Facing Fears and Accomplishing Goals

I'm taking swimming lessons. I don't like swimming. I hate that pools are usually cold. I hate getting wet with chlorine or fishy water because I have to think about when I will shower it all off and how fixing my hair afterwards is a hassle. I'm thinking my anxiety about swimming started when I was in elementary school and I would go swimming almost everyday in the summer. My hair was so green! I tried lemon juice, Sun In, leave in conditioners and none of it would keep my hair from turning green. It was a little embarrassing.

It's not that I don't know how to swim. I can definitely swim well enough to jump off diving boards and rocks and swim back to a boat in a lake. I'm usually one of the first ones to jump off of things.  

This is me jumping off of some rocks in Puerto Vallarta a little over a year ago.

 My problem is inefficiency. My form is atrocious. One of the things I've wanted to do for a while now is a triathlon. If you are not a very efficient swimmer and hate the water, this could be tricky. When I was very pregnant and dreaming of the things I could do when I was no longer pregnant, I made a goal board for 2015. On that board I have "Become a better swimmer" and "do a triathlon sprint". Dreaming of doing these things is very different that actually accomplishing them. When all the other times I said I was going to do these I would put it off for another time. I knew I needed to have a plan. I could go swimming as much as I wanted but if I didn't rework my form to be better, it wouldn't help me much.

 This is why I'm taking swimming lessons. I had my first one last night and was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed it. The pool wasn't cold. I had a swim cap and goggles on. I bought some one piece swimsuits because no matter how fit I am, I will always be self-conscious about two piece swimsuits even though I buy a new one every year. I'm going to make sure that this is the time I learn to love swimming and get over my insecurities or other weird issues. I'm constantly afraid of looking dumb and I'm sick of living like that. I can have wet hair and no make up on when I leave the pool and that's okay. I can have the goggle and swim cap marks on my face and just not care because it shows that I'm doing something.

Face your fears and accomplish your goals! This is my new mantra!

On another note...

Baby P is 8 weeks old today. Isn't she cute?

I took some gross bathroom selfies this morning because I could see my upper abdominals! 

I still have quite a bit of loose skin that hangs over my c-section scar but that will go away with time. I'm pretty pleased with this improvement since 4 weeks PP.

I will get an updates progress picture in the same outfit as above sometime soon to get a better grasp of progress being made.

Your turn:

What goals have you made for 2015 and how are you accomplishing them?

Postpartum Running

Well, I may not be able to run like I'm being chased and that dinosaur would totally catch me, but I needed extra motivation this morning to run even though it's hard. 

My view this morning

You see, even though I worked out pretty hard my whole pregnancy, I feel very out of shape. I get out if breath very quickly and I'm not even running that fast. It takes everything within me to keep pushing myself when I'm like that so I can rebuild my lung capacity. It will take time, but it's frustrating.

If you're wondering how my incision is feeling when I run when I had my c-section only 5 1/2 weeks ago, my secret is a neoprene tummy wrap.

It holds everything in with support and also reminds me that I need to take it a little easier when I'm doing other things like lifting weights. I also like it because it feels like it tucks in my excess skin from pregnancy. I will at some point wean myself off of it because after my last pregnancy I felt like I was relying on it too much and not engaging my core. The name is Baboosh Baby and is endorsed by Brooke Burke if you are interested in looking it up.

Something I'm excited about is that I went on a Lululemon shopping spree at their outlet in Burlington, Washington when I was there this summer. I was taking a chance that my old size would work after pregnancy, but the last couple of days, I've been able to wear some of the items.

How cute are these running tights?!

What do you like to listen to when you run? I totally listen to the Britney Spears station on Pandora. :)

One Month Post-Partem

Well, I had hoped to do some photos at 2 weeks PP but I was still carrying so much extra fluid that I didn't think it was an accurate representation of an actual starting point on the road to getting my body back in shape after baby number two. To see where I was before I got pregnant, here's this photo:

This photo was also taken right after I went on a gluten binge and was having some extra bloat problems. However, I look at that now and I would give anything (most blood, sweat, and tears) to get my stomach looking like that again.

And now, four weeks PP, this is what I've got to work with: 

Up until last week all I have been able to to was walk on the treadmill. I was able to vary my pace and incline to get the most bang for my buck. Last week I couldn't take it any longer and started to do some easy jogging and some drop sets with dumbbells for my shoulders, triceps, and biceps. I figured I could work these muscles groups without straining my incision from the c-section. I have my PP doctor appointment next Thursday and I'm considering wearing workout clothes so I can go straight to CrossFit afterwards. Haha!

Although the pictures above are humbling and show me how far I have to go, I'm excited for the journey and more photos to compare my results throughout the coming months. I'll leave you with a comparison photo to when Inwas four weeks PP with my first baby. Although there's not a significant difference in my body overall (wouldn't it be nice if you just gained weight in your stomach and nowhere else?!), I notice a change in my stomach. Now if I can just get my nutrition on par...

She's here!

Baby P has finally made her arrival and she's perfect! I was a Nervous Nelly for the IV and the Spinal because I'm a baby when it comes to pain and needles, but I made it through with lots of chuckles from my husband. Because of the nature of the complications I had with Baby E, I was not a viable candidate for a VBAC (Vaginal Birth After Cesarean) so we had the day planned ahead of time and truthfully, I was okay without going through contractions again.

Three Surgeries In One

First, and foremost, I had the c-section but I also opted to have my tubes tied because my husband and I had discussed that this was our last pregnancy. I don't enjoy being pregnant and we also have plans to adopt from Africa at some point in the future, so we knew that we were more than okay with this permanent birth control method. 

The third part of the surgery that I hadn't anticipated was that I had another small cyst on my right ovary. Did I not just have a fist-sized tumor and part of that ovary removed in June?! My doctor said it's possible that there was a tiny piece left that they didn't see and the hormones from pregnancy has made it grow. He said that there may be more of these in my future but hopefully he saved me a surgery down the road. I'm not super thrilled that I'm possibly going to keep having cysts unless I remove the whole ovary, but at least we know they are NOT cancerous. That's really all that matters to me at this point.

Recovery

As before, I have been lucky and have bounced back pretty quickly in terms of how I feel. My nurse was impressed when I wanted to move around the day of the surgery. An interesting thing that I did not expect is that my incision does not hurt. It doesn't burn or anything. I didn't have a problem standing upright right away whereas before I walked pretty hunched over for a day or two. My biggest pain has been inside my stomach itself. All of my organs feel like they were used at punching bags and I feel some slight pain where I can only assume my Fallopian tubes were cut. Other than all of the crazy water-retention, I'm feeling really good. I get so swollen everywhere from all the fluids they pumped into my for the surgery. I could only wear my slippers for the first three days. I've been wearing a post-partem wrap to help squeeze out fluid, make my uterus shrink like it should, and to "hold things in". I used one of these with my last pregnancy and I loved the stability it gave me.

Our first family walk!

I will be doing photos at two weeks post-partem so that I can document my body's reaction to my approach to round two's "baby weight loss". Last time, I ran A LOT and tracked my calories and feel that I got too skinny too quick, which may have contributed to my having to cease breast feeding at 4 months. This time I'll be mostly doing CrossFit to gain/maintain muscle with some running mixed in. Instead of focusing on calories for my food, I'm going to focus on quality and make sure that I'm eating enough. It should be a fun journey that I hope you'll follow with me. :) Until next time, I'll leave you with an adorable picture of my girls!

Pregnancy and a Cancer Scare

I've been wanting to write a post like this for quite a while, but life happens. First of all, I'm now 9 months pregnant.  Eek!  I'm not really sure where the time has gone, but yet it has seemed like a long, miserable journey as well.  I guess it depends on the day.  I am not one of those people who love being pregnant.  In fact, I'm quite the opposite.  I think with my first to term pregnancy I was just so happy that I was able to continue in a pregnancy that didn't end in a miscarriage like my first two.  Pregnancy problems run in my family so I was concerned and really tried to "enjoy" or more like, embrace, my pregnancy with Baby E.  I had horrible back and rib pain but was still able to remain active.  I ran until I was 33 weeks pregnant and did some light yoga and weight training up until the end.  This pregnancy went from embrace to endure.  I know that sounds terrible, but with this second time of making it past 12 weeks I became more aware of the things I don't like about pregnancy. I'm not going to get into all of that now because I don't want to seem like an ungrateful whiner, but I do need to delve into this pregnancy a little bit more.  You see, everything is different about this go-around.  And here's why...

The C Word
When I was pregnant with E, my doctor had made mention of a small cyst on one of my ovaries.  No big deal.  A lot of pregnant women get them and they eventually go away on their own.  Fast forward almost three years to the beginning of this pregnancy and the cyst was still there or a new one had formed.  Again, I didn't think much of it until the ultrasound tech explained that it was about the size of my fist and couldn't understand how I wasn't haven't weird symptoms from it.  I've been having weird stomach problems for the last few years but I just chalked that up to my gluten and lactose intolerance.  The next time I met with my doctor, he addressed the cyst issue.  He pulled out the ultrasounds to show me the grey matter that was scattered throughout and that a normal cyst would just be clear liquid.  He said he had no doubt in his mind that this was a form of tumor, but whether it was malignant or not, he couldn't tell.  He actually said, "I can't look at you in the eyes and tell you that you do not have ovarian cancer.'  As I became numb to his words, he listed my options for surgery and the short time window we had to perform it because of the growing baby inside.  He also said that we could wait until my scheduled C-section at the end of my pregnancy to remove it but I would have to know that if it was cancer, 6 months could be the difference between my life or death.  I left his office and walked downstairs to my husband's office and repeated to him what I just heard and showed him the ultrasound of my now-tumor.  There I was, 30 years old with a two year old and another baby on the way and the most amazing husband and life going so perfectly...

Next came the research.  Shockingly, I had a lot more symptoms of ovarian cancer than I had originally thought.  Did you know that ovarian cancer is one of the most deadly forms of cancer because there is no reason to have your ovaries checked unless you are having symptoms, which in most cases, is too late at that point? So yes, this was all very Debbie Downer and I would have moments when I was watching B and E play in the living room and would have to leave so they wouldn't see me crying because all I could think was, "He is the best dad.  If one of us has to go early, I'm glad it's me."  Which then leads to thinking of all the wonderful things in E's life that I could miss out on.  I wish that I could say that if I was told that I may or may not have cancer that I would be strong and not let it get me down, but it's really one of those things that you can't say how you'll react until it happens.  I had a lot of fear in those days.  We went back and forth between risking the pregnancy to remove the tumor then or risk everything else by removing it later.  Luckily, we were able to use a few connections and have my ultrasounds sent to main gynecological oncologist in the state of Idaho.  He had emailed my husband that afternoon and said he hadn't had a chance to look at my ultrasounds yet but most of the time in cases like this, they wait to remove the tumor at the time of delivery.  About an hour later, I get a phone call from this specialist who is supposed to be the best in the state and the second he starts talking to me, I get scared.  He asks me questions about my family's history with breast/cervical/ovarian cancers and why it wasn't removed after my C-section with Baby E.  He even tells me that there is one part of the grey area that if it isn't cancerous now, it very well could be soon.  Scary.  Very scary.  I asked him what I should do and he gave me the doctor answer of giving me the options when I cut him off and flat out said, "If I was your wife, what would you tell me to do?'  "Remove it now."  Two weeks later I was in a room getting prepped for surgery.

So why the negative attitude and certainty that the news I would get would not be good news?  Well, I have this thing with dreams.  I've always been a very vivid dreamer at night and I remember the craziest details and some of these weird dreams would come true.  For instance, several years ago I had a very disturbing dream about an ex-boyfriend out of the blue and the next day, I had an email from him talking about how unhappy he was with life.  One time I had a dream where I was staring at this shape that was made out of two different shades of white.  That was the whole dream.  A couple of weeks later I fell off of a ladder while painting the ceiling at my sister's house and it was that exact shape and the two different shades were where I had painted and not painted.  Weird, right?  So in high school I had a recurring dream.  Well, nightmare really.  Every time I had this dream, I would wake up crying and in a cold sweat.  This dream was that I was married to a tall, handsome, blondish, successful man that I never could see his face and I was in a hospital bed when the doctor comes in and tells me that I have ovarian cancer.  I didn't even know that ovarian cancer was a thing then, I just knew the dream terrified me to no end.  Obviously there is more to the dream but that was the gist.  12-15 years later and I was afraid that that dream was going to be a reality.  When you have such a powerful recurring nightmare like that, you don't just forget it when a doctor looks at you and says that you may have ovarian cancer.

Everything went well.  They did have to remove part of my ovary to avoid blood loss and they had to go ahead and put me under general anesthesia because I guess I started moving on the table.  They reopened my C-section scar and checked out both ovaries and flushed out my stomach so they could check out my lymph nodes as well to make sure there were no abnormalities.  The baby is fine.  They sent the tumor to the lab and the spot that they thought was cancer, wasn't.  In fact, my doctor told me it was a strange gelatinous thing that he had never seen before but the tests came back not cancer and that's all I really care about.  :)  Phew!

The photo on the left was before surgery and the one on the right was after. No wonder I started "showing" so early! It was just my tumor.

To learn more about ovarian cancer and what the symptoms are if you are baffled like me as to why ovaries are not things to be regularly screened like breasts and cervixes, go HERE.

Focus On What You Can Control

"Focus on what you can control."

That is my motto for the day and will be for the rest of this pregnancy and into post-partem recovery. You see, I've been a Debbie Downer the last couple of weeks and here is why.

Kicking Ass and Taking Names

Three weeks ago I was kind of rocking this whole maternity thing. I had just taken some time off from working out due to a sinus infection and then a vacation to visit the hubby's family. I was worried about my time off and what that would mean for my workouts, but I came back fighting. I performed in the 31 Heroes WOD to honor some fallen soldiers and did shockingly well for my current pregnant condition. The WOD includes running with a sandbag, rope climbs, and some thrusters (squatting and then pressing a barbell overhead). Everyone made me feel so good about how I did and I thought to myself, "It really isn't that hard to stay active during pregnancy." 

That weekend I was in a 10 mile bike race to bring awareness to SIDS and even hauled my two and a half year old on the back.

 It felt so good to be active and able to still do the things I love. I know what you're thinking...you're thinking, "Oh, she over did it and gets hurt." Well, I DID get hurt, but not from CrossFit or riding my bike. I got hurt from doing something that every mother in America does when they help their toddler get dressed. I was bending over her to get her legs into her pants and she grabbed my arms and decided to hang on them. I'm a little angry with myself because I know better to stand bent over like that with a rounded back without my core tight. I mean, that's the whole point of learning good deadlift form, right? Needless to say, I've been in excruciating pain that has involved many massages (not the feel-good kind either) and now a chiropractor and I'm just praying everyday that the pain in my SI joint gets better so I can return to working out.

Now back to the title of this post...

I've been so frustrated to not be active. I hate going to The Pack and just foam rolling or sitting on a lacrosse ball. But today when I was in the shower I looked over at my Goal Board on the wall and saw "Focus on what you can control." So this is my take away: I may not be able to go running like I desperately want to or pick up a barbell at this point and chances are that this may be the way it is for the next 9 weeks of my pregnancy. However, I CAN control some of my mobility. I can keep working on my hips, ankles, and shoulders as long as it doesn't hurt in the bad way. I CAN control what I eat. I've been really bad about my diet lately since everything I eat seems to give me heartburn. Veggies in general (with the exception of tomatoes and peppers) will not give me heartburn so now is the time to load up on them. As "over this pregnancy thing" as I am, I got this. I'm going to focus on what I can control and *try to be somewhat positive about the rest.

A Moment of Weakness...

I know I haven't written in a while and I have a hundred other things to share about, but this is so fresh in my head (and stomach) that I thought I would share.

Finding out that you have a gluten intolerance is really crappy. Having to live through that while pregnant is even worse. When I first found out I was pregnant, I let myself eat whatever I wanted because I was bloated and felt like crap anyway. I quickly learned that clearly is the wrong path to take, especially while pregnant because it can cause less nutrients to get to the baby because my stomach is in overdrive trying to figure out what to do with the gluten. Again for what seems like the thousandth time, I said "never knowingly again" to gluten. I do have the occasional times that I've been glutanized unknowingly that I can tell within a couple of days because of the way my skin breaks out and how I feel lethargic and yucky.

Today I was in one of those pinches where I was running late to get home and have dinner ready so I ordered out. I was good at this point. I ordered a cheeseburger without the bun and everything. The problem was when we got home and my two year old refused to eat a perfectly good, mouth watering, grilled cheese sandwich. This is my favorite food so automatically I start reasoning on why I should eat it. It started out with "I'll take one bite and then make a big deal about how good it is so E will want it. One bite will not kill me." Then it turned into "Well, I already had one bite and she's still not interested so why not eat half?" Within seconds the thing was gone. As much as I would love to say that it was delicious, I can't even remember what it tasted like because I gobbled it up so quick. So how do I feel now?

Well, within seconds I was overcome with guilt and regret to the point where, if I was alone, I would have cried. Within minutes I had a new sore on the roof of my mouth. This could be coincidence but a lot of food allergies show up as sores inside your mouth. An hour later I feel sick. Sick like I ate too much and want to throw up. Sick like I just gained 10 pounds and inches in bloat. Sick like I made a few second mistake that will result in the next two weeks of misery. My coming days will be filled with stomach problems that I don't think you need me to go into great detail about, my jawline and neck being filled with painful cystic zits that are not poppable (meaning no enjoyment out of even popping them) and will probably cause me to shut myself in my house for a day or two when it is at its peak.

So what can I do to ease these symptoms? I'm starting off by taking a relaxing bath to let go of the guilt and ease some of my stomach discomforts. I'm also drink a cup of hot ginger-lemon tea which has known effects to help digestion and tummy irritants. I'll probably drink quite a bit of this the next few days. I'll also drink lots of water in the coming days to help flush out toxins. Eating as clean as possible (little to no processed foods) is a must as my stomach will be in healing mode. I'll still go in and WOD tomorrow morning even though chances are I'll feel sick and lethargic, but exercising makes me feel good and makes my body feel good.

And most importantly, I'll try to forgive myself and move on. I'll read labels and not let this spiral out of control. It's a setback to feeling good, but I will come back from this moment of idiocy.