Weighty Matters

This is all about weight, nutrition, dieting, and other matters.  So, you know, not exactly scintillating.  Read if you like!

When I left the hospital with this kid, I had lost only ten pounds.  I found this odd, since the baby was almost ten pounds himself – what about the weight of the amniotic fluid, the umbilical cord, the [the rest of this is redacted for your benefit, but you get the idea]?  A couple of days after we got home, when my hands got large and prickly/numb and my feet turned into ginormous boats stuck at the end of a leg with absolutely no ankle at all, I understood.  Fluid retention’s a bitch, man.  (I’ve never had IV fluids during delivery before this one, which probably explains why this is the first and only time my extremities swelled.  At least that’s what WebMD says, and if it’s on the internet it must be true.)

Anyway, I drank copious amounts of water, walked as much as my non-bendy ankles would allow, and put my feet up whenever I sat.  The swelling went down after 24 hours and I lost 8 more pound overnight.

So at this point I’m only 5 pounds above my pre-pregnancy weight.  Since the Death of Thyroid put me 15 pounds over my norm, however . . . [MATH] . . . I’m 20 pounds over where my norm used to be, before my pregnancy with Liam.  I have a closet full of pants that I’d love to wear again, which I could probably manage if I could even shave off 12ish of those pounds.

I’m 2 weeks postpartum, so there’s obviously no dieting or exercising happening at this point – right now I’m just trying to slowly wean myself off of my bad habit of compensatory eating.  (i.e. – no sleep last night?  compensate with a cookie before nine am.  Boobs hurt from nursing?  Compensate with a glass of wine and some cheese and crackers and maybe some chocolate when that doesn’t satisfy.  Older boys driving me nuts?  Eat that ice cream right outta the carton, I deserve it.)

Anyway, I will continue on my mantra of “healthy, not thin” as a goal.  But since I gained very little over the course of this pregnancy, compared to the other two pregnancies and compared to my body’s metabolic performance after the Death of Thyroid (let’s call it DoT for short), I am trying to anticipate what’s in store for me now, weight-wise.  Will my weight go back to being a wild stallion bolting out of the barn, trailing me after it, as it did after the DoT?  Or will it stabilize at all?  I’ve also pondered my pregnancy diet, and how vastly different it was from my post-DoT diet.  Post-DoT, in an effort to control the dizzyingly fast weight gain, I had eliminated all full-fat dairy, most meat, most sweets, trimmed back the alcohol, and was starting to lose carbs (like pasta and potatoes).  I also worked out like a banshee, counted calories on an iPhone app, and all in all just paid a LOT of attention to my inputs and outputs of energy – all to very little effect.  Then I got pregnant, and threw up a lot, but eventually when the appetite returned I craved beef (other meat was acceptable, but a non-meat meal made me nauseous), chocolate 2% milk, 2% Greek yogurt, and huge servings of veg and fruit and starches like pasta and potatoes.  Sweets made me nauseous (though I still ate them, because breaking the “food-reward” link after 35 years of having a sweet tooth is almost impossible), but so did skim milk or fake butter or 0% yogurt or french fries.

I didn’t exercise at all and followed my cravings, especially because it was nice to crave food after months of nausea and barfing.  And even after the appetite returned and I was able to eat again, I never really gained a lot of weight – 25 pounds total, 10 of which was Craig, 10 of which was fluid and other structures.

So was it the pregnancy and hormones that reigned in the metabolism?  Or was it the diet?  I wonder.

We’ll see.  In the meantime, the Beab and I have to go get HIM weighed at his 2 week checkup . . . here’s hoping all of this endless nursing is making him grow grow grow!