Aug 23
Sixteen months ago I delivered a beautiful baby girl via emergency C-section after pre-eclampsia forced an induction at 37 weeks that didn't go as planned.
My world was turned upside down. All parents say that. Other cliches that were inevitably true:
"You'll never understand the love until she's in your arms."
Yep.
"Your whole life changes."
Duh.
"You will never be alone again."
I'm running a half marathon in three days, but you wouldn't know it by the number of times my Garmin has tracked runs lately.
Because that number would be zero.
But my miles logged are as impressive as I could hope for with a very active nearly 10-month old running my life lately. I could wake up very, very early to run. I could. But I've never been a morning runner.
I'm not a huge fan of bikinis. I think I've owned quite a few tankinis. But a bikini? I doubt I'll ever have enough confidence to pull that off. Despite that, in early January I signed up for Bikini Body Mommy Challenge 3.0.
My daughter will be nine-months old on Thursday. When people meet her, there's generally a consensus about how happy she is, how much she smiles and how good of a disposition she has. I'm lucky that at this point in the mommy game, I'm rarely getting asked the question that I was so frequently at the beginning.
"Are you nursing?"
"That's complicated," was the standard and necessary response.
After my daughter was born last April, I decided I wasn't going to turn this blog into a space about being a mom. People close to me asked the question throughout my pregnancy. I stayed firm and said that while my posts would include my adorable offspring, I wasn't going to fall into the trap.
This would not be a mommy blog.
The problem is that I had become a mom. The moment my daughter was handed to me the first time I fell head over heels in love with her.
I told myself after I ran the Oakland Half Marathon in 2011 that once I finished I'd have at least one thing going for me: I would never have to run my first half marathon again.
Fast forward to July 27, 2014.
Pregnancy does a number on a woman's body. I say that, now 11 weeks postpartum, only minutes after trying to find professional clothes to wear to a formal event. It, obviously, changes the abdomen. Even though everyone swore I was "all tummy," my legs and arms feel deflated.
At 8:29 a.m. I hadn't stepped up to a race start in seven months. At 8:32 a.m. I was starting off on my first 5K in more than two years.
I'm going to count myself in the minority of new parents who get MORE sleep after welcoming a baby. I've been an insomniac since my first year of grad school. I rarely, if ever, sleep through the night. Instead I usually wake up four or five times, barely get back to sleep and then wake up again.
I left the doctor's office with instructions to basically sit on my butt for the weekend and monitor my blood pressure. I went home to the couch and called work to let my division office know I wouldn't be returning. I emailed over the appropriate documents, including a new form for my maternity leave to start.
Copyright © 2024 Tara Cuslidge-Staiano. All rights reserved.
