Just In Case You Were Curious About My Feet…

… They are almost completely back to normal.

The cankles are pretty much gone as well. Although, as you can see, I need someone to go to the nail salon with me and hold Lilian so that mama can get a pedicure.

It’s nice to look down and see my own two feet. It’s even nicer to be able to walk around pain-free.

Kristian keeps insisting that I need to step on my scale, but I’m not ready for that yet. I know that most of my weight gain was fluid, but I’m hoping that, if I wait long enough, the first number that I see will be less than 200 pounds. I only gained about 15 pounds through my first two trimesters and the rapid weight gain at the end went hand in hand with all of the fluid retention. But, like I said, I really don’t want to discover that I weigh more than 200 pounds. I don’t know why, I just don’t. It’s a bit of a moot point, anyways, as my scale is currently out of batteries and I have no desire to track down AAAs anytime soon.

I’m trying to walk as much as possible, both to get my strength back and for my own sanity. And I’m mostly eating healthy, but I’m not going to get too restrictive with my diet until I’m a little further down the road to recovery. I feel like I owe it to myself to take it easy for the first month. Being a new mom is hard enough without the prospect of counting calories.

My body is steadily deflating like an old balloon, which is a surprisingly nice feeling. Not only am I so much more comfortable now, it’s also a good reminder that I was only huge because of all of the water retention. Which is something that I knew all along, but was hard to internalize because I got so many judgmental comments from acquaintances and strangers.

And Miss Lilian? She’s thriving, which is the best news of all. We had another doctor’s appointment yesterday and she now weighs in at eight pounds and three ounces. The doctor was fairly impressed. She was also impressed with LJ’s neck strength, which is actually fairly remarkable. She’s not really floppy at all. Not bad for a baby whose due date is today!

She’s sleeping for four hour stretches now… but only during the day. I did sneak in a couple of naps yesterday and today, but this whole “sleep when the baby sleeps” business is not as easy as you’d think. I know I should be napping, but there are just so many things that I want to do when I have two hands available. Like eat lunch. And shower. And write boring blog posts.

I did have a fantastic nap over at my Mom’s house yesterday. We took a nice long walk and Lilian fell asleep in her infant carrier. We put her carrier in my Mom’s living room and then I curled up on Mom’s bed for a couple of hours, leaving Mom in charge. There’s something about knowing that somebody else is responsible for keeping your baby alive that makes for a deeper, more restful sleep. When I’m the one looking out for Lilian, I’ve always got my ears slightly attuned to her, listening to make sure that she’s not crying. When I know that there’s somebody else looking after her, I tune everything out and pass out completely. It’s a pretty rocking feeling.

I try to let Kristian sleep as much as possible at night, because I do get to sneak in naps during the day. But somewhere around 5:30 this morning, I had to wake him up and ask him to take a shift. I’d been feeding her and changing her since 3am with no break, and I just couldn’t keep my eyes open any more. To his credit, Kristian has been amazingly helpful in the wee hours of the morning, even when he knows that he has just a few short hours before he needs to be at work. I definitely married one of the good ones.

Good thing Lilian is so cute!