Well, I've dropped a couple of nearly invisible hints that no one (with permission to mention it) seems to have noticed, and all friends and family IRL have been dutifully notified, so I'll just come right out and announce it, even if it means nobody will read the other two posts I wrote today:
Baby #4 is expected in late January!
There will be a larger gap than I originally wanted between Mary Jane and her younger sibling — she will be nearly 3 1/2 when baby X is born. After I met my weight loss goal, we decided, I needed some more time to learn how to manage my new weight. I am certain that was the right decision — my confidence was so much better in April than in November.
Besides, almost by definition, weight loss depletes your physical resources. A few months of solid, good nutrition at a stable weight seemed like a good foundation for a healthy pregnancy.
In many ways, this pregnancy feels like a first time. So many things are different: I am getting regular exercise, I am more physically fit than I have ever been in my life, I am eating a different diet richer in vegetables and fruits and lighter in starches and meat, I am starting out 27 pounds lighter than I ever started a pregnancy. Already at 8 weeks there are some obvious differences. I am tired and sleep a lot, but mostly in the afternoon and evening rather than all day long as in previous first-trimesters. I have a little bit of aversion to certain foods, but so far zero nausea and vomiting.
On the other hand, I am astonishingly stressed out and obsessed over the 3 pounds I have put on. My morning weigh-in is swinging wildly up and down and every morning it kind of freaks me out. Is anyone surprised? No, me either. And I am having some trouble figuring out what to eat, especially with the slight food aversion which is monkeying with the routines and meals I had carefully settled on in the past few months. I can't even look at a Brussels sprout, for instance.
I tried to find some helpful advice online by googling "pregnancy after weight loss". Not a whole lot out there, or at least, if it's there, it's a needle in a haystack of "weight loss after pregnancy" and "pregnancy after weight loss surgery." I'm beginning to wonder if I should be looking for pregnancy-and-nutrition information on sites for people who are recovering from eating disorders.
Anyway, coming into it I decided that a safe thing to do is mostly to eat how I've been eating, and add extra calories mainly in the form of yogurt. Because one of the ways my new way of eating shook out is that I don't eat nearly as much dairy as I used to.
So… let the expansion begin.
(UPDATE: Just in time, here's Alice Bradley's new website, Let's Panic About Babies. Check out the "ad" for slings in the right sidebar. Awesome.)
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