When You Find Your Way Back Down In One Piece

So I wrote my last post about flailing and being miserable and then a few days later my dog died and I got a 20% salary decrease at work. Fun times.

It's actually helped me put things into perspective, though.

I don't really talk about work much (besides my ranting on Twitter) but I've been with my current employer for 6.5 years. I've been unhappy for quite some time but I'm paid extremely well to put up with a lot of bullshit. The salary thing is complicated (they didn't just arbitrarily cut my pay) but it's helped me see things more clearly. I'm looking for a new job and I'm excited to take my time and really find a good fit instead of relying solely on a large pay cheque to make up for stress / anxiety / bullying etc.

As for old Toby, he was a good pup who lived a long life. We brought him home when I was an angsty teenager and he lived to meet (and love) my two monsterpups and my boy. His health has been declining for the last year and the decline started progressing much more rapidly a few weeks ago. It wasn't a surprise is what I'm saying. It's silly but his passing is affecting me more than my Gram's passing back in October. Not in the degree of sadness - I'm not more sad about Toby than I am about Gram - but in the sense that it's making me acknowledge that life is short and I can't just float along aimlessly. Most likely it's because my grandma was old when I was born so she's always been old to me. I remember when we brought Toby home and he was just a cuddly little pup who fit on my lap. I won't get all circle of life here but witnessing his life and watching him grow into the crotchety old dog he was at the end has truly been beneficial to me.

So no money, dead dog - things aren't peachy but I'm trying to get there.

Sometimes I Need A Little Sunshine And Sometimes I Need You

I don't know what I'm doing.

I used to. I used to be confident in my relationship with Shawn. I was comfortable and secure with my close circle of friends. I was happy with my blog and my little blogging community. I used to know where I stood at work. I knew my place in the grand scheme of things.

And now I'm just flailing.

I flail from one half-assed thing to another, never actually completing anything or doing anything well. I neglect things and people and then am surprised when they disappear. I change my mind - wildly - and refuse to commit to a path and then lament my lack of clarity. It's insanity.

This isn't a pathetic call for love or support. It's just ... what it is. An acknowledgement of my own failings? Or something? A hesitant promise to change. That's what I'll call it.

Today I (tentatively) pledge to do better.

I'll Be Your Baby And I'll Take Care Of You

His shirt says heartbreaker and he is. He has big blue eyes and a plucky grin and just a hint of a dimple in each of his big round cheeks. He is growing so quickly.

Before Grady was born, I couldn't imagine wanting to stay home with a baby. My job was a huge part of my identity and I couldn't imagine giving it up. Now I'm trying to figure out how to do just that. How can I afford to give up my (stressful albeit) high-paying job? We live in a city where you can't buy a house for less than half a million dollars. We have a mortgage and bills and life is expensive.

I'm lucky. I know I am. I'm not going to complain about my job situation. I'm lucky to have my job. I'm lucky to live in Canada where 52 weeks of maternity / parental leave is the norm. I'm lucky that Canada allows either the mother or the mother's partner to take parental leave. I'm lucky to have a spouse who is as invested in raising our child as I am.

But it's hard. Two days a week I drag my tired ass out of bed (Sir is teething. There is no sleep.) and I try to nurse my sleeping baby without waking him. I kiss the top of his head and I leave him snuggled up and cozy in bed. I spend 20 minutes pumping breastmilk in the office bathroom, three times a day (breastmilk that my child refuses to drink out of a bottle or cup. Breastmilk that would be going to waste if I wasn't lucky enough to live in a city with a breastmilk bank.) Shawn drives Grady to my office (30 minutes each way) at lunch so I can give him a nice long feed. I endure snarky comments about spoiling my baby, judgments from non-parents and parents alike, and offensive remarks like the one about my son growing up with a breast fetish because I don't force him to drink from a bottle.

The other three days a week are difficult in their own way but are made much more easy because of my close proximity to sir. I sit on the floor of the nursery with my laptop on the floor beside the activity centre. I try to schedule my phone calls around Grady's nap so I don't have a giggly baby in one ear and a phone stuck to the other ear.

This two days in the office and three days at home work schedule is working. It's hard at times but Shawn and I are committed to making it work. We've almost worked out the kinks, just in time for everything to change again. We have four more weeks of this - tops - before I have to make a serious decision about being back in the office full-time or officially cutting back to part-time work (and a part-time salary.)

Shawn is currently on parental leave. Now, please believe me when I say I'm not complaining about Canada's maternity / parental leave system. I know that we're lucky. But our system doesn't allow for him to work part-time while on leave. Or rather, it does allow for him to work but whatever he earns is deducted from his benefits dollar for dollar. The way the system is set up discourages people from working part-time while on leave. I'm making a basic statement on what is a complicated situation but that's essentially what it boils down to. If I reduce my hours (and pay) to part-time, Shawn cannot work part-time while receiving benefits. Our benefits expire at the end of June. It doesn't make sense to forfeit those benefits (another quirk of our system is that all maternity / parental benefits must be claimed before the child's first birthday.)

So we're trying to come up with a plan.

On paper it seems logical for me to go back to work full-time. I have a higher salary than Shawn and my job is much more secure than his. But logic isn't dictating this decision. Logic flies out the window when I think of spending ten hours a day, five days a week away from this face:

We're trying. We're fumbling our way through, trying to decide what's best for our little family. We just want to be happy but somewhere along the way things have become very complicated.

It’s The Weight Of Love So Gentle In Your Arms

I gained 43 pounds during my pregnancy. I did not need to gain 43 pounds during my pregnancy. I did not start off grossly underweight. I was not carrying multiples. I just gained weight. A lot of weight.

In hindsight, my postpartum depression was not entirely postpartum. Things started to go downhill somewhere around my 34th week of pregnancy but at the time I attributed it to being huge and tired and achy and having a stressful work situation and moving to a new city (and, and, and.) I am not someone who loses weight when feeling blue. I am an emotional eater. I eat my feelings in the form of baked goods and sour candy.

I gained eight pounds in my last week of pregnancy. Yes, Grady was five days late. Yes, it was late July and I was retaining a lot of water. But still. Eight pounds in one week. At the time I didn't care because as I was standing on the scale hearing the nurse tell me my total weight gain for the week, I was actually in labour and had more important things on my mind. But thinking back on it now, I feel a bit icky. Eight pounds is a good-sized baby. Eight pounds is more than what my niece weighed at birth. I put that on my body in one week.

I spent my teen years and a good portion of my twenties hating my body. It's only been recently, as I've entered my late twenties, that I've been able to appreciate my body for what it is. That's not to say that my body issues magically disappeared. It will always bother me that my lower half is wider than my upper half. I will probably always appreciate my height while hating my long torso. But I managed to overlook the flaws and focus on the good. Until I got pregnant. No, until I gave birth. Pregnancy gave me curves and made me feel voluptuous and supple. My postpartum body made me weep.

A week after Grady was born, I was changing my clothes and Shawn said to me, "babe! You look three months pregnant!" in a congratulatory tone. As the tears started to flow, he quickly tried to fix the damage by saying, "no, it's a good thing! A few days ago you looked six months pregnant!" (And then I killed him. I am writing this from jail.) The thing was, I did look three months pregnant. And that was okay! I had just given birth! But I didn't feel okay. I felt huge and jiggly and more insecure about my body than I had ever felt before. I didn't know what to expect from my postpartum body. I still don't know what to expect from my postpartum body.

I hit my pre-pregnancy weight about six months after Grady was born. I had been hovering about five pounds above it for a few months thanks to no effort on my part (I'm not trying to be all pro-breastfeeding here but seriously, it melted away the pounds) so when I decided to cut back on sweets, it was a fairly quick and easy slide back to my pre-pregnancy weight. Which was great. Awesome! Cause for celebration! But also a little depressing. Because even though the scale told me one thing, the reality of my body is an entirely different story. I am jiggly in places where I never jiggled before. My abs are pretty  much non-existent. My once perky butt is now flat and saggy. I'm a mess is what I'm saying.

I've been participating in Jennie's Biggest Blogging Loser since January. I have been eating salads and cooking more and trying to avoid sugar and processed foods. I have gone to yoga once a week - every week - since October. I feel like I'm making the right choices. But it's not enough. I want to be proud of my body. I want to feel physically strong. I want to feel healthy. But ... I also want to wear a bikini this summer. And I kind of hate myself for that. I hate that vanity is playing any part in my attempt at a new, healthy lifestyle.

This is my long-winded and twisty way of asking how you approach your weight / health. Are you motivated by your appearance or something deeper? Have you ever struggled with a significant change to your body? How do I work to improve myself without feeling like my current state isn't enough?

I'm Losing My Mind Losing My Mind Losing Control

It's Leap Day today! Leap Day is supposed to bring you luck but mine started with my 40-minute commute to work taking over 2 hours because of snow and good goddamn if that isn't a crappy way to start the day I don't know what is. The snow can't ruin my day, though, because it's my dad's birthday. His 17th birthday, to be precise.

Grady is getting more teeth and there is no sleep at our house so my thoughts are jumbled and fairly incoherent. I've been neglecting this blog for too long, though. I resolved to post today so this is it.

Thank you all so much for your breastfeeding stories. I was so hesitant to write about breastfeeding at all because there are so many feelings out there; I didn't want to inadvertently be an insensitive ass. I find it all very interesting, though, in a way I wasn't expecting. I fully expected to fail at breastfeeding. I wanted to do it but I was sort of non-committal whenever my doctor or nurse would ask me if I planned to breastfeed. I planned to try, I would tell them. Now I'm all nursing this and lactate that. Want to talk about your cracked nipples and painful letdown reflex? I'm your lady.

I wanted to respond to each and every one of your comments but ... I don't know how. It's a damn miracle I manage to blog at all, I'm so technologically unsavvy. I am the unsavviest. I see blogs with wonderful comments sections where the blog author can reply under each and every comment and I want that. I want to do that so badly. But I don't know how.

So I'll just say thank you. Thanks for letting me ramble on in this little space of mine. I wish we were interacting over hot mugs of tea and gooey chocolate chip cookies but until that happy day comes, I'm glad I've got all of you in my glowing computer box (see? unsavvy.)

Let me distract you from my unsavviness with a picture of my adorable kid trying really hard to crawl:

I Am Milk I Am Red Hot Kitchen

I started this post to tell a funny (to me) story about something that was said to me by a male nurse but it turned into a word-vomit post about breastfeeding. The breastfeeding vs formula debate is not my fight. I respect everyone's right to choose what is best for their family and their body. 

I donated blood last week (O-neg. They love me.) After I signed in and had my iron checked, I filled in my donor eligibility questionnaire. One of the questions asks if you have recently been tested for HIV. I have recently been tested for HIV, so I filled in the "yes" box.

The next level of screening was talking to a nurse about the answers I submitted. My nurse was a young guy - really friendly and chatty. So we started going over my answers and we get to the HIV question. There's no room for explanation on the questionnaire - just a straight yes or no - so it's the nurse's job to get the history. I told him about how I'm donating my excess breast milk to the Vancouver milk bank and in order to do so, I had to go through a full screening process which included an HIV test.

(I realize that this post sounds a little "oh look at me and all my do-goodery, spreading my fluids around without abandon." (gross) But I promise, it's not. There's a point. I'm getting to it.)

The nurse was interested in the milk bank donating process so we talked a little about that. Which was fine. I mean, since giving birth to Grady I have become so whatever about discussing my body and bodily functions with medical personnel (and non-medical personnel. Sorry, Turtle! And thanks for letting me talk to you in extreme detail about my butt!) So we're talking about breastfeeding and breast milk and he asks me if I'm going to keep donating. Which confused me a little. I mean, it's not that big of a deal for me to freeze the milk that Grady doesn't drink (which is all of my pumped milk. Sir won't take anything that isn't straight from the source.) (The source is my boobs.) But then he clarified that what he meant was, am I going to keep donating breast milk once Grady is weaned.

You guys. I am so grateful that I am able to breastfeed. I love nursing Grady. I feel lucky to have an abundance of breast milk. I feel fucking awesome that I can donate to a milk bank and help other babies and mamas who are not able to breastfeed. But I am not a fan of pumping. I started pumping to relieve pressure (I have always been fairly small-chested so my giant breastfeeding knockers were painful to deal with at first) and now I pump to maintain my supply when I am at work. Honestly, I feel better about donating than I really have a right to. I mean, I would still have to pump even if I wasn't donating the pumped milk. I just freeze it and drop it off at the bank instead of pouring it down the drain.

I didn't know what to say so I didn't say anything. I have a lot of feelings about breastfeeding but I find it difficult to talk about because I don't want to offend anyone. I am 29 years old. My mom could not breastfeed me so I was formula fed from day one. My mom still feels guilty. Twenty-nine years later she feels guilty. She cried when she talked to me about it after Grady was born and we had successfully established breastfeeding. Breastfeeding - or not breastfeeding, whether by choice or circumstance - is an emotionally charged topic. So I don't talk about it. Or think about it. I just feed my kid, pump when I can't feed him, and drop the extra milk off at the milk bank.

Until I was in a blood donor pre-screening room with this dude nurse who innocently asked if I was planning to pump and donate breast milk indefinitely and suddenly I can't stop thinking about it. Once the silence stretched into awkward territory he started talking about how a woman's body continues to make breast milk as long as it's needed and how pumping would trigger my body to keep producing milk, etc. I just sat there with what must have been a stupefied look on my face because he suddenly just stopped talking about my breastfeeding goals and got back to my questionnaire.

I don't mean to make him sound like he was pressuring me at all because that wasn't the case. He was just genuinely curious about the whole thing and we were having a nice conversation until he managed to stun me. But he got me thinking. Could a woman continue to pump breast milk after her baby was weaned? Don't get me wrong, I'm not planning to pump after Grady is weaned. I'm just curious. The conversation made me realize that I take a lot for granted in my relationship with breastfeeding. I had an extremely rough first two weeks that made me question whether or not I could breastfeed my kid (two weeks that the wonderful ladies of the internet helped me get through) and then it was smooth sailing from there on out. I assume that I will be able to feed my kid for as long as I want to but that may not be my reality.

Basically I'm all twisted up over breastfeeding now and I'm curious to hear about other feeding (breast or formula) experiences. No judgements here - I fully respect the choices everyone makes for their own family - just curiosity.

This Shit Is Bananas

We started (unsuccessfully) with sweet potatoes and this weekend we moved onto bananas. We're not sure we like all these big changes just yet but we're keeping an open mind.