Hashtag New Mom Life

I have two friends that are also new moms and we communicate via text and Facebook almost daily.  It goes without saying there is a lot of talk about the New Mom Life. Savannah, Daddy, and I are finally getting into somewhat of a routine. However, those of you that have children know that the term "routine" is used extremely loosely, and I'm really shocked at how my Type A personality has adapted to the lack of schedule and structure. Reader's Digest version of what's going on with us these days…

Savannah turned a month old Saturday. WOW, what a month. The child hates to sleep. Yep, fights sleep every step of the way. Mom said I was the same way as a baby. This has been challenging, but mostly b/c of the time consumption spent with her. However, I absolutely love it, and I wouldn't trade it for anything. She's such a sweet and cute girl. 

Being that this is a running blog, and I promised to somewhat return the conversation there, here's my new mom life in regards to also being a runner.

I'm still running for time. However, I'm doing 40-45 minutes a day at easy pace still. I've been using the Garmin for the data, but have set the screen to only show the elapsed time. Funny thing- one day recently I decided to run what I thought would be a tempo mile. I was really pushing, and it felt hard, but good. Yeah… got home and checked the history… 7:37 pace. LOL! That shows you how out of shape I am. The rest of my runs are 8:00-8:45 pace depending on the day and the course. Sam and Robyn have come over a few times for us to run together. That has been really, really nice. I've missed them so much. 

I got cleared by the doctor to resume everything, including core work. Um, core work completely sucks post-baby. It's kind of like trying to lift something ridiculously heavy that you have no business lifting, like a CAR. Yep, holding my gut off the ground feels like I'm trying to lift an automobile. Because of this, I'm sticking to the post-natal yoga/pilates routine for another week or so. 

According to the doctor's scale, I'm 6 lbs from pre-baby weight. However, I've lost a ton of muscle strength. I've started using My Fitness Pal to track calories and nutrition. I'm not "dieting" exactly because I'm breastfeeding; meaning I need 500-750 extra calories a day. I'm using the app to track nutrition and as an accountability tool to not eat crap. 

It's easy to eat crap when you are up all hours of the day. It's really crazy that my schedule is not having a schedule. I stay up a LOT during the night. And then I try to catch a few power naps during the day when Savannah sleeps. Keith has been sleeping through the night b/c 1) he has to work, and the drive is an hour, meaning if he's tired it could be dangerous. 2) He can't breastfeed the baby; so I would have to be up anyway. Our schedule is kind of like this…

Baby wakes up for the day at 5-ish a.m.

I feed her, change her, and put her in her bear vibrating seat or her wrap (on me).

I make myself coffee and attempt to eat breakfast before she starts fussing.

Sometimes we go for a walk in the morning or she plays on her mat. 

She naps in the late morning, and I work on lesson plans, grade papers, or clean house.

She then eats, snuggles, hangs out until daddy gets home from work, unless we have appointments or somewhere to go.

If Keith gets home early enough, I go to XC practice.

Once I get home we eat, snuggle, etc, and we give her a bath.

Keith gets her to sleep for awhile while I go run and he cooks dinner.

We eat super late, like 10-11 p.m.

Keith goes to bed, and I feed her when she wakes up. She goes back into her crib until her next feeding around 2 a.m. 

After this feeding, I snuggle her on the couch until 5 a.m.

And REPEAT