Diastasis Recti Update - Almost 4 Years Later...

Friday, February 24, 2017

It has been a while since I have posted anything to this blog (Hi everyone!! :-).  Crazy how the days turn into weeks turn into months turn into years when you have an almost 4 year old, work full-time, and own a fixer-upper house.  I have been getting many requests, via email or comment, that readers would like an update on the diastasis recti (DR) issues that I have faced since giving birth in 2013 so here goes nothing…

I am still fighting the fight, both physically and mentally.  Some days are better than others.  I am still incredibly insecure about my mid-section and I pretty much like to conceal it at all costs, especially at work.  I got tired of the constant stares and questions, so for the most part I wear lots of flowy types of blouses, wrap dresses, forgiving dresses, black, Spanx, etc.  

I still hate being naked and/or partially naked (i.e. a bikini) and I am constantly thinking about how unsightly my stomach is, how I hate my outtie belly button, and how the constant flexing of my ab muscles is so tiring.  I'm positive that this affects my sex life, especially in the 1.5 weeks before I get my period and I look like I am 6 months pregnant (or at least I feel like that's how I look).  I don't feel attractive and it is all because of my stomach.  My husband claims that I still look hot, but I'm not sure if he is just saying that to not make me feel bad (and because he'd still like to get some and is willing to ignore this...haha).  Sound familiar anyone??

Every year when I visit my GP or Gyn they ask me about hernia/stomach and whether or not I am going to get it fixed.  My answer is always the same... "Yes, I would LOVE more than anything to get it fixed, and I am like 99.99% positive I am one and done, but there is that .01% chance that I might change my mind so I'm leaving the door open for now."  Then they look at me like I'm nuts, smile and nod.

Lately I have been doing lots of research on getting my abs sewn back together and the hernia fixed because I am getting to the point where I feel like I either need to get it done and need to give up completely on the idea of ever having another kiddo (I could write a really long post about this, but I'll spare you all) or need to give up on the idea of ever wearing a bikini again.  I have a GYN appointment next week and when they ask me, this time I am going to ask a few more questions than I normally do: Is it cover partially/fully by insurance?  If not, how much is it?  What is the recovery like?  Will it be a full on surgery (similar to my c-section) or will it be laparoscopic?  Will I be able to eventually do core workouts again?  If I did, by a freak accident, get pregnant again, would there be any risks?

I'm sure you'd all like some pics to understand what I am talking about.  Full disclosure - besides me having a serious lack of a tan right now, I am a day or so before ovulating, so I am not super bloated like normal and it is the AM in all of these shots.  If you have DR, you know that by EOD, and especially depending on what you ate, your mid-section looks way more pregnant-like in the PM than in the AM.  I am flexing in the pics on the right and relaxed in the pics on the left.  I measured today and my DR is about 2 fingers and definitely the widest right at my belly button.  If you put a large diamond cut-out right over my belly button, that would look like the gap that I see.



Here is a little update on what I have been doing to, at the least, remain in decent shape.  While I am not training for any marathons, or even any races for that matter, I am still running a lot.  I would say I run between 25 and 35 miles a week, with my average being about 30 miles.  I do it to stay in shape and because I always seem to feel better mentally after pounding the pavement for an hour.  I also, on occasion, lift weights in my basement or do a rowing or CrossFit type of workout that my husband gives to me when the weather is crummy and I am just so sick of the treadmill.  I work out about 5-6 days a week and aim for 12k steps a day.  I haven't been doing any types of core strengthening exercises, probably because I have found the programs boring and not incredibly helpful.  

While I do not eat strictly Paleo anymore, I still eat very healthy.  I try to remain as low carb as possible for most of the day, but I usually allow myself a treat each day.  That might be a glass of wine, some organic candy, some tortilla chips, a donut (my vice!), or sometimes a few treats in a day.  My diet consists mostly of fruits, veggies, organic and/or grass-fed meats, fish, nuts, egg whites (b/c I hate the yolks still!), EVOO/coconut oil, and black coffee.  I eat very little in the way of regular dairy, processed foods, sugar, wheat, gluten, etc.  

BEGIN RANT: Oh and I should also mention that I am cresting the threshold of my mid-30s and so everything seems more difficult.  Working out, eating healthy, sleeping enough, etc.  Aging pretty much sucks.  END RANT.

I'd love comments or stories if anyone has them.  Feel free to email me or comment below.  :)


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#Microblog Mondays - Happy 2015 (Paleo Christmas Cookie Wrap-up)

Monday, January 5, 2015

#Microblog Mondays?  Read more about it here!

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It's been a while since I have been able to sit at a computer for more than 5 minutes at a time since daycare has been closed for almost 2 weeks and I have taken some time off of work.  It was nice to be away from the daily grind, but today it is back to reality.  I already miss my little B. 

Let's see, in the past 2 weeks, I have put on Christmas Day dinner for 10 people, hosted 5 family members at my tiny 1100 sq. ft. house for 5 days, hosted NYE for 10 people, won a race that over 500 people ran (1st female), and was able to get everything back together for today.  No, I didn't sleep much.

Lastly, here is a quick (and promised) update on the Paleo cookies that I made for Christmas this year... most of them were a success. 

Hope you all had a great holiday with family and friends!  XOXO



Recipe
Verdict
The lemon cookie turned out great, but the lemon-curd was TERRIBLE.  I remade it twice and both times it turned into a gelatinous and chalky tasting mess.  What I ended up doing was filling the cookies with fruit preserves (apricot and blackberry).  That was awesome.  They did not save well though and got terribly mushy after several hours.  I should have frozen them immediately.
AMAZING and easy.  They got rave reviews from even the pickiest eaters (my younger brothers).
These were kind of a pain in the @$$ to make, but they were really fabulous and most likely the best out of all of the ones that I made.  They tasted like a real cookie, not necessarily a samoa, but very excellent.
GREAT (and easy)!  I also got rave reviews from this and was asked by several people where I got the recipe.
These did not turn out as hoped.  The cookie was really hard to "roll" out and stuck like you have no idea (even on parchment paper).  The "cream" filling also did not work for me.  I ended up salvaging about half of the cookies and filling it with some homeade "Nutella".  I actually got asked for the recipe! :-)
Incredible, as usual.  This is a staple for me that I use to wow Paleo-naysayers.  The cookies always turn out great and you would have no idea that they were grain-free.  I think I have made 4 batches of these over the past 2 weeks.
I didn't make these, but instead subbed with a recipe from Danielle Walker's "Joyful" cookbook.  Normally I love her recipes, but this one fell short for me.  It could have been because I used sunbutter instead of almond butter, but my son did love them.  He ate most of the batch!
I didn't get here either.  
Paleo Marshmallows from Danielle Walker's "Joyful" cookbook
They were easy and tasted as good as marshmallows made with honey could taste.  The consistency was spot on.  
These turned out well, but didn't keep very long.  I was able to get these into the freezer.
Paleo Thumbprint Cookies from Danielle Walker's "Joyful" cookbook
These were easy to make and turned out great!  I froze a bunch of them for later.


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#Microblog Mondays - A very Paleo Holiday

Monday, December 15, 2014

#Microblog Mondays?  Read more about it here!

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There are not many things that I like about CrossFit, as you all know very well by now.  The one thing that I can honestly say that I am grateful to CrossFit for is the Paleo type of diet that we have been following for well over a year now.  Sure we are not perfect 100% of the time, but we eat a lot healthier because of it and we feel better, too. 
 
Cutting out gluten has made me realize that I may, in fact, have a sensitivity towards it.  When I eat a regular cookie (with flour/wheat) it doesn't take long for me to feel like total crap afterwards.  Seriously, I get stomach pains, some yucky bloating, and have to lay down.  Not fun.  Especially for someone who loves baking and eating Christmas cookies like I do.  In the past, I have taken days off work to bake cookies around the clock for days and days (no joke) to give as presents to family, friends, and coworkers.  Sure it is very tiring, but I love it.  I miss it. 
 
Getting into the spirit!
 
I have decided to continue the tradition, but with a slightly different twist.  I'm making Paleo/gluten free cookies this year!  In past years I would make 13-15 different kinds.  I am going to have to scale that back this year due to cost (almond flour ain't cheap) and time constraints (20 month old anyone?).
 
Here is the list that I am working on.  I plan on baking this weekend Fri-Sun.  I'll check in next week and let you know how it went.  Crossing my fingers!!
 
 
Who says Paleo can't taste good?



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Normal cycles returning?

Tuesday, December 2, 2014

No one may find this interesting at all so I am pretty much just documenting it for myself.  After having my first two post-baby cycles at 47 days each, I finally had a cycle of a more normal length of 34 days.  It might sound long to you, but this is the first "normalish" cycle (non-drug induced) that I have had since my miscarriages.  So, that means that it has been since 2011.  Wow.


I am still not temping or anything like that.  We are not TTC now (or possibly ever again), but it would be good to track my cycles for prevention since I have no plans to take any birth control.  We'll see.  I feel like if I take out the thermometer my husband is going to get suspicious and feel like I am trying to pull something.  Haha. 

On the subject of birth control, a few things I have noticed about my body since I have stopped taking it and let my cycles be as they will...  The major thing is the pre-period insomnia.  This is BAD.  I never get insomnia, but the past 3 cycles have provided me with several total sleepless nights.  Not fun.  I G.oogled it and apparently it is a common problem caused by hormones.  Who knew?  Definitely not a problem that I had while on birth control for 10 years.

I also have much worse PMS (my poor family).  I get super testy and more emotional than normal.  I am not the most emotional person, although I will admit that I have gotten to be more so since having a child.  In the few days before my period, I get mean and then weepy.  I never had PMS while on birth control.  I was always super even-keeled.  This whole emotional thing is a new challenge for me...and my family.

I actually have a sex-drive and it peaks when I am ovulating.  I recognize that this is just biology, but I NEVER had any really strong desire to have sex while on birth control at all.  Of course, I would, but it wasn't like I was ever really that excited (nice pun) about it.  This makes things potentially dangerous and condoms a mid-cycle necessity!

Another nice non-hormonal by-product is increased flow.  While taking  birth control I had very light 2-3 day periods which would start with spotting.  While not taking it, I have 4-5 day flow with no warning flood-gate onset like when I was in high school.  I woke up in the middle of the night to blood soaked pajamas during my last cycle.  Seriously?!   

The last thing I notice are the CRAMPS.  YUCK.  I did have them while taking birth control, but they are oh so much worse now.  So much worse that I have contemplated calling out of work sick. 

Anyways, now you all have the 411 on my cycle.  Have a great day! :o)   


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#Microblog Mondays - A case of the 'Mondays'

Monday, November 24, 2014

#Microblog Mondays?  Read more about it here!


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Glass is half-empty today...wah wah wah...Monday morning rant ensuing... 
 
I was up most of the night with a sick child (2nd night in a row).  Poor baby B has a bad cold and a fever.  He is staying home with Daddy today.  It will be nothing short of a miracle if we are all healthy for travel this holiday weekend.

It is pouring rain and my umbrella is broken.

I dropped my lunch and smashed my banana trying to juggle 2 bags, a coffee, an umbrella, and a security badge.

I have a hideous headache.

Work is sucking the life out of me.  Seriously.  Work.  You.  Can.  Shove.  It.
 
A co-worker of mine keeps taking candy from my candy dish to put into hers even though I have politely asked her twice NOT to do that anymore.  WTF?!
 
To try to better my shitastic morning...

Some 'Ladies and Gentlemen, The Best of George Michael' (yes, I'm a cheese-ball).
 
And this trio:
 
 Come on guys...help me out here.

Happy Monday everyone!


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#Microblog Mondays - The MuTu System (for diastasis recti repair)

Monday, November 17, 2014

#Microblog Mondays?  Read more about it here!


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Back in June, I bought the MuTu system in an effort to try to further self-repair my broken belly.  Since I don't really need help with the weight-loss and diet portion of things, I opted for the Focus Program instead of the 12 week one.  
 
Very gung-ho, I started it right around the time that I was ramping up my marathon training and you can probably connect the dots that I didn't get very far.  One only has so much time to spend on working out when they have a young child.  So yeah, I quit after a week.  I vowed to return after marathon training.
 
Here I am; my marathon is complete.  My diastasis recti still bothers me and I have heard nothing but good things about the MuTu System.  I'll try to check in regularly on this and will try to keep up with it.  Cross your fingers that I can make some improvements here.  Oh yeah and stick with it this time.   


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Back to body image (read at your own risk)

Thursday, November 13, 2014

Maybe it is because the marathon is over and I have a large amount of time that has been freed up due to the lack of training, which has given me more time to think. As fast as my negative body image went away, it decided to make a return with an evil vengeance.

My sister and I had a conversation a few weeks back about our biggest insecurities and issues. One of my biggest is my body, which as you all know by now, was exacerbated by the number that my pregnancy did on it. No matter what anyone tells me, I will always feel inferior. It seems that no matter how hard I work out, I still can't achieve the body aesthetics that I think "look good".

I have always been a perfectionist. I am not sure exactly where it started. Many people will argue that first-born children tend to be more "Type A". I would have to agree with this. As a child (just ask my mom!), I was always the best behaved, super-organized, and most responsible child of the bunch. I started ballet classes at a very early age and was taught that discipline and structure were two of the most important keys to success in life. I remember my dance teacher inspecting our lunches as we waited between classes or rehearsals. She would throw out food that she thought was going to make us fat even though I weighed under 100 lbs until I was a junior in high school, I felt like I had to adhere to those strict standards of eating throughout my teenage years. Getting into running junior/senior year of high-school kept me rail thin, or maybe it was the combination of being cross-country captain, track captain, school VP, school leadership member, honor society member, dance team captain, and the prom queen. I didn't really have any time to eat or obsess over my body. It just was what it was, but I was fine with it. I NEVER "partied" or got into trouble even though I was friendly and well-liked by most of the people at school including the most popular and the least popular.

Once I got to college, I did what you might refer to as rebel against my "miss perfect" lifestyle. I drank very heavily, ate total crap (and lots of it), didn't exercise, hooked up with random guys, and started getting bad grades because I either didn't go to class or I fell asleep during it. As a result, I gained a lot of weight freshman year. So much weight, if fact, that if you were to look at the picture on my college ID and a look at a picture of my taken last week, you would swear that it was not the same person. When I started dating my husband, I had settled down a bit and lost weight and although I wasn't the specimen of fitness, I had youth on my side.

In my mid-late 20s I started running a lot more and got into racing, marathoning, and healthy eating. My husband and I went to the gym almost every day of the week...together. He would go lift weights and I would do some cardio and light-weights. I would eat bags of veggies for lunch and cut-out all harmful fats and sweeteners. Looking back on pictures of myself during that time now, I think I looked really great. The best in my whole life, actually. Muscular, but lean. I remember a high school classmate commenting on a FB picture that I had posted and him saying how great I looked at that time. I ate that up, but deep down I didn't necessarily believe him. I could always look a little better.

Enter the world of miscarriage and infertility. Thinking that we would pop out a baby by the age of 30 due to our super-healthy-lifestyles turned out to be a total mind f*ck.  I gained weight, lost muscle, lost pride and self-respect while trying to have a child.  I started to really loathe my body in a way that went much deeper than its outside appearance.  I can remember the absolute darkest day of my life.  I had just gotten home after finding out that I was losing my 3rd pregnancy.  I called my mom hysterically crying telling her that I wanted to die.  It was hard to get words out to express everything, but I know that she was incredibly concerned.  I was so angry with my body.  I remember thinking that I would so much rather be dead than have to deal with this again.  I got into bed and put the covers over my head and wished so hard that I would not wake up.  That was the absolute worst and lowest day of my life.  I had never hated my body more.

Thinking that finally having a baby would fix all of my body-hating issues has proved to be untrue.  While my body finally decided to allow a child to grow successfully, it was not without lots of permanent "bruises" and battle scars.  I will never be able to get back to my 20-something body because, no matter how hard I try, I have imperfections that either can't be fixed at all or can only be fixed with expensive "cosmetic" surgery.  I am constantly reminded of what I won't have again when I am bombarded with images of the super-fit (and young or gifted in the gene department) women on a regular basis. 

Last weekend was the perfect storm of body-hating resurgence.  A huge "party" at my husband's CrossFit gym in which several (as my husband refers to them as) CrossFit pin-up ladies were in attendance (Google if you are interested in what this means).  They were all scantily clad in sports bras and almost see-through spandex booty shorts, sporting golden tans, washboard abs, doing squats and hand-stand pushups while all of the guys, including my husband, and all the girls for that matter, had to clean up the drool that landed on the floor beneath them.  My MIL, who came at my husband's urging, loudly proclaimed that all of those women were "gross and manly" and she would "never want to look like them".  Even though several people around us gave her the stink-eye, she got a few extra points in my book.  One of the pin-ups, who I found out was recently married, was shamelessly flirting with several guys.  Other married guys were flirting with other ladies that were in attendance.  The whole thing made me so uncomfortable.  I could not get out of there fast enough, not to mention I stuck out like a super modest sore thumb wearing long pants and a long-sleeved shirt.

Why am I comparing myself to these women that I wouldn't even really want to look like?  Maybe it is because I know that my husband thinks they are hot and I feel like I don't even come close to looking like them.  Maybe it is because I feel so self-conscious when naked and don't enjoy having sex like I could be because I feel terrible about the way my body looks.  I feel like they look so perfect and so they must have perfect (sex) lives, which I know deep-down isn't true, but I still can't shake the negative thoughts and the idea that things must be perfect for them because they look perfect.

Once again, another evening was corrupted with a heated discussion about CrossFit and how much I hate it last night.  The time commitment, the obsession, the overwhelming amount of super-fit 20 something women that work out 24/7 and put their bodies and looks above (seemingly) anything else in life that seem to want to wreck good homes.

I stopped therapy in the summer because it wasn't helping.  Maybe the therapist wasn't for me.  I'm not sure.  The thing is, I know what the issue is.  It is deep-rooted insecurity of my whole self with my body image being one of the top contributors.  I always feel like I am somehow not good enough.  I am not pretty enough or hot enough and somewhere deep down I worry that my husband might come to realize this someday and leave me because of it.  What I fail to factor into this scenario is the fact that my husband (obviously) married me for more than my physical self because there is so much more to life that how you look.  When we die, our bodies stay here and decompose.  No one is going to be stunningly gorgeous or having amazing washboard abs that guys fawn over when they turn 80 years old.  I mean come on, that is reality.  What will endure until death is personality, wit, humor, etc.  I just need to keep reminding myself of this when I start to get into that loop of negative self-talk.  I need to build up my self-esteem that my years dealing with body-betrayal took away from me.    After all, could one of those pin-ups run a difficult marathon in 3.5 hours with 30 mph head winds after a broken nights sleep (nursing an 18 month old)?  My body may not be perfect ever, but it can surely rise to the call of duty when it has to.           


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