5 steps to losing weight the AP way

Image by bricolage.108 via Flickr

I was a size 6 before I was pregnant. I don’t know what size I was immediately after birth, I just lived in old sweats (hah!) but when Baby was about 8 months old I celebrated getting into size 8 jeans! Now, I am a size 2. That sounds tiny to me. I am one size away from the infamous size 0. How the heck did that happen?!

This is controversial I know. There are two kinds of mamas out there, I reckon, the ones who didn’t lose the baby-weight and don’t want to talk about it and the ones who did lose all the weight and dare not talk about it. Anyway, I am going to break rank and brave the topic even though I am on the skinny-cow side. I am not crazy skinny, so don’t go getting jealous or anything like that. I am actually a flabby (non-toned) size 2 – if that isn’t too much information! And I am spotty and have a big c-scar, remember, if you need it for balance.

I have not dieted (certainly not with the intention of losing weight) and I don’t do any organised exercise… at all. So how did I do it? I credit Attachment Parenting. Here’s the rundown of what worked for me.

Weight loss the AP Way:

1. Breastfeed at will/on cue: if your kid is anything like mine it will be a big challenge to consume as many calories as they are sucking out of us each day – and I, for one, love to eat! If I eat light for even a few days (and by light I don’t mean ‘less’ I just mean better quality/more greens, soups, salads, etc.) I find I automatically lose weight, without trying. This was especially noticeable in the first few weeks as my uterus contracted back into place, magically and seemingly overnight. And now, in the long term, I can see that breastfeeding is definitely linked to my new shape.
2. Co-sleep: … which basically means you continue to do the above – breastfeed on cue – even through the night! Ooops, I just dropped some more calories just thinking about it, I think- and certainly without trying.
3. Baby-wear: I have been pretty much exclusively wearing/carrying my baby since she was born. She is now 18 months old and at the 90% percentile for weight. I still carry her most places – if it is too far for her to walk or just easier to carry her. That has got to help, don’t you think?
4. Walk: not strictly an Attachment Parenting practice but it definitely falls squarely within the Natural Parenting movement, especially if it is used as a greener alternative to driving. I love walking. For the longest time there, especially when Baby was smaller and hated to be in the car seat, I would just go for long walks – sometimes one or two hours at a time – with her in my front pack. I am not super fit, but I can walk and, again, I am sure this really helped the weight drop off.
5. Eat Healthily: I try and eat as green, alkaline and fresh as I can… I am far from perfect, but I don’t eat wheat/gluten, dairy or meat and I limit refined sugar (the almost permanent stash of chocolate doesn’t count, right?!). The couple of times I got the flu, since Anya was born, I did nothing but eat ‘green’ for two or three days: all vegetable soups (with no carbs). I recovered quickly and I lost weight. You gotta be careful with this. You don’t want to lose too much weight when you are breastfeeding as it will affect your supply (it did mine) but eating healthily is always a good thing, to my mind.

So I lost lots of weight. Still, I want to acknowledge the role of luck in all this. This month I am this size, I hope it sticks but my love of eating has got me in trouble before, let’s hope I can keep balance, stay healthy and get way, way fitter so I can keep this trimmer figure which I am so enjoying (even now I don’t have the super-boobs, anymore).

Really this post should be about being healthy, the AP way. It is not about trying to lose weight, it is about doing what feels right for your family, going with the flow and taking care of you, too. If that so happens to bring a more optimised weight for you, hooray! I know plenty of hardcore AP mamas in all sizes and shapes. They nurse and baby-wear, eat healthy and still feel weight-challenged (and/or are happy and celebrating their womanly curves) so this is not a cure-all that works easily on everybody. But it worked for me. I guess now it is about finding what will work for you, but you can’t really go wrong with walking, breastfeeding and eating a diet with lots of fresh, green veg, can you?

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10 things I thought I knew about motherhood… and was just plain wrong about

Motherhood changes you. It changed me – in ways I did not see coming.

Before giving birth:

1. I was sure I was going to have a beautiful homebirth
2. I thought breastfeeding was easy and happened naturally
3. I was clear that Post Partum Anxiety was something that only happened to other women
4. I saw how much my friends who had children seemed to age suddenly compared to their pre-baby selves… but ‘knew’ that would never happen to me as I take my omega 3s and omega 6s. I’ll be fine, right?
5. I thought my baby would effortlessly start sleeping through the night from about 3 months or so, no?
6. I was planning to just strap my baby to me and go, to continue leading a life of travel and adventure – only, plus baby
7. I imagined my life with baby would be all bliss and butterflies, all the time
8. I expected I’d get so much done. It would be so easy staying at home: the baby would sleep for so much of the day that I could do some writing, some photography, get some chores done…
9. I felt moms who let their babies ‘cry it out’ were cruel
10. I imagined motherhood would be challenging but fulfilling

After giving birth and having a baby:

1. I discovered you have the birth you have. You can plan for the best, visualise the fairies and rainbows that are going to be present for your water birth… and then let go and let God take care of it. What will be will be and you are not in charge of it. That doesn’t mean let the medical establishment do what they will with your body and that of your unborn child – learn, prepare, take breathing and pain management classes and whatever else you can do to look this experience, this humongous life trial that only women can go through in the eye; don’t go into denial or pretend it will be easy (as ‘failing to plan is planning to fail’, as they say), do everything you can to have the birth you want… but know that ultimately you will have the birth you need as part of your own life journey.
2. It became clear that breastfeeding though it is completely natural is a skill that must be acquired. There is lots of information and knowledge that can really help you overcome all the barriers, fears and apparent pitfalls that will most likely come up for you. Arm yourself with this knowledge, it will serve you well. Read this. No, really, if you are pregnant or a new mom and have never breastfed before, READ THIS! It is too easy in this society (where formula feeding is so ‘normal’) to mis-read the signals, give into the fear that your child ‘isn’t getting enough to eat’ or that your kid is in some way suffering because your milk production or the balance of your foremilk and hindmilk are not ‘perfect’ and before you know it you are supplementing or even full time formula feeding even though that wasn’t your plan (if it was your plan from the start, that is your right and your choice and then this does not apply to you). I got through it but I had a few scares along the way and lots of awesome support from La Leche League and some pretty clued up, nursing-loving lactation consultants.
3. One in Three mothers have post partum disorders – one in three! I have mentioned before that I have Post Partum Anxiety. This is not easy to talk about for two reasons: it is taboo, we don’t talk about these things in polite conversation, right?; I hate being self-pitied and don’t want people to take this as a cue to treat me like a ‘poor little’ anything. I am strong, I am healthy. I LOVE my daughter and this is just a challenge along the way. I welcome support and love but say ‘no, thank you’ to people suddenly viewing me like I am different than they thought of me yesterday when they didn’t know. Ahh, well. I can’t control other people’s thoughts about me, right?! Anyway, the point is, before pregnancy I remember seeing sections about post-partum mood disorders in books and I literally skipped over them thinking, well this will never apply to me. Hah!
4. I saw photos of me and realised I look like I have aged 10 years since before I had a baby. My daughter is only 1.5 years old!
5. If you don’t sleep train them, many if not most babies do not magically start sleeping through the night by themselves. My baby is, as I say, 18 months old and still wakes up to feed during the night. I never thought I’d have her in my bed, either. I thought she’d sleep in our room, sure, but in her own cot or side-car. She was having none of it, though… so here we are, still co-sleeping and more than accepting of the fact that she is probably not going to sleep through the night until she is three!!
6. I learned. It turns out babies – especially the little ones – need attention 24 hours a day. No exaggeration. I realised what every mama knows, that we are lucky enough in those early months to do a pee on our own… and having a shower all by ourselves is pure luxury. As for travel and adventure, I found my priorities just shifted, completely unexpectedly. Suddenly risking even a mild bout of diarrhea for travel to some exotic corner didn’t seem something I was willing to put my tiny, sweet little baby through (I favour third world/wild country destinations, you see). She can travel when she is a bit older. Plus it turned out she didn’t like being strapped in a car and isolated. She is surprisingly fine in airplanes on my lap but road travel was out, therefore not only exotic but also close by destinations were out. So, here I am having shifted gear completely from a life of exuberant freedom (as it now looks to me) to the life of a suburban housewife… uh, what?!
7. I realised that though there is a lot of bliss (and some butterflies) but there are a lot of other emotions mixed in there, too. And now, 18 months into it, I welcome them all – but it was not always easy letting go of who I was and the feelings that came with struggling with what is now.  (see points 3 and 6)
8. I assumed when I wasn’t out being the change I wanted to see in the world (hahaha) that I’d be at home writing about it, or the like… and then the baby came and slowed me right down. Now, the only change in my day is to my daughter’s dirty diaper.
9. I still don’t want to let my baby cry-it-out… but I have a lot of empathy for those who do. The same goes for all kinds of parenting choices that I used to judge, oh, so flippantly. Now I take a minute, pause, and think ‘there but for the grace of God go I’. I am blessed with having an incredible AP support network (including all of you readers and fellow mama-bloggers) and some outstanding role models (starting with my mom who raised me AP before there was a name for it, it was just what felt right to her). Because of this, I hold certainty in my heart that even though it is hard – VERY HARD – I can do it. If my mom can do it, I can dig deeper in myself and find the energy, the stamina, the self-care to put my child first for just a little bit longer. Yes, I can keep on nursing even though it takes so much out of me, it almost literally drains me some days. Yes, I can keep on co-sleeping and being responsive to my child’s needs including through the night, even though that means I haven’t had a full night’s sleep in nearly two years – me who LOVES sleep and really does not function well without good rest. These things are not easy and I have, I confess, looked over the fence at those babies in their cribs peacefully sleeping through the night with more than a little envy on many a day. So I know, I know how easy it could have been for me to say, ‘I can’t do this anymore, I need help. I need rest. I need to sleep train my baby’. I haven’t done that… but I no longer think ‘evil’ mommies do it. Now I think tired mommies do it. Mommies lacking in support do it. Normal, loving mommies who would do anything for their kids AND need to be able to function through the day do it. I didn’t do it but I am no better, just luckier.
10. I have come to see motherhood is challenging – so much more so than I imagined. I often said, in the early months of mothering, that this is by far the hardest job I have ever done and I have done some pretty demanding and stressful ones. This is way harder than those of us that don’t live in extended families and haven’t had much contact with real babies (as opposed to the ones Hollywood puts on my screen, all cuddles and cute burps) often imagine. It does test you in ways you never saw coming. And it is also rewarding, far more deeply but also, frankly, in more prosaic ways than I would have guessed. It is some times the simplest little things that hold us enraptured – that she can hold a cup by herself, that she can say the word ‘sofa’, that she can pick out the sound of a guitar on a tune on the radio – crazy little things that would never have held any magic for me are now so beautiful they could make me cry. It is like I see life, this journey, our bodies, this planet in a whole new light and hold so much awe for each creature that is able to do anything. I see the cost and investment that goes into each life and then into each movement that new life makes… and I like it. I feel it. I breathe it in and everything above is just a blur of words from the mind of one dwelling in the heart, in love with her daughter.

Wordless Wednesday – Bre@stfe*ding Gallery

With thanks to my loving partner who took all of these – his photos (sometimes by commission), my edits. Thank you!

Even breastfeeding for a week is helpful!

Image via Wikipedia

This is a really lovely guide to some benefits of breastfeeding according to how long you do it: ‘if you breastfeed for four to six days…’, etc: peaceful parenting: If You Nurse Your Baby…. It does have a bit of a bias toward extended breastfeeding perhaps but nonetheless it does encourage and support women to breastfeed for as long as works for them and their families – knowing every little bit helps and we are all doing the best we can!

A great ‘natural parenting’ resource: Hobo Mama’s blog

I love me a bit of synchronicity, I do. Yesterday I sourced a photo from a flickr account called HoboMama of a mother breastfeeding a toddler. Today I stumbled across this: Hobo Mama, the blog. And I am so glad I did – her writing is clear, honest and well researched. She is a mine of information and links to other great bloggers. Gotto check her out.

Also, I noticed she has replaced the term ‘attachment parenting’ with ‘natural parenting’ which sounds so much better and really resonates with me – finally, a  title for this approach I love that I can really get behind.

How to become a hippy-mama in 20 easy steps!

Image by theqspeaks via Flickr

The ‘You know you are a hippy-mama (or papa) when…’ post has been updated and now has tons of links to websites with useful information about the various practices referenced from Elimination Communication to Baby Led Weaning, from the advantages of extended breastfeeding (for mother and baby) to the benefits of eating your placenta. So, if you didn’t know what the ‘eck I was going on about before, go here and find explanations for all the weird and wonderful hippy parenting practices of California – perfect for the beginner hippy-mommy!

You know you are a hippy-mama (or papa) when…

• you rent a birthing pool
• you are intent on using hypno-birthing over an epidural
• you have a doula or a homebirthing midwife
• you secretely wish Ina May could be with you at your child’s birth
• you know how to tie a moby
• you regularly wake up with a kick to the stomach or a baby ‘self-serving’ from your left boob
• your doctor speaks to you slowly (like you must be from a foreign planet) when you decline their vaccination schedule
• you have been carrying around a potty since your child was a newborn
• your baby’s first food is a big ol’ chunk of veg (not a puree)
• you have a pail full of stinky (cloth or compostable) diapers in your house
• you do a dance for joy when your kid does their first sign
• your child’s toys are Waldorf approved
• your back aches from carrying your one year old round in a sling
• you are always being told how cute your kid looks in that amber necklace
• you are breastfeeding a child who can speak in whole sentences
• you teach your kid that gluten is yucky
• you find yourself singing along to the ‘hello song‘… even though there is nobody else in the car
• you think Mayim Bialik rocks and that tiger-mom is a bit doolaley
• you think exposing your kid to germs is good for him but pesticides are hazmat
• you eat your placenta

How many of these can you tick? Frankly, two or more and you are a hippy-mamma! I know, I know, you don’t think of  yourself as a hippy… the question is ‘do other people?’

For the record, I am not the hippiest hippy in the valley, I tick 14 out of 20 of those. Now, fess up and leave a message if any of these sound like you :p  Feel free to add your own on, too!

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Edit [Jan/6/2013]: Yes, I went for sillyness here rather than full acuracy. My back never ached wearing my baby – who I continued to carry in an ergo until she was past 2, for example…

Green foods for the win – how we kicked Anya’s anemia

Woooohoooo! Anya’s anemia has been resolved (for now, at least).

After 6 weeks of taking the iron prescribed by the doctor we went for another appointment at the pediatrician’s and did a finger prick hemoglobin test. Anya’s hemoglobin level was 10.8. You will remember when they first tested it , it was 10.1. ‘Normal’ is 11 to 14.

I was happy with this new reading – her iron levels were going up and were almost normal…. the doctor was not. He said the levels weren’t raising fast enough. So he sent us to do more in depth blood analysis to rule out any possible conditions belying the anemia (such as Thalassemia, for example).

We could have gone straight to do the test that day but I chose instead to delay it by another week or so, to see if an extra push at home could bring Anya’s iron levels up. I was really unhappy with the iron the doctor prescribed. It is the standard pharmaceutical one – which is basically an inorganic form of iron which is very hard for the body to utilise. On top of that they add artificial sweetners and preservatives – why??? That is the first time I put such unhealthy stuff into my baby and prescribed by a doctor, no less. I mean, I really like our pediatrician he is a nice guy and very supportive but I think, like many doctors, he is not so much into reading the minucea of drug labels – as long as the iron is in there, he is happy. The ‘details’ matter to me. This is my daughter’s health we are talking about.

Normally, I would just march down to the health food store and buy a natural equivalent. That is what we did when the doctor told us, at birth, to supplement Anya’s diet (well, her breastfeeding) with Vitamin D. We followed his advice but went and got an all natural one. Unfortunately, I asked at the pharmacy and they didn’t have an iron supplement without additives (or at least without sweetners) and neither did Wholefoods – not for babies under the age of one! The closest I could find was a kids version of Floradix which clearly contains iron (based on the list of green veg and other ingredients) but does not disclose how much and is more centered on the vitamin content of its ingredients [I am assuming this is because toxicity from iron overdose is one of the leading causes of infant death – touchy subject, really]. In any case it says not to give it to children under the age of one. That is, I am guessing, because it contains honey which can carry the botulism spore. Adults high-acid digestive system will destroy this spore but babies’ under the age of one, will not. Anyway, the upshot is that there was no off-the-shelf, all natural, easily absorbable iron I could find for a young baby.

Why does this matter? The issue with the cheap form of iron the pharmacy’s will give you is that it is not the kind that is naturally occurring in food. The kind they give you is not easily recognised by the body as a food stuff/ nutrient and consequently is very hard to absorb, from my understanding. It causes constipation and the feces go very black – what is that doing to the poor little digestive system of my pure little baby? Naturally occurring iron is found in great concentration in foods that are absolutely not constipating like green leafy vegetables beans and avocado, for example.

So, I spoke to my dad (the natural medicines practitioner) and he suggested I give Anya a green food supplement. We went for Dr. Brock’s Power Plants. It is designed to be not only super-absorbable but also extremely alkalising to the body. This was perfect as, so far, Anya has been raised vegan (though neither of us, parents are – we just feel she is pure and should be given the chance to chose whether she wants to eat the flesh of animals who have been killed for this purpose and often raised for this, too – but that is a whole other post, really…)

We shifted to giving Anya much more of the green food supplement and pretty much phased out the pharmaceutical iron (which clearly wasn’t working that well, anyway). Then, onto the blood test about ten days later.

I have got to tell you the actual blood drawing was probably the most traumatic thing Anya has experienced since her birth. It was really horrible. It took 3 nurses to try and find a (tiny baby’s) vein and with me holding her down so she wouldn’t hand undo all their work. They had to stick a needle in her three times and it left humongous bruises. It was all rather stressful (I know much worse things can happen… but it felt like a bit of an ordeal – I am very blessed that this is our biggest challenge to date).

The results? Anya’s doctor phoned back a few days later to say she was completely in the clear. Her hemoglobin levels were now 12.5 and all other indicators were normal. What a huge relief. But wait, let’s do the math: so in six weeks of taking the pharmacy’s iron her hemoglobin level went up from 10.1 to 10.8 – that is 0.7 points. In about 10 days of taking the green food supplement it went up by 1.7. That means that in ten days it went up more than twice as much as it did in the previous six weeks.

Honestly, I haven’t researched the biology of iron absorption – perhaps it is cumulative and the horrid-iron did all the good work first and the supplement just came in at the last moment and stole all the glory… but it does not look like that. It certainly seems like it was the green supplement that did it, not least because the doctor clearly wanted it to have gone up faster in the first place and then seemed surprised it had gone up so much in that final stint. I have not had a chance to speak to him in person yet. It might be interesting to see what he has to say on the subject when we next meet.

In any case, my mother’s heart is now (temporarily at least) at rest. The doctor’s words were that ‘she no longer needs to take iron’. That is huge and a huge comfort. I can let out a big sigh and stop worrying so much about getting enough iron-rich foods in Anya’s diet, etc. I was becoming almost obsessed, focussing on a single nutrient above all others – which is clearly not good, either.

I am sooooo happy Anya is better, is responding to the natural iron and, all-in-all, as far as we know (knock on wood) healthy. Phew.

We have, of course, discontinued the iron-filings-style-pharmaceutical-concoction; we are, however, continuing to give Anya the green supplement albeit at a slightly lower dose. I can tell you her digestive system is certainly reacting a lot better now. I am taking it, too, as afterall the most likely cause of her anemia is that I am anemic too (and hence had little or no iron to pass on to her in my milk). Ironic (or symbolic, somehow) that Anya may have got sick because I am not taking good enough care of myself. If ever I needed a reminder… I need to stay well to care for my baby – both my and her health and wellbeing depend on it.

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Friendly disclaimer: this article is meant only to describe my personal experience and is based on my opinion. It is not meant to replace proper, professional medical advice.

Introducing ‘Free Childhood!’: a mommy blogger with a unique angle

Image via Wikipedia

I want to introduce you all to a mommy-blog I have been following called ‘Free Childhood‘. When scanning my google reader for blog updates I find my eye wondering to FreeChildhood to see if she has a new post. I don’t always agree with her but I always want to know what she is going to say next!

I mean, for example, she has a habit of trawling through twitter for people dissing public breastfeeding and then slamming them. This is, in a way, quite a horrible post. It is filled with negativity and conflict to the point that I found I didn’t want to finish reading it… and yet… the image of the militant-cyber-breastfeeding-activist stayed with me. It is not my style, I guess you know that by now, it is not my style at all. I am more of a live and let live kind of a gal.

I approach breastfeeding with naturalness and expect people to respond in kind and so far I have found they do. I tend to believe what you put out is what you will get. If you put negativity, paranoia and aggression out there then you will find it met by an equal opposing force. The Universe obliges and makes your world what you think it is…

Still as different as we are in how we react to the world, many of our basic beliefs are shared. We are both pro-natural-birth, pro-homebirth, pro-natural-breastfeeding, pro-child-centered-learning, etc. I guess my interest in her writing is akin to the fact that I am a big GreenPeace supporter even though they are all about in-your-face activism and I more favour meditation and prayer as a way to change first yourself and then the world. Somehow, I guess, supporting GreenPeace balances out my energy, a bit of yang to go with the (over developed?) yin I got going. So, it is with FreeChildhood that I find I just can’t look away, entirely.

I wonder if she is happy living this angry life… but then it is none of my business. This is how she is approaching her enthusiasm for natural mothering practices.

She is also way out there. Whenever I think I have found the limits of hippydom in motherhood I meet somebody new who challenges my thinking. FreeChildhood wants and is going for not only a home birth but an unassisted (or ‘Universe assisted’) birth. I had literally never heard of that. She finds the presence and practices of even a homebirth midwife too intrusive. I got to say, raised on Ina May as I have been, it never occurred to me to think of midwifery as intrusive, I just thought it was a natural, ancient, gentle support to birthing women. I had really never heard anybody say anything to the contrary, until now. Again, I may or may not support this view of hers but I am thoroughly fascinated by it. I kind of get it, too, but not sure I’d have the courage or inclination to see it through. I like the idea of some sister support through my labour, thank you very much.

Anyway, go check her out and give her some love. She is out there, fighting for us, for freedom to breastfeed in public, for unschooling, for ‘Universe assisted’ births and for generally doing it our way. You go girl. You got our back!

Continuum Concept – in practice

I came across this YouTube video the other day and thought it was really sweet and endearing, somehow. I like the simplicity and down-to-Earthness of the girl being interviewed. I also love her ‘day village’ concept. I realised I have one of those, a day village, shared with all the women who attend the parenting circles I frequent. Love them all!