Hellobee

After my first pregnancy, I assumed with some regular workouts and enough time, I would lose the extra baby weight. I only wanted to lose 8 lbs. It doesn’t sound like much, but it bumped me up to another size, and many of pre-pregnancy clothes didn’t fit. I joined a Stroller Strides class and loved and gained muscle tone as well as fun friendships. However, the baby weight wouldn’t budge. I was patient. It took nine months to gain the weight, and I gave myself nine months to lose the weight, but it never happened. I bought clothes in the next size up and decided not to worry about it.

After my second pregnancy, I gained even more weight and wasn’t exercising at all because of the worry about our little guy’s health. Six- months postpartum, I was 25lbs heavier than I wanted to be. I’ve always been active but I felt too tired to play sports, and didn’t have the energy to play with the kiddos. It was also really discouraging not to fit into any of my pre-pregnancy clothes. It was summertime, and I was still sporting my maternity swimsuit from last year. I took daily walks with the kiddos, swam at the pool, but that was about it for exercise. Again, the weight didn’t budge.

I resolved to try and be healthier that fall. BeBe would be back in preschool giving me a time to jog with the baby in the stroller. My husband would be on a better work schedule which would free up my time.

That fall I lost all the baby weight and then some. I was surprised because I didn’t feel like I had done anything different from when I tried to lose weight after my first pregnancy. Both times I had eaten healthy and exercised, but I realized two factors made me successful this time around.

The first factor was sleep. BeBe was a colicky baby and continued to have a horrible time with sleep. For the first two and half years I was so tired I felt like a zombie. When she was one-year- old, I started going to the gym after she went down for the night. I would start running and five minutes in to my exercise I was yawning. I was desperate for sleep. At the time my husband had to leave for work in the middle of the night and sleep during part of the day, so I was never rested.  In hindsight, the lack of sleep was a significant barrier to my weight loss plan.

Our little guy, so far, has had a much easier time with sleep and his sleep patterns are more predictable. I thought I would be more tired with two kids. However, with BeBe sleeping better and our little guy sleeping through the night, I have so much more energy this time to exercise. (I hope I don’t jinx his sleep by writing this)!

I need lots of energy to keep up with these two.

The second factor that helped me lose baby weight was our family prioritized my exercise time. I started jogging to become healthier, but I was also so frustrated trying to do feeding therapy with our son. Running became a tool to manage my stress. My husband understood how hard I was working with our son and how stressful it was. Neither of us wanted me to get burned out working with our little guy, especially because we didn’t know how long and intensive his therapy would be. We both agreed on prioritizing time for me to run. As soon as my husband walked in the door each evening, I would take off for a quick run with no kids. Even BeBe knew this was mommy’s special time to recharge.

After my first pregnancy, I didn’t prioritize time for my health and exercise. I just tried to fit it in my schedule when I could. When I did exercise, I usually had BeBe with me so I was constantly stopping to attend to her. Having two kids has forced our family to be more deliberate in how we allocate and schedule our time, including exercise time for me.

Realistically, my weight will probably always fluctuate, but I feel like my old self, able to play sports and chase the kiddos. My next goal is to work on muscle tone. After two pregnancies and getting older, the muscles in my back aren’t as strong. My kiddos will be growing bigger and crazier, and I want to have the strength to pick them up for many years to come.