I used to be a fairly serious runner. I wasn't that competitive (I'd do the occasional race, mostly for fun) but I ran a fair amount, could handle serious distances (there was a time when a "short run" was anything less than 10 miles), and I was reasonably fast, at least for short and middle distances. My last real race was back in 2009, when I did a 10 miler at 7:54 pace, which I think is respectable.
Anyway, I didn't run when I was pregnant with H because I'd have serious BH contractions and they alarmed me. Then I ran a little after he was born, but never really got back into it regularly, being busy with my clinical year of vet school, first year of work, and having a baby. I was just starting to train again when I got pregnant with E, so instead of trying to run, I'd take H on long stroller walks, usually walking 4-5 miles on most of my days off, and incorporating a playground stop, so we both enjoyed them. :)
When E was about 8 weeks old I started trying to run again, and OH MY PELVIS - ligament laxity is a serious thing, man. I'd do 2 slow miles and feel like someone had taken a sledgehammer to my pelvis. I'd limp around for the next 24 hours with pelvic pain and then days would go by before I'd work up the courage to try again. I didn't have that problem after H, and I don't know if it's because that sort of thing gets worse with each successive pregnancy? If I had a third baby, would it be even worse? Or is it something that is totally variable with each pregnancy? It seems like it would continue getting worse each time, but I don't really know.
So I figured out that I could do about 1.5 miles before my pelvis started complaining, so I tried to get into a routine of doing a very short little jog 2-3 times a week, hoping that would help my body adapt faster. It seems to have helped (or else it was just a coincidence and everything was slowly going back to normal on its own at the same time), and the other day I ran 4.5 miles without much trouble. I'm very, very slow. Like, hovering-around-the-10:00-mark slow. But I really love running for relaxation and for enjoying time outside in beautiful semi-wooded scenery, so I care more about being able to do distance right now than speed. I have no racing plans in the near future (even if I wanted to, either MM or I work almost every single Saturday, and I'm not going through all the trouble of finding a babysitter and paying an entry fee for a race short enough that I could handle it soon). So my goal for now is to regularly run a reasonable shortish distance (maybe 3-5 miles) and enjoy it.
I also started swimming again, when we joined the Y so that H could take swimming lessons. I LOVE TO SWIM!!! I love how relaxing it is, how meditatively monotonous it is to swim lap after lap, how silent it is under the water, how great a workout I get with no impact, the feeling of gliding through cool water, how spent I feel when I'm done with no physical after-effects like crippling pelvic pain! I didn't realize how much I missed it. It's been . . . . . . . . at least 8 years since I did any actual swimming, and I only learned how to swim - meaning do an actual stroke with semi-proper form - as an adult, so I was never that great at it to begin with. And now I'm really slow, and I can feel that my technique is poor, but it's still so relaxing that those things don't really bother me. And they'll get better with practice. I've gone swimming maybe 4-6 times since we joined the Y, and I would like to go more frequently.
So, workout goals for August:
Run twice a week, for an average of 4 miles each time
Swim 6 times, for an average of 1200 yards each time
Go to at least one Bikram yoga class
Do at least 3 strength workouts at home
Saturday, August 2, 2014
Friday, August 1, 2014
Golden weekend
I'm on day 2 of a 4-day weekend! And even better, it's a golden weekend - meaning that we BOTH have off BOTH Saturday and Sunday!!! That happens maybe 5 times a year, so it's always very exciting. And flies by way too quickly, of course.
The Doodle has been sleeping pretty well for the past few nights - she's been a more challenging sleeper than H ever was, but for weeks she'd been STTN or only waking up once to eat, then going right back to sleep. Then we went to the beach for a week with my sister's family in mid-July, and we shared a bedroom with both kids, so anytime E cried at night I would get her out of the crib and nurse her so that she wouldn't wake H. Apparently she got used to that, because her sleep got worse and worse even after we got home, to the point that she was waking up 4-5 times a night and needing milk to go back to sleep. I'm not a "cry it out" fan, but I don't get up with her at the first peep - often she's just griping a little bit between sleep cycles and falls back to sleep on her own within a minute or two. So I will let her cry for 3 minutes while I wait to see if she's settling down or ramping up into being really upset, and recently, each time she woke up at night she'd get really upset and need to be picked up and fed. She's 9 months old and eats well during the day, and at those middle of the night feedings she'd be rubbing her eyes and fussing, and only end up drinking 1-2 ounces, which made me think she wasn't really hungry and just wanted to nurse back to sleep. Anyway, I ended up changing her bedtime routine a little bit, and waking her up fully before putting her in the crib (instead of letting her fall half asleep nursing or drinking her bottle and then just moving her to the crib still half asleep). Since I started doing that, she either cries for 1-3 minutes then falls asleep, or falls directly asleep with no crying at all, and then sleeps through the night without intervention! Hallelujah!
So last night, MM and I made our third attempt to move her into our bedroom (previous 2 attempts obviously failed) (oh - H sleeps in our bedroom [in his own bed], and E sleeps in a crib in the living room. Whoever is on baby duty that night sleeps on the couch. I'm tired of sleeping on the couch every other night.) and it went very well. The two bonuses of this setup are that we can both sleep in bed together, which I miss, and that we can stay up after the kids go to bed and not be crowded around the little light above the stove trying to read without waking E, who was sleeping in the living room. We actually started a MOVIE!!! On the television! It was amazing!!! Previously we'd have to huddle around an iPad, each with one ear bud since we'd be sharing a pair of headphones, and it wasn't really worth bothering. But last night we sat on the couch together, we conversed above a whisper, we ate Ben & Jerry's ice cream out of the carton, and we watched Star Trek Into Darkness! Well, we watched half of it, because then it was 10 PM and goodness knows I can't stay up any later than that. :)
Anyway, it was a very nice start to our golden weekend. Additional plans include a picnic, a trip to a local pick-your-own orchard to pick blueberries (or whatever; we're not particular) and visit the goats, making blueberry galettes, doing laundry, swimming class for H, making biscuits and gravy for breakfast one morning (MM spent summers in the deep south with his extended family, and LOVES biscuits and gravy. I used to make them for him regularly, but it's been awhile), and finishing Star Trek. I can't wait. :)
The Doodle has been sleeping pretty well for the past few nights - she's been a more challenging sleeper than H ever was, but for weeks she'd been STTN or only waking up once to eat, then going right back to sleep. Then we went to the beach for a week with my sister's family in mid-July, and we shared a bedroom with both kids, so anytime E cried at night I would get her out of the crib and nurse her so that she wouldn't wake H. Apparently she got used to that, because her sleep got worse and worse even after we got home, to the point that she was waking up 4-5 times a night and needing milk to go back to sleep. I'm not a "cry it out" fan, but I don't get up with her at the first peep - often she's just griping a little bit between sleep cycles and falls back to sleep on her own within a minute or two. So I will let her cry for 3 minutes while I wait to see if she's settling down or ramping up into being really upset, and recently, each time she woke up at night she'd get really upset and need to be picked up and fed. She's 9 months old and eats well during the day, and at those middle of the night feedings she'd be rubbing her eyes and fussing, and only end up drinking 1-2 ounces, which made me think she wasn't really hungry and just wanted to nurse back to sleep. Anyway, I ended up changing her bedtime routine a little bit, and waking her up fully before putting her in the crib (instead of letting her fall half asleep nursing or drinking her bottle and then just moving her to the crib still half asleep). Since I started doing that, she either cries for 1-3 minutes then falls asleep, or falls directly asleep with no crying at all, and then sleeps through the night without intervention! Hallelujah!
So last night, MM and I made our third attempt to move her into our bedroom (previous 2 attempts obviously failed) (oh - H sleeps in our bedroom [in his own bed], and E sleeps in a crib in the living room. Whoever is on baby duty that night sleeps on the couch. I'm tired of sleeping on the couch every other night.) and it went very well. The two bonuses of this setup are that we can both sleep in bed together, which I miss, and that we can stay up after the kids go to bed and not be crowded around the little light above the stove trying to read without waking E, who was sleeping in the living room. We actually started a MOVIE!!! On the television! It was amazing!!! Previously we'd have to huddle around an iPad, each with one ear bud since we'd be sharing a pair of headphones, and it wasn't really worth bothering. But last night we sat on the couch together, we conversed above a whisper, we ate Ben & Jerry's ice cream out of the carton, and we watched Star Trek Into Darkness! Well, we watched half of it, because then it was 10 PM and goodness knows I can't stay up any later than that. :)
Anyway, it was a very nice start to our golden weekend. Additional plans include a picnic, a trip to a local pick-your-own orchard to pick blueberries (or whatever; we're not particular) and visit the goats, making blueberry galettes, doing laundry, swimming class for H, making biscuits and gravy for breakfast one morning (MM spent summers in the deep south with his extended family, and LOVES biscuits and gravy. I used to make them for him regularly, but it's been awhile), and finishing Star Trek. I can't wait. :)
Thursday, July 31, 2014
Hello, world
I started a blog when I started vet school, way back in 2008. I just went back to read the first few months of archives, when I was double-checking the date, and it's pretty hilarious how much I bitched about grades. :) :) :) What a dork. :) :) :)
I started another blog when MM and I started trying to have a baby back in 2010. That one was private, and after H was born, I started using it as kind of a digital baby book.
Both blogs have kept going (sporadically), but I've gotten tired of having to log out of one blog and into the other when I want to comment on blogs that I follow, and maintaining them both is getting to seem kind of like work, so I'm starting this one to combine them both. I want to be able to post photos without worrying about a coworker identifying me (not that there's anything particularly confidential on either blog, but one is personal and the other one is so astoundingly full of grade-obsessed nitwittery that I'd be mortified if anyone I work with nowadays read the archives), so here we are.
I started another blog when MM and I started trying to have a baby back in 2010. That one was private, and after H was born, I started using it as kind of a digital baby book.
Both blogs have kept going (sporadically), but I've gotten tired of having to log out of one blog and into the other when I want to comment on blogs that I follow, and maintaining them both is getting to seem kind of like work, so I'm starting this one to combine them both. I want to be able to post photos without worrying about a coworker identifying me (not that there's anything particularly confidential on either blog, but one is personal and the other one is so astoundingly full of grade-obsessed nitwittery that I'd be mortified if anyone I work with nowadays read the archives), so here we are.
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