Me and My Baby Weight

What new mom doesn't talk about their baby weight? We're women, we talk about everything. But, how many of those new moms are just glowing and back in their skinny jeans in a matter of a couple months? Not really any I know. So, here I am coming up on the 3 month mark with my little Happy Boy and except for the 30 pounds I lost in the two weeks after his birth I have lost nothing. In fact I even gained back a couple. After I had Mini Me I had obviously never had a postpartum body before and much to my disappointment nothing went back to how I remembered! Despite breastfeeding exclusively and eating fairly well I was stuck at a rather uncomfortable 180 pounds on my 5' 7" frame. After Mini weaned herself at 10 months I finally found my will power and started to lose the weight by cutting out all gluten and sugar as well as walking faithfully. In about 6 months I was down to 155, 10 pounds below my pre-pregnancy weight.

This time around I would like to try losing all my pregnancy weight plus about 10 pounds like last time but while breastfeeding. My supply seems to be much less finicky than before so I am feeling confident I will be able to accomplish my goal without effecting it. I certainly have enough fat to fuel production! But, I have more than just weight loss as my goal. I would like to...


Increase my energy. This is probably even more important to me than the weight loss. I have really struggled this time with fatigue and constant ups and downs. My mood has not been awful but it certainly has not been as even as I'd like it to be. So I would like to find a natural way to get some decent energy! Right now I am a major coffee drinker (BAD!!!) and sugar eater (WORSE!!!). Combine these and no wonder I have this issue.


Slowly detox. Now, before you jump on me about how I'm going to dump a bunch of toxins into my milk let me just say that I have concluded through research that I can absolutely detox without it effecting my milk. Done slowly and carefully detoxing can help jump start a very tired and overloaded body which is precisely what I have! Mainly I will be reducing the toxin intake and increasing toxin elimination by eating whole, unprocessed foods, drinking lots of water, drinking supporting herbal teas like milk thistle and trying out some gelatinous foods like chia seeds.


Regain my clear skin. Before having Happy Boy my skin looked great! Now it's dull and I'm getting breakouts! Enough said.


So, the big picture is I would like to regain my health and continue to breastfeed while doing it. It's going to be hard but when I think of how good I will feel again it's motivation for sure. I will elaborate more on the actual weight loss once I start losing some!

Til next time.

From Average to More Series: Chores, Plus Some Springtime Extras

It's seems I skipped a week! I could make excuses but I am a mama of two, pregnant with the third and that is all you need to know. Yet, I will go into detail as to how I have been feeling which did influence said missed post. But, first, would you like to see how big I am??

Sorry, it's a phone "selfie". Is that even spelled right? I hate that term. Anyway, there I am, that was a week and a half ago at 16 weeks and change. I was in Michigan at the time which was a great trip, by the way. I love my cousin and her family out there, if only we lived a bit closer to each other!

So, as the title suggests we will be talking about chores. I cringe over this currently because I have been somewhat restricted recently due to contractions and the like. It's been concluded that I am not having preterm labor but I am to be monitored a bit closer for it and not over extend myself especially with lifting. When Montana Man is home he has been helping me tremendously, but when I am solo I am doing the best I can. Sometimes my best is still too much and I end up having contractions at night which I calm down with an herbal tincture and half a beer. It's frustrating and tiring but I will make it work! Because of where we are with house construction and my condition we have decided to scale back our barnyard ambitions for this season. Grudgingly and with some relief also I cancelled getting the goats. I'm not super woman and really waiting another year won't do us any harm. I think we might also be waiting on pigs as well. The house is progressing but slowly as we are building it ourselves from this point and do not have a crew. It should be livable before baby arrives but it might be close! The chores I am left with I will illustrate for you as small as they may be.

The chickens we will be adding to this year and the flock will be quite large for the summer but will be whittled back down in the fall when we fill the freezer. I have mentioned getting heavier breeds to be for both meat and eggs and intend to increase the laying portion of the flock to around 20-30 so that I can sell more. My hope is to end up with some broody hens next spring and have them hatch next years chicks. Caring for them will still be pretty minor especially once we get a proper coop and run done. It's a basic feed, water, clean, collect the eggs routine that would take less than 30 minutes a day total.

The horse is still pretty easy what with his free choice hay and not using a stall. Obviously I am not riding him but I do want to get back to some ground work with him soon. We will move him back over to the "pond pasture" for the summer and then over to our new house when his paddock is done.

What I currently do is do chores either during nap time or after the kids have gone to bed. Very rarely do I get up to do them before the kids are up in the morning. I have no shame in saying I am not a morning person and if I were to get up before Puzzle Boy that would be 5:30. No, thank you. So nap time will be my aim since during the winter months that would allow me to actually see what I am doing. I will probably steal outside for a couple minutes just to let the chickens out in the morning but the rest will have to wait for nap time. And, that's it! Nothing to exciting.

Spring is still at war with Old Man Winter as it is cold today and snowed two inches overnight. NOT impressed. However, everything in the greenhouse is either coming up or thriving including the onion and cabbage seedlings I moved out there a couple days ago. I forgot to take pictures but I will soon! My four small raised beds are full of tiny white and red Russian kale, spinach and Rainbow Chard as well as peas that I planted along the back edge of each box. When the peas are a couple inches tall I will make them a trellis of yarn so they can crawl up along the sides of the walls out of the way of the greens. If this works well this might be a new ritual for springtime to get a jump on the growing season with the little greenhouse! So far the greens seem to have germinated well if not a little slow but given I direct seeded them all it took was a few days over 50 degrees to get them to take off. Hopefully it will stay cool enough to get some good spinach without bolting. We'll see!

And, a final note... while I was having testing done to make sure I wasn't in labor we found out we are having a... boy! Yay! Sweet little man.

Til next time.

Drink Your Greens

I love greens and they love me. Sometimes, though, I just don't feel like cooking them and chewing. When I was pregnant with Mini Me I used to make smoothies with baby spinach but after she was born I seemed to have gotten green smoothie amnesia. A month or so ago I was just feeling gross and frustrated and it dawned on me while talking to a friend that I just needed to whirl up some greens and fruit and drink in the goodness! I am addicted and have expanded my greens to kale and swiss chard. I will be posting some of my favorite recipes soon! Until then please check out this website for more info on green smoothies.

Going Back to Gluten Free... This Time Me Too.

So after nearly a year off gluten we tested Puzzle Boy to see if he could handle it again. After about 3 weeks the answers was very clear... nope. He needs to be gluten free for his own well being and ours as his caretakers! But this time I am going to be joining him! Recently I have just been feeling "blah". You know, sluggish, tired, gross and well... fat. Attractive, huh? Yeah, I don't think so either. So I am back to being diligent on myfitnesspal.com and I have done a bit of research on Blood Type Diets. I was vegetarian for a period when I was younger as well as attended a yoga class weekly and felt amazing. Granted I wasn't a mom at the time and I had the time to really focus on my well being. But, now it is imperative that I get this figured out. I need energy! I am going to be doing a loose-ish version of the diet for my blood type (A positive). This includes a mostly vegetarian diet with limited fish, chicken and turkey, no processed foods, no wheat except sprouted wheat, limited dairy (mostly cultured). I am not going to be restricting veggies and fruits at all, except ones that clearly bother me. Life without any tomatoes? Uh, no thanks. So while I will not be super strict GF, I will be mostly GF.

Luckily, we have quite a bit of gluten free baking mixes and flours left. When those are gone I will be trying out making my own flour mix using aramanth, brown rice, millet, oat, soy and sorghum flours and sweet rice, tapioca and arrowroot starches. Mixing my own will result in about $1.55 per 1000 grams of finished flour which will save me about $5.64 per batch compared to buying Bob's Red Mill AP gluten free Baking Flour. See! I can still save money even on GF! May not be as cheap as regular flour but healthy is worth it for me and my little man. I am sure I will play with different flours and such for different baked goods but that combo will be my starting point. I will share the recipe for it when I make it :-)


Have a good week!