not that you asked...

1.5 hours out from Friday but HERE YOU GO ANYWAY

Seven Quick Takes

ONE: I know you've watched “I Didn't Know I Was Pregnant.” I KNOW YOU HAVE. And if you haven't, I know you've heard of it and so I ALSO know that if you turned it on and saw some woman squatting over a toilet or in a bathroom and and moaning in pain while also looking confused that you'd KNOW what you were watching something other than someone just taking a poop. They don't put that stuff on television, you know? So tell me why they have a need, in EVERY SINGLE EPISODE, to say things like, “Amazingly, Claire didn't even know she was pregnant, or about to deliver.” WELL DUH. Isn't that what this entire show is about? ISN'T IT? And then, without fail, they interview a young, female doctor who says something about women who think they have their periods throughout a pregnancy or who got pregnant while on the pill and then I, without fail, start thinking that SURELY there is a more creative approach to this show than the format they've got.

TWO: Although, do you know what I DO enjoy about “I Didn't Know I Was Pregnant” is comparing the real people with the actors hired to play them in the reenactment. Because they always hire someone who is WAY MORE ATTRACTIVE than the actual person who didn't know they were pregnant. I imagine this is a difficult balancing act. Can you imagine the auditions? “Well, that was a great job you did there, lying on the floor and panicking about the head sliding out from between your legs, but I'm still a bit concerned that you're a little too ugly for the part. We just don't want to offend the person that this REALLY happened to, you know?” Or perhaps this is simply because the reenactment actors have hair and makeup teams? I know they aren't sending any hair and makeup teams to the REAL people or else no one would be interviewed with greasy hair and wearing an ancient Old Navy t-shirt, which unfortunately, some of them are.

THREE: So remember how I told you about the lady with the German Shepherd hooked up to the chariot? I guess last time I wrote about her I had way more to say about other things, so I didn't tell you the VERY IMPORTANT part of the story, which is that the only reason I knew to keep a lookout for her in the first place is because she came whizzing down a hill a few weeks ago at top speed (dog running with the chariot being pulled behind it) and ran into my friend who was jogging with her baby in a stroller. The chariot lady actually knocked the stroller with the baby in it OVER onto its SIDE and KEPT GOING. Kept going! I AM SO TOTALLY SERIOUS. And my poor friend was freaking out, what with her BABY all tipped over in a STROLLER onto the ASPHALT and chariot lady was long gone and she couldn't even turn around and give her the finger. She did call the police and try to report her, but apparently the police couldn't do anything unless she pressed assault charges and I don't remember the rest of what my friend told me because I was still all open-mouthed at the BABY LYING ON THE ASPHALT but I think if you press assault charges, you probably need to be willing to secure a lawyer and possibly go to court. Which I don't think they were ready to do, since TECHNICALLY, no one got hurt.

FOUR: So THEN one evening I was walking the dog on the golf course by our house and I ran into all these people who bring their dogs out to play with each other after all the golfers have gone home and we chatted for a bit before I casually brought the chariot lady up in conversation and that's when I found out that these aren't dog people, these are Dog People who warrant CAPITALIZATION because they about fell over themselves talking about how wonderful the chariot lady was for doing all this amazing work with her dogs and how great she is for being so committed to them and isn't it so cool what those dogs can do? And I was going to mention how another thing that dog can do is knock BABIES in STROLLERS to the GROUND with all the reckless speeding down hills they do but I didn't want to be a total party pooper so Hambone and I continued on our way without me saying what I really wanted to say which was CHARIOT LADY HATES BABIES.

FIVE: Everywhere I turn lately, it seems there's an advertisement for some program to help my children learn to read. Today in the car I heard a particularly annoying one, where a woman talks about how it helped her three-year-old read at a fifth-grade level. And that it wasn't a fluke, because she used it with all THREE of her children and all THREE of her children went on to be the smartest kids in their class and two won the Nobel Peace Prize and the other one invented the printing press or something. Actually, what she really said, AND SHE SAID IT SMUGLY, is that her son went to kindergarten and after three weeks, they moved him right up to first grade. I just don't know how I feel about all this Learn to Read Early! stuff. On one hand, I absolutely believe in helping your kids learn to read the moment they start showing interest. My other hand, however, wants to close around the throats of people who can't simply settle for their children learning to read – their children have to EXCEL at reading, to the point where they have paper cuts from flash cards and do workbooks in their spare time and can't even go to KINDERGARTEN like a REGULAR KID. I can't WAIT for my kids to be able to read. But I don't think it's healthy for me to push them into that kind of thing just so I can claim those bragging rights.

SIX: We went to Target the other day, and as I was trying to pay while simultaneously trying to keep Lucy from diving out of the cart, I noticed Asher had gone very quiet. “Asher?” I called out, and then I turned around to look for him and there he was, directly behind me in the line, silently licking the red partition wall that separates the checkout lines. LICKING. THE WALL. AT TARGET. “ASHER!” I cried out. “Don't lick the wall! That's yucky and you'll get germs and diseases.” He looked at me for a moment before speaking. “Asher lick it just a little bit?” he asked hopefully. “No,” I said. “No licking it AT ALL. Not a little bit; not a lot. NO LICKING THE WALL.” The cashier snorted. Then he gestured to the red shelf that ran under the candy bins. “Asher lick that?” I just stared at him. “No,” I said, finally. “No licking anything.” File that under Things I Didn't Know I'd Have to Teach My Child: DON'T LICK ANYTHING I HAVEN'T SPECIFICALLY AUTHORIZED YOU TO LICK.

SEVEN: Thank you all for your very kind comments regarding the iVillage article. I never got around to reading many of the comments there, mostly because I didn't want to risk having them bring me down. I don't put any value on negative comments and I don't actually believe the negative things that people wrote, but I didn't want to give any of that negativity a foothold, you know? I don't need any reason to second-guess myself; don't need to waste any of my time wondering if I should have done something different or if I'm contributing to the obesity epidemic or if I'm selfish. Wiser to just ignore it and let it play out without me monitoring it and read the amazing, wonderful things that people said here instead. The Internet is such a wonderful place in some respects – it brings people together who would never had the opportunity to know and support each other otherwise. Unfortunately, it's also a place where you can be judgmental and hateful and remain completely anonymous. It doesn't necessarily make it right, but I like to think those women who left angry or hurtful comments (comments not only directed at me, but at other women who stopped breastfeeding or chose not to) would never say any of those things directly to someone's face; that it's the anonymity of the Internet that brings out the worst in them. Thank you all for being so kind and supportive to me and to everyone else who comments and shares here.

Writing elsewhere

I wrote a piece on breastfeeding – and why I chose to stop (though the title choice was not my own) – for iVillage. It's been up long enough to generate 19 or 20 pages of comments, although I had to stop reading through them after only a handful. I loved writing the piece and I still stand by the choices I made with zero regret (truly, ZERO), even though there were times when I thought I would feel the regret of not nursing my children every day of my life. The truth is, I got past it. I moved on. I don't even THINK about it anymore, and I don't know why some people think I should.

This is my first time writing something personal for a website other than my own. It's actually kind of hard to post something personal somewhere other than here. I can't help but take the negative comments personally; can't help but want to email everyone who didn't quite get what I was trying to say and tell them I TRIED, I DID, it just didn't work and I promise I saw a lactation consultant and I DID get help and HOW DARE YOU IMPLY THAT I DIDN'T WANT MY CHILDREN AT ALL JUST BECAUSE I DIDN'T BREASTFEED FOR 36 MONTHS.

But that would be ridiculous. I have to remember that 1500 words can't possibly convey my whole story or the overwhelming spectrum of emotions I experienced when I went through that. And I have to be okay with that.

So I am.

Well, I'm trying to be, at least.

It's funny, isn't it, how there can be 300 positive comments, 300 people saying THANK YOU, I NEEDED TO HEAR THAT and yet we can get so bogged down by the one person who says that you're a terrible mother. 

Actually, I think more than one person called me a terrible mother, but I only got to write one article, so no one gets to hear me defend my decisions or about how that non-breastfed baby can now TYPE THE ALPHABET. 

Regardless, if you want to read it, you can find it here. 

We haven't talked about my thighs in a while

I gave birth to Lucy almost eight months ago. Last Tuesday, I stepped on the scale to discover I am but one pound shy of my pre-pregnancy weight – the weight that was recorded on my chart at my first prenatal visit in May of 2008. It's not my lowest weight and it's not my final weight, either, because I'm not done, but it's a huge success for me. It's been a long journey to get here again and there were times I thought that maybe I would never get back to where I was before I got pregnant with Lucy; that maybe I was going to be one of those women who swore their bodies just held on to an extra five or ten pounds after a second pregnancy no matter what they did.

I worked really hard after Asher was born in 2006 to lose almost 30 pounds. The weird thing is, that “working really hard” for me involved the food aspect of losing weight. I worked MENTALLY hard when I was losing weight after having Asher because I had never learned how to eat to lose or maintain my weight. I never knew what a proper portion was or that it wasn't okay to eat a bowl of ice cream every night (or an entire block of cheese) just because I'd exercised earlier that day. I had no idea how much physical work I had to do in order to cancel out the things I was eating. The thing that came easily to me then was incorporating regular exercise into my life again. I exercise EVERY SINGLE DAY now without fail; I actually feel GUILTY if I don't, and I like it that way. I don't sit around inventing reasons not to. I like the way exercise makes me look and feel. It gives me energy, and it helps me sleep (even if my kids don't), and I like that my thighs are relatively firm and not fleshy. Even skinny people can have fleshy thighs, you know?

When I started this journey all over again after having Lucy, it was definitely more difficult. It was harder to control cravings because of the stress of learning to handle two kids, especially when one of those kids slept poorly all night and day. It was harder after having a bad day to not want to comfort myself with chocolate-chip cookies and six glasses of milk. It was harder to find time to exercise, not because it was all that hard to find a half-hour to run outside, but because after that run, I needed a shower, and a chunk of time to dry my hair and put on clothes if we were going to leave the house, which sometimes we have to do, you know, to buy toilet paper and Diet Coke.

There was also a period of about two months where I was stuck, and my body and the scale were refusing to budge. It was depressing, and frustrating, and annoying and resulted in the consumption of zillions of handfuls of M&Ms, which is probably why the scale never budged in the first place. What I finally realized was that two pregnancies probably HAVE changed my body in more ways than I recognize. And that I am almost two years older than I was when I lost weight the first time around, which might not be a big deal when you're a teenager, but can probably result in substantial changes in metabolism and the like when you're in your 30s. So I had to work PHYSICALLY harder than I had to last time; I had to step up my exercise regime. I had to push myself. I can't stop after running three miles anymore – I need to go for four, or five, or six. And I DON'T MIND. Nor do I feel like I'm pushing myself too hard or becoming obsessed. I'm only running twenty minutes longer than I used to, and I'm stronger and faster and happier with how it makes me feel.

Another reason I'm happy to exercise is because heart disease continues to be the number one killer of women, and not only am I one of those (a woman, I mean), there was also a recent study that linked heart disease and risk of stroke with preeclampsia. Preeclampsia. I've been lucky enough to have it TWICE, which according to this study, means I'm more than twice as likely to have a heart attack or stroke in my 40s than a normal woman. Dude, that's SCARY. That's worth an hour of exercise, every day, if you ask me. I have big plans for my 50s, you know. I'm buying a RECREATIONAL VEHICLE in my 50s. I am going to hike in National Parks and such! And get pedicures! I do not have time for dying from heart disease if I can help it! (Yes, dying! Also, what a cheery title for an article, WebMD!)

Something else I've realized is that it's harder to accept your body the second time you lose the same weight. The first time, everything felt great. Every pound that I dropped was new territory; every time something fit looser or better or in a smaller size was amazing and wonderful and something to be proud of. The second time around, though, is like a mind game. Whereas last time, hitting a certain weight felt like a miracle, this time, it feels defeating; it just feels like ten pounds away from my goal. It isn't nearly as satisfying, and sometimes I have a hard time focusing on the fact that I'm getting healthier and shapelier in a smart way; in a “lifestyle” kind of way, as cliché and annoying and Dr. Phil as that sounds. Sometimes I get lost in the Get To Goal mantra. Sometimes I put on a pair of jeans that I used to wear all the time before I got pregnant with Lucy and get caught up in wondering if they feel like they used to feel or if they feel DIFFERENT or TIGHTER and I end up fixating on that; fixating on where I once was, and feeling bad that I'm not there again quite yet. I don't like that part.

The other thing I will say about myself is that I finally understand that I realize that the jealousy I've had looking at other people's bodies wasn't about whether I was envious of their legs or their arms or their abs. I like my body and I don't want anyone else's body instead of mine, for various and sundry reasons, but probably mostly because this body has made me who I am and I LIKE WHO I AM. What I DO want is the BEST VERSION of my body. I want strong legs, even if they're not slender little toothpicks. I want the ability to run six miles without stopping. I want clothes to look good on me, and they don't have to be a size four. But it's hard work to get to the best version of my body. I'm not one of those people who eats salad for a week and loses 15 pounds. I'm not one of those people who can ignore exercise and look her best. So my envy wasn't for someone else's body; no, I was jealous that some people don't have to work hard to look awesome. Some people can eat a Twix for breakfast and a Chick-fil-a combo meal for lunch and drink a bottle of wine with a pizza for dinner and NOTHING HAPPENS TO THEM. I do not want to tell you what would happen to me if I was to follow a diet plan like that. I can't even eat like a REGULAR person and manage my weight effectively. I have to buckle down and run hard and sweat like a pig and I have to do it every single day. There were a lot of times when it felt unfair. So how cheesy is it that I can finally say that I've learned to appreciate it? Make peace with it? Now instead of hating the fact that I have to run four miles to stay in shape, I am simply proud of myself that I have the drive and ambition to keep running until I've completed six. It's not a means to an end any longer. I don't resent it anymore. It's just who I am. And I'm embracing it.