Finding some balance

This season in life is a weird one. Some days I feel like I have everything figured out, and I do a good job of balancing all that is going on and all the "hats" I am wearing right now: I can be a mom, a wife, a daughter, a sister, an employee, a coworker, a friend... all at once. And other days I feel like I can barely keep it together enough to be any one of those things, let alone all of them! I'm sure that's how most new moms feel, but it is definitely requiring some mental adjustments to let myself figure out how to live this version of life. There are times when it feels like I've been doing this forever, and other times I remind myself that I have literally only been a mom for 8 months, and that is such a tiny piece of time. There is no rush to have it all figured out quite yet.

I've been back at work for about five months now, and while we have a good routine, and I am very lucky to have a very flexible environment and understanding team, some days it feels like I can barely keep it all together to make it work. I got two pieces of good advice recently, one from a random blog and one from a coworker. The random blog said, you can be a great mom and a great employee, but you will likely never be great at both at the same time. That really resonated with me - if I am being great at one of those things, I am likely just being good at the other... and that is okay! Sometimes I'm being a great worker. Sometimes I'm being a great mom. Neither is suffering when I'm just being good, though. I have to give myself a little grace and understanding, and know that being good is good enough.

A few days after I read that blog post (really wish I could remember the source.. oops. Mom brain!), I had a meeting with my career manager / mentor at work. We were supposed to be discussing my current career goals. Over coffee, I was completely honest with her and told her that, truth be told, I really don't have any career goals right now. My goal is to keep doing my job while I figure out how to be a mom. Wouldn't you know, she looked right at me and said, "Your goal is to tread water. And treading water is okay!" I needed so badly to hear that from her. She is a mom and an employee with many more years experience under her belt, and she understands where I am in life right now - so lucky for me! I needed someone to tell me that, right now, I don't need to be setting giant lofty goals and trying to propel myself forward. Instead, I need to learn how to maintain and keep my head above water. You can't keep swimming forward if you don't know how to just keep from drowning to start with! So here I am. Treading water. And it's okay. I will do the best I can, of course, and do the best work I can, but also admit to myself that some (most) days the 80% solution will have to do instead of the 100% solution. That is a little bit hard to come to terms with, but I'm working through it mentally. I have many years ahead of me to learn how to do everything really well again! For now, I'll just keep treading water. 

This sweet boy makes it all worth it - I know I will look back on this time later and barely remember the things I thought were so difficult. He is such a joy to us!

Postpartum Fitness (insert crazy laughter here)

Let's talk postpartum fitness. WAIT. Don't leave. Really.

More specifically, let's talk about a definite lack of postpartum fitness. Uh oh.

Lately, I've had several people ask me about what I'm doing to lose weight, and if I've been working out "all the time" because I hardly look like I had a baby. The answer to that is most definitely no, and I don't say that in a bragging way, I say it a little bit sheepishly. There is no exercise happening around these parts, my friends.

I'll be honest. I've lost all but about three pounds of baby weight. And I'm happy about that. But things are not as they seem, and the weight is not where I left it, if that makes sense. The number on the scale is about the same as it was pre-baby, but my body looks totally different these days. It's weird. And wiggly. Nice, right?

Here's the deal. I exercised all throughout my pregnancy...kind of. I skipped most of the first trimester because I was just SO TIRED, but once I got that second-trimester-energy-burst, I was back at it. I kept up with BodyPump and cardio (no running, because it just didn't feel good, but elliptical, treadmill walking, etc.) and continued working out in some capacity until about 38 weeks. I was pretty proud of myself, and even though I gained almost 40 pounds while pregnant, it never seemed like so much and I was pleased that I never "looked pregnant" anywhere but in my midsection. Yay, pregnancy fitness.

Then I delivered a baby via C-section and was completely knocked on my ass with recovery. Seriously, guys - a C-section is no joke. In fact, it is major abdominal surgery. (Who knew?!) It is awful. It literally never occurred to me that I might have a C-section versus a vaginal birth, and it certainly never crossed my mind that recovery from that surgery would be intensely painful and slow and hard. The whole thing pretty much sucked. I don't recommend it.

Apart from taking the baby for walks and pushing the stroller, I didn't do anything in the way of exercise for a full two months following delivery. I took it easy and worked on making sure I recovered well. Then, I was given the go-ahead for activity at 8 weeks postpartum by my doctor, with the advice to ease back into it and listen to my body. Wahoo! I was excited to get back into the groove. I downloaded the Couch-to-5k app. I went to a yoga class. I bought 5-pound weights and had my sister (a PE teacher) write out some workouts for me. I was ready to go!

And then those weights sat completely unused in my basement. The C25K app got moved into a folder of unused apps so it would stop taunting me. I never went back to the yoga studio.

I want to workout. But I just can't find the drive to actually do it. Every day there are about 1000 reasons why a workout, even a short one, just doesn't happen. Most of them are baby-related (duh). What's left is, I don't have a sports bra that actually fits. It's too cold / windy / rainy outside to run / walk. I'm too tired. And here's the truth, too: I don't like how my body feels right now. Things don't move the same way as they did before. I'm out of shape, my breastfeeding-boobs are out of control, my stomach is soft and jiggly, and my muscles are wimpy. It feels like I'm starting completely from square one with my fitness, and that's not a very nice feeling. It's discouraging. I worked hard for years to get to a place where I was happy with my body, and I was strong and confident. Pregnancy pretty much turned everything upside down in that arena, and now I "get" to start from the bottom. Awesome.

So it's easy to see why I've lost my fitness mojo, right? I know that it doesn't have to be all or nothing, and I can start to find ways to work a little bit of exercise in. I see all these other moms who are doing it (the "benefits" of social media, right?) It's just frustrating to think about starting again, and therefore I'm avoiding it. I push the thoughts of sweat from my head and  I opt instead to just sit on my squishy butt on the couch at the end of the day.

There's no real point to this other than to say, this is what life looks like right now. It's not how I expected it to be at this point, but really, nothing about pregnancy / birth / motherhood has been. Why should fitness be any different? This "season" of life is full of steep learning curves, I'm finding. What a surprise! (sarcasm.)

PS: I registered to run a five-mile race in the middle of May. I thought maybe that would inspire me to get moving. So far, not so much.