How am I doing?

Next week it will be 5 months since I gave birth to the most awesome daughter on the planet.  Okay, I *might* be a bit biased. :-) How am I doing?

*Right now I am down 40 lbs from my highest pregnancy weight. That means I weigh about 15-20 lbs less than when I got pregnant!!  I certainly could have been in better shape/weight when I got pregnant, but I was not exercising, eating my unhappiness, and having lots of "fun" with Lupron so it's not too surprising that I weigh less now. I didn't use pregnancy as an excuse to eat all of the things so the 20 pounds that I gained during pregnancy came off quickly.  Currently I am stuck at a weight that is higher than I am happy with, but I'm not eating as healthy as I could be so I can't expect to lose weight unless I eat a bit healthier.

*Unfortunately, Biff and Harry the hemorrhoids are still hanging around. They don't cause any problems and are certainly a lot smaller, but still there. I'm hoping they decide to go away at some point....

*As I mentioned here, I do have some uterine soreness after running. I ended up emailing my doctor to ask if that was normal and she wants me to go in for an appointment.  Ruh roh.  Maybe I shouldn't have said anything?  

*I had hoped that I wouldn't be one of those people who had bigger feet after pregnancy, but it looks like I am one of the unlucky ones.  About half of my shoes still fit....the other half don't.  Thankfully I don't own 10 million pairs of shoes, but it is still annoying. Time to purge the closet and give away things that no longer fit!

*I pulled out a plastic bin of warm weather clothes last week and it was like I went shopping!  I was too pregnant to wear any of the clothes last year so I had forgotten that I even had most of these items.  The good news is even with the pouch I still have over my incision scar (and the chorus of friends telling me that it won't go away any time soon), most of the clothes fit (I think because everything but the pouch is a bit smaller than before).

*The good news about my weight being lower than when I started the pregnancy and that fitting clothes is that I am not feeling too down about my body. Sometimes I get down, but then try to tell myself that it has only been X amount of time since giving birth.  I do wish that I didn't have the stomach pouch and I do wish that my stretch marks on my stomach would start to fade to white, but neither of those things are happening, so I might as well just suck it up.

*Right around Izzy's four month birthday I started losing tons of hair.  I swear I could save all of it up and make a coat out of it after only a month!  I was sort of hoping this postpartum symptom wouldn't hit me because instead of having luxurious hair like you are supposed to during pregnancy, I had dry hair that felt like straw.  But sure enough, I am losing hair and have already been warned that when it does grow back I will have a ton of wispy hairs in the front.  Awesome.

*I'm pretty tired these days.  Izzy is sleeping through the night and is awesome, but there are just not enough hours in the day to get everything done!  I suppose my exhaustion could be a lot of things- breastfeeding/pumping burns calories so my body has to be working a bit harder every day, the lack of a husband the past two weeks because of his work travel, not getting a ton of down time, etc.

*Sex hurts.  Despite having a c-section.  Yes this sucks.

*Despite feeling tired, I'm also feeling pretty lucky.  I'm still amazed by the miracle of science that not only got me pregnant in a lab, but with my body for sustaining a healthy pregnancy the first time around.  My c-section was textbook with no complications. Despite our initial issues with breastfeeding, it is now going well. I also have been lucky enough to be able to run (forget about the uterine soreness).  So far, no postpartum depression. Yep, I'm pretty lucky.

*I was a little worried about what my bra size would be after pregnancy because the two bras that I bought after my rib cage started to really hurt during pregnancy were size 42H!  My largest band size when I was at my heaviest weight was 38 so I was worried that I would always be in the 40s post-pregnancy.  During my maternity leave I only wore soft nursing bras for fear of clogged ducts and other problems, but once I started work I started to wear my underwire pregnancy bras again because they at least fit my cup size (unfortunately they are not nursing bras though so sort of annoying to deal with when nursing/pumping). I finally took a few minutes last week to get sized again and to buy an underwire nursing bra and my current size is 36GG.  So still ridonkulously huge (cup-size wise), but at least my band size is back to normal. 

*It's funny.  I was thinking the other day about how, even over a year after finding out that I was pregnant, I still check the toilet paper in the bathroom.  During pregnancy it was to make sure that I wasn't bleeding.  Then for the past five months it has been to check if I was getting my period back.  This week, after a year and two months since my last period, I don't have to check anymore.  Boooooo.  I was hoping not to get it at all while I was breastfeeding, but I guess almost 5 months is pretty good.