Busy Monday!

Today was a big day!  I returned to work after having 9 weeks of maternity leave, Macy is 9 weeks old today and I weighed in this morning.

After spending the last 9 weeks home with Macy, and a big part of that time home with Kara and Joe too, it was hard to go back to work today.  Especially because I got sick this weekend and am feeling pretty miserable.  My co-workers were kind enough to fill my cube with latex balloons.  I should probably mention that I have a strong fear of latex balloons...

And of course we had to deflate all the balloons, I wouldn't allow them to pop the balloons, cause I'm scared of that!  So we very carefully deflated them.  I was told there were about 300 balloons!!

So I survived my first day, although, I don't really remember how to do my job yet, so I should probably figure that out in the next few days.

My little baby girl is 9 weeks old today!  Joe sent me some cute pictures of her while I was at work, but I can't seem to download them from my text messages...  Macy is such a good baby!  She is sleeping through the night, usually from about midnight to 9am!  I don't know how we got so lucky to have 2 good babies, but I'm not going to complain about it!  Over the last few weeks she has started to smile and coo a ton.  She loves her big sister, whenever she sees her she starts smiling and talking, it's so cute!  We bring her in on Wednesday for her 2 month appointment, I can't wait to see how big she has gotten! 

Monday is my official weigh-in day.  I am down 2.5 pounds from last week and a total of 8 pounds so far!  Woohoo!  I like those numbers!  I have now lost 25 pounds of the 50 that I gained while I was pregnant.. hopefully those next 25 will be gone within a few months!  

Last weekend we had some pictures taken with Auntie Em, here are a few for you to enjoy :) 

Day 3!

Today is day 3 and I am still going strong with calorie counting!  It's ridiculous how quickly the calories add up once you start counting them!  I am trying to get back into the swing of this and trying to remember old foods I used to eat that were healthy, low in calories and kept me full.  Once I get used to eating healthy and smaller portions it's not so hard.

Tonight I went to the grocery store and loaded up on fresh produce and some healthy snacks.  When I got home I made some chicken stir fry with broccoli, red pepper, onion, carrots, pineapple and brown rice, it was pretty good, but the recipe for the sauce included quite a bit of soy sauce - I'd definitely use a different sauce if we make this again!

After dinner I made a bunch of pre-packed snack bags - I think snacks are always the killer to me counting calories, I think I'm hungry and end up eating something I shouldn't have, I'm trying to avoid that by planning in advance!  For my snack bags I counted out pieces to the correct serving size and wrote the # of calories on the outside of the baggie, so rather than sitting down with a bag of potato straws, I can quickly and easily grab a pre-packed bag and know that it is 130 calories.  I also did some dry-roasted peanuts, dark chocolate almonds (not the kind dipped in chocolate), pretzels, celery and broccoli.  I only have one more week of maternity leave - so I hope I can get in some good habits before I go back to work!

I haven't worked out in the last two days.  Yesterday I was too sore from my walk/run the day before and today I really did plan on going to the gym or working out at home, but it's 9:00 and I am just sitting down!  I started cleaning closets in our bedroom today - I cleared out so much stuff and have so many bags ready to donate, it's ridiculous how much stuff we have!  After cleaning I went to the grocery store, brought the groceries in and put them away, made dinner, cleaned up dinner and made my pre-packaged foods... all while helping Joe take care of Kara and Macy... I think I had enough packed in to today!

Alright, that's all for now!  Hoping to get some exercise in tomorrow!

Day 1.

Yesterday was day 1 of my life transformation.  I'm not calling it a diet, because it's not.  I want to make healthy changes to have a healthy life, but obviously the goal of this life transformation is to lose weight, feel better and be healthy.

I am still holding on to about 30 pounds of pregnancy weight.  I have lost this weight before, so it's kind of frustrating having to lose it again, but I know that if I don't make changes that this weight will never go away.  And I know that I have done this before so I can do it again!  It's also hard starting to workout again.  I quit exercising while I was pregnant, so I am pretty much starting all over with that too.  It's frustrating having to start from square one with things that I used to do on a daily basis, they are harder to do now both because I am out of shape and I am 30 pounds heavier than when I was doing them before.  But, I started somewhere before and made it to the level that I was at, so I know that I can do this and get back to where I was.

To make these changes I am back on the calorie counting train.  I lost about 80 pounds counting calories before, so I know this is an effective way to lose weight for me.  I have been messing around with the apps My Fitness Pal and Lose It to track my daily caloric intake.  I think I am leaning towards My Fitness Pal to be the one for me.  With My Fitness Pal it is so much easier to find foods in their library, I can easily find homemade foods, store bought foods and easily add my own creations.  With Lose It I have found it very difficult to find foods - I can't just type in 'peaches and cream oatmeal' and find it, everything is categorized funny.  It is easy to find things by using the barcode scanner, but you don't always have a barcode to scan, and My Fitness Pal also has this feature.   And the deal breaker... My Fitness Pal has beer in their food library, even Surly!  I know I shouldn't be drinking beer while I am trying to lose weight, but you better believe if I have calories left at the end of the day, I will be drinking them!  You can have 'friends' on My Fitness Pal, so if you're using it too, find me kristinlien04.

I also joined the gym again!  They had a deal to join for $14.99/month and if I go 8 times a month I will get reimbursed $20/month by my health insurance, so I'll be making $5/month.  Can't go wrong with that!  Yesterday was my first attempt at running on a treadmill.  It was slow, but it was a start!  When I first tried running 2 years ago I couldn't run for 60 seconds straight.  After nearly a year off of running I am pretty much back to where I started at.  I did manage to have a couple of 2 minute and 2.5 minute stretches, which I consider a success!  I did 3 miles in 45 minutes, extremely slow, I know... but I did it!  The treadmill that I was on was acting kinda funny, so it made it hard to run... every time I increased the speed the belt would slip. I have to make sure not to get that treadmill again!  I am using dailymile.com to log my miles, if you use it, be my friend!  My DailyMile profile

I will be doing my official weigh in every Monday.  But I am a freak and like to weight myself daily.  I know some people say not to do this, but it keeps me in check with where I am at, so I do it!

My first goal is to run the Get in Gear 5k on April 28th, and to be down about 20 pounds by then.  The run is 12 weeks away, so that should be plenty of time to drop 20 pounds and to get myself prepared to run.. wish me luck!

My overall goal is to fit into all of my pre-pregnancy clothes, and for them eventually to be too big for me!!

I know this will be a daily struggle, but I need to remind myself that it's worth it.  I am ready to enjoy clothes again, to feel confident, to enjoy exercising.  Every day is a struggle, but I feel so much better at the end of the day when I know I stuck with my plan!

This about sums it all up for me:

I also have a pinterest board for all these lovely motivational and inspirational quotes to keep me going.. feel free to follow it!  Post Pregnancy Body board

Quick Post...Huge Milestone

I just need to document a huge milestone! Last night Macy slept from about 10:30pm to 7:00am!! Woohoo! Let's hope this will be a regular thing. I'll be going back to work before long and I would love if she could keep this up and let momma get some sleep. And on that note, I am off to bed. Sweet dreams!

Where has the time gone?

I thought my maternity leave was going to be a nice, relaxing time at home with my baby girl.  I thought I would be able to catch up on housework, get things organized, keep my blog updated, keep up on pictures...boy was I wrong!  Macy will be 5 weeks old tomorrow, I have had 5 weeks off work and I feel like I have been off about a week!  Christmas is a complete blur, did it really happen??  We have been so busy and I feel like we are just getting into a routine, barely...  So here is a little update of what I remember from the past 5 weeks!

When Macy was 4 days old we had to bring her to Children's Hospital Heart Center to have an EKG and an ultrasound of her heart.  While I was pregnant with her her heartrate was always very high and after she was born she had a murmur, so her doctor wanted to be sure that it was a normal murmur and nothing to be worried about.  Macy did really well hooked up to all those machines and in the end it was found that she had 2 small holes in her heart, but they are nothing to be worried about.  It's possible that one of the holes will close over time.  We go back when she is 2 months old to have her checked again.  Another thing that happened while we were here - they measured Macy and found that she was 18", but she was measured 21" at birth... so yeah, pretty sure that her length listed on her birth certificate is wrong.  At 3.5 weeks she is only 19.5 inches, oh well...

While we were at Children's we also had to go to the lab area to have her blood drawn to check her bilirubin levels since they had been elevated.  The results came back very high!  Her numbers went something like this from the day she was born 8.5 - 13 - 16.4, so they were rising, and rising pretty quickly.  It was determined at this point that she needed to have a biliblanket to help break down the bilirubin in her system, so a biliblanket was delivered to our house that night.  We hooked her up to the blanket and had to go back to the hospital on Saturday (the following day) to have her blood drawn again.  Let me tell you this - having blood drawn from your tiny little newborn baby is the hardest thing to watch!  And she had to have it done day after day.  So we stopped at the hospital on Saturday hoping for a real quick in and out visit.  First of all, we couldn't get to floor 3 where the Children's lab was.  No one mentioned to us that the Children's lab was closed on Saturdays.  After wandering around trying multiple elevators and not being able to get to the third floor we finally found some people to ask and found out that we had to go to the lab downstairs.. ugh!  Why do things have to be so difficult?  Her levels from this day were up to 17.8 - so she got to stay on the biliblanket for at least another day.  She ended up being on the blanket for almost a full week.  Finally on the following Wednesday her levels were starting to go down, so the doctor decided that she could come off the blanket.  Saturday was also the day of the Adams' Family Christmas - so after our adventure at the hospital we drove out to Ramsey to celebrate Christmas and let Macy meet the Adams' Family.  Christmas was a lot of fun and both Macy and Kara did great - thank goodness for Aunty Em keeping an eye on Kara for us!! :)

Macy in her biliblanket

At 6 days old Auntie Emily came out to our house to do Macy's first photo shoot.  Of course this is the day that Macy decided she didn't want to sleep, because we wanted a sleeping baby in pictures.  It's ok though, cause Emily got amazing pictures as always!

One of my favorite shots from the photo shoot

You can view all the images here

At 8 days old I had commented to Joe that I was so proud that we hadn't had to supplement any formula for Macy, she was 100% breastfed - which was huge cause I had some serious troubles breastfeeding Kara.  I was really proud of the fact that breastfeeding was going so well.  Yes, it was hard when she wanted to clusterfeed and be attached to me for hours at a time, but I knew that that was an important part of supply and demand, and I knew that breastfed babies should be fed on demand, so I dealt with it.  Then day 9 rolled around.  I had horrible chills to the point that I was shaking uncontrollably, my whole body ached, I felt completely miserable.  I would go from having the chills to being incredibly hot and sweaty, it was horrible.  After the second day of feeling like this I knew that I had mastitis.  Mastitis is what made me quit breastfeeding with Kara.  I got it when she was about 4 weeks old and it killed my supply, I tried for 2 weeks to build my supply back up, but it wasn't happening, so I gave up.  I was able to continue breastfeeding and pumping with Macy and made it through the 10 days of antibiotics and was still breastfeeding.  We did have to start supplementing with 1 or 2 bottles of formula a day, but for the most part she was getting breastmilk.  And then 1 week after finishing the antibiotics I started feeling really sick again, it came out of nowhere, but I knew instantly that it was mastitis AGAIN!  UGH!  This happened on a Friday night, I figured I would just call the on call Dr the next morning and get an antibiotic, well guess what, apparently the answering service for my doctor's office doesn't take messages on the weekend for prescriptions.. WTF?  They wouldn't let me leave a message, they told me I could go to the ER or wait until Monday.  I am still a little pissed about this and plan on talking to my doctor and the clinic manager, but I haven't had time for that yet.  I am almost done with my second round of antibiotics, and I'm really scared to be done with them, I just have this feeling that I am going to get sick again right when I come off them...

Other than all of the above, life has been great with two girls.  Macy is a great baby.  She really only cries when she needs a diaper change or needs to be fed, she sleeps good at night, she is just a good baby!  I really love the newborn stage, they are so cute and snugly, I could snuggle her all day long!

Kara is an amazing big sister.  When she came to the hospital to meet Macy she couldn't get in the room quick enough - she couldn't wait to hold her, it was adorable!  She loves to hold Macy, help me wash bottles, she brings Macy toys, blankets, pacifiers, etc..  She calls her 'her baby' and you can't just say that Kara is her sister, you have to say 'big sister'.  She does great with Macy, but has been acting out towards Joe and I.. for the most part she is good, but she definitely has her bad moments, which is to be expected I guess.

At 5 weeks post partum I have lost about 18 of the 50 pounds that I gained.  So now I get to try to lose 30 pounds, that should be fun!  I want to try to get into running again, I'm thinking I'll start the couch to 5k program as soon as I can.  I don't have a gym membership anymore, so I will have to run outside, and that's no fun when it's cold and icy.  Eventually I will get back into all my pre-pregnancy clothes, until then I will continue to wear the one pair of jeans that fit me every single day :)

Me and my lil babe

Joe will be laid off as of Tuesday.  It will be nice having him home more, but it will be hard living off two limited incomes.

Joe with Macy on her first visit to Surly Brewing Co. 

Macy in her Surly shirt