial hours you probably know what it is. If you go to bed at a decent time though, and are clueless what P90X is, I'll explain a touch. P90X stands for Power 90 Extreme. The Power 90 series was a pretty intense workout (I've never actually done it) and this is the extreme version that is supposed to completely transform your body in 90 days. The workouts are about 60 minutes each with an additional 15 minute ab routine every other day. The workouts are intense and pretty difficult, and use muscle confusion to keep you from plateauing. I have done this workout before, but only for a couple weeks. There were other things that got in the way and I just wasn't able to find the time to workout. My husband has done the workout previously as well, and you really do start seeing results very quickly (he had a noticeable size increase and toning on his biceps in only one week).

This time we made a schedule with Google Calendar and made time every morning for the workout. I am not a morning person at all, and am not really looking forward to getting up so early. On days were my husband works early, we will be getting up just after 4 am so he has time to get ready for work and eat breakfast after the workout. Yes, I will be getting up at 4 in the morning, and I am dreading it. This is going to be such a hard change to make, but I think the pay off will be worth it. I have been impressed with Google Calendar (never really used it before). My husband and I both have separate calendars, but we share them. I can see and make changes to his calendar (handy, since he doesn't really have time for doing this kind of thing) and can even print them off (this is awesome for school purposes as it makes it easily available and there is room for jotting down quick notes). We can both have access to the calendars on our phones and have alerts and reminders set up. I only wish the color coding showed up on the phone app, seeing as how I went to the trouble to color code everything, lol

The plan is for working out to be a "forever" lifestyle change, and not just a short term thing. Previously we have worked out in our living room space, but I am not going to put up with putting away my husband's weights for the next several years. Our solution is to make a dedicated space for working out in our basement. There is some work involved in this, but it should be pretty cheap to do (hopefully we will only need to buy some mats for the floor). There is some rearranging and sorting to do mostly. We have an old tube tv down there, and there should be enough room to set up a pull-up bar and have the weights out and ready to use. This has been unusable space for us so far, since the basement isn't finished and the stairs aren't very kid friendly. It will be nice to finally have a use for the space before it gets finished (some day we really are going to finish it, though it isn't that high on the priority list at the moment). I am excited about getting the space ready for working out.

In other news, the pencil sharpener comes today! Hooray! lol Probably not a big deal for most people, but as a homeschooling mom who has been manually sharpening pencils for the past 5 days, it is a huge deal, lol I recently gave my box of approximately 100 colored pencils to my children, and while sharpening them my old sharpener quit. This also happened to be shortly after buying a bunch of new coloring books from the dollar store...right before the weekend. I am so tired of manually sharpening pencils and I was actually starting to get a blister! (see, this is beauty related ;p). Anyway, the new sharpener is an X-ACTO ProX commercial grade sharpener, and it had better not poo out on me in the middle of sharpening 100 colored pencils! It was a bit of an investment ( $55) so I expect it to last forever during heavy school use.

Week #4 summary

Okay, so the update is a few days late. I have been pretty upset about my weight loss lately as it has been slow and I gained a pound this morning :( But here I am, finally getting to it ;)

Day #19                                                                     Day #26
     Weight...................202.0 lbs                                      Weight...................198.4 lbs
     Waist.......................36.8 inches                                 Waist.......................36.0 inches
     Hips........................43.0 inches                                  Hips........................43.0 inches
     Body fat %.............27.6 %                                         Body fat %.............27.6 %

Again my losses were pretty good this past week. 3.6 lbs lost is .6 more than I lost the week before. I also lost just over 3/4 inch off my waist. I am curious as to why I haven't lost anything off my hips for two weeks in a row now...hopefully that trend doesn't continue much longer. Over all, last week was a productive weight loss week.

I am currently on VLCD#28 and I am really starting to struggle with the diet. I am having a lot of head hunger and some rather strong carb cravings. I don't know what is going on, but it is frustrating. I shouldn't be craving carbs at all, but our last grocery shopping trip was pure torture! (I didn't cave, thankfully). I have stopped eating the fruit and am only allowing tomatoes as my fruit, and I try to keep that at only one serving each day. Hopefully here in another day or two the carb cravings will stop or at least lessen.

I am becoming pretty tired of the diet as well. I am starting to feel like I've been doing this for much longer than I have. I am not really getting bored of the food or having any real issues, it just seems like I am not quite where I should be emotionally. Either I am getting really close to my time of the month, I am deprived of dietary fat, or I am just plain going crazy. I know in my head that I am doing very well and losing fat and inches really fast, yet I feel like I am not making enough progress. I have made so much progress and I know that I should feel pleased, yet I am confused as to why I don't feel good about my progress. I am thinking this may have something to do with decreasing my fat intake and the effect that has had on my mood. I have 11 whole days left, but I am thinking I may need to stop before then and switch to Atkins just for my mood's sake.

Exercise has been entering my mind a lot lately. I am not supposed to exercise on this diet, and I don't believe exercise leads to weight loss anyway. I wouldn't even be considering exercising or thinking about it at all if it wasn't for my husband. He is wanting to start working out again. The problem with that is that I would like to do the same workout, but I don't want to start it months after he has. It would be much easier for me to start it the same time he does and just do the workouts alongside him. It would be good to tone up some, but I am still on the fence about whether to start now or later. If I don't start when my husband does, then there is a pretty good chance I won't do it at all. I don't really feel ready to start working out quite yet, but I don't really want to ask him to wait since it seems to be pretty important to him. I want to make a decision on it pretty soon, as I will need to have switched to Atkins for a while before I could start working out.

That's all for now. I am really hoping to have lost my pound gain tomorrow. I have really been loading up on liquids today, so hopefully that helps some.

VLCD#24

I had a .8 pound loss today, so I am exactly at 199 lbs. I am doing really well losing weight, but I don't emotionally feel it right now. Encouragement hasn't exactly been abundant, and I've been struggling with keeping positive. I know in my head that I am doing good, but for some reason I don't feel like it is good enough.

I thought going shopping for new pants would make me feel better, but it didn't. Instead of being a rewarding experience it was frustrating and discouraging. We went to Target, and I have to say, I hate Target's pants. The jeans that are supposed to sit just below the waist, were a good 3 inches below my belly button. Either Target has no clue where a woman's waist is, or they make their clothes for people with extremely short torsos. Besides the issue of their pants just not working, they have very unflattering mirrors in the changing rooms. Like most women, I feel I look worse than I actually do. Target's mirrors made me look worse than I feel I look. I can't see myself trying on clothes there again anytime soon. After the not so good experience at Target, we went to Walmart (shudder) and I bought the only pair of size 12 long jeans they had. Why are they nearly always out of my size, no matter what size I am?

I am looking forward to switching over to Atkins in a couple more weeks. I don't mind this diet as much as I thought I would, but my mood has suffered. I can't wait to get back on a high fat diet and have a sunnier disposition. I can't say that I'll miss these vegetables and extra lean meats at all. I am looking forward to having a stir-fry, stuffed pork, and hamburgers again.

Anyway, that's all for tonight. Hopefully tomorrow is a good day :)