Feb 13
I've run half marathons before.
But even so, I'm incredibly nervous about running a half marathon tomorrow.
This will be my 25th half marathon since 2011. I'm completely aware some people run more than that in a year. But this one is the first one I've had a complete training cycle for, a ramp up, a taper down, etc. since my daughter's birthday.
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.
So ... my blog had a major issue this past weekend. I spent Friday-Monday trying to get it restored. It took a call, several support tickets and a bunch of anguish on my part to bring it back. I lost one of my personally managed sites in the process. It was all sorts of sadness for me, especially because I truly thought I'd lost my daughter's birth story (even though I had backed up the database).
I've had a StrideBox monthly subscription since last August. That's when I received my first, exciting both. Since then, I got charged $15 for the box of goodies to come to my mailbox at the beginning of every month. My loot from my July box, which I received late last week, is above.
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.
There's a confusing stupor that comes with being awoken after general anesthesia. In the same moment, you are there, waking up, but still very much "out."
More than two days after I was induced to deliver my daughter, I was coming out of that haze very slowly without recollection of what had happened to me in the moments, hours and days before.
"She's here," my husband assured me. "And she's fine."
I don’t want the title to sound like a complaint. My husband likes to remind me that WE WANTED to have a baby. We consider this little girl a huge blessing. And we are incredibly excited to welcome her in a couple months. (Also: I look like crap in that picture. I don’t even care.)
What I didn’t know, though, was how difficult it would be to see my body change so dramatically in such a short time. My “baby belly” didn’t really show until December when I was a bridesmaid in a friend’s wedding. But I started feeling “pregnant” nearly immediately.
Consider my last long run before I found out. I was exhausted. I could barely keep my pace. I kept stopping and sitting down. What was supposed to be a 15-mile run turned into a 12-mile run when I just couldn’t go on anymore. I stopped my Garmin and walked back to my car, thinking, perhaps, I was just having an off day.
That weekend I took a pregnancy test and immediately suspended my marathon training. I had 15,18 and 20 milers on the schedule for my next three weekends after that. I took the test because I could barely get up in the morning. I was having problems staying awake during the day. I knew, only weeks into the first trimester, that there was NO WAY I would be able to run a marathon at the end of September.
The positive pregnancy test meant that I slowly started pulling away from the running world, and this blog, and retreat to my everyday life. Why? Because, despite signing up for a bunch of races in that first trimester, I kind of knew I wouldn’t be running long distances for awhile. If I would have accepted it earlier, I likely would have been able to unload some of those race entries.
I’m finding, though, that at 30 weeks, my body is betraying me more than I ever thought it would. Health worries I thought I didn’t have anymore and coming back. My body is changing daily now and I never know what to expect. It’s exciting, because it means she’s coming soon, but it’s also so foreign to be in a body I don’t feel like is mine anymore.
DIABETIC WORRIES
I haven’t been on medication for four years, but the fact that I once was comes up in nearly EVERY appointment with my OB. At the beginning, it frustrated me. Now it’s just part of life.
Early in my pregnancy, I was given a new glucose meter to measure my blood sugar. I hadn’t owned one since right after my husband and I bought our house in 2010 and I purged a ton of stuff.
I was supposed to use it four times a day. But my hands started mildly swelling, and I couldn’t get any blood out. None. I would massage my fingers, put a rubber band around the finger I was poking, run my hands under hot water, etc. Nothing worked. I would get more upset with it than was really good for me or the baby.
So I stopped. Instead I opted to get my blood drawn for regular average sugar tests. So far? All within normal. But I can’t get past the fact that I’ve been on the medication before.
What irked me more than anything was the “you need to work out X amount of minutes a day.” I was already. The fact that my doctors didn’t seem to listen to me during my appointments when I told them I ran and did yoga was even more bothersome.
THE LEGS AREN’T WHAT THEY WERE
I lost 15 pounds when I first got pregnant. I didn’t have morning sickness. Instead, I just couldn’t eat anything. I picked apart my food for the first 14 weeks. I only ate small meals. I’d start eating something, then stop and give the rest to my dogs.
I was also too fatigued to run a lot at first.
The result of those two things was a decline in my leg muscles. It didn’t take long, particularly because I went from running 100-plus miles a month to 20 or so. My husband always told me that I really wanted to lose weight, I’d have to stop running as much. Turns out he was right.
When I did get back into it, in the second trimester, there was a noticeable difference in my running. My legs felt tight, and weak. They haven’t recovered.
EVERYTHING IS SWOLLEN
My feet, my hands, etc. Before anyone jumps to “that could be a sign of something bad,” I know. My doctor and I have had numerous conversations about pre-eclampsia. We’ve talked about me going in for twice-weekly monitoring of baby girl’s stress level. My blood pressure is checked regularly.
Swelling is part of pregnancy for some women. I’m one of those women.
My running shoes don’t fit. Neither do any of my heels. In the past four weeks none of my flats have fit me well.
Worse even is that my wedding ring has been in our home safe for weeks because I haven’t been able to wear it out of the house.
The swelling makes me very uncomfortable. When I clinch my hands, it hurts. Obviously walking around is painful after awhile as well.
BABY GIRL HATES RUNNING
Maybe she doesn’t, but she sure seems to. My husband is concerned about pre-term labor (which is a real concern for us with my health history) and asked me to NOT run during the third trimester. Yoga is fine. Walking is fine. But no high impact. The funny thing is that I’m OK with it. I’ve been fine with it since I started getting Braxton Hicks contractions in the middle of two mile runs.
I also started responding to the baby when I feel as if she is sending me messages. Some runs were fine. I felt as if the movement had rocked her to sleep. Other days, I felt as if I was making her incredibly uncomfortable. She started kicking my bladder uncontrollably and then didn’t calm down about an hour later.
She would kick me relentlessly after. I started feeling as if she wasn’t all that comfortable when I was running, particularly in the past couple weeks of running.
So I stopped.
Now I’m sticking to yoga, but even that is becoming harder. I’m 30 weeks today. I’m going back and forth about registering for another few sessions of yoga. At this point I only am looking at five sessions at a time … because I had a couple weeks were I was too uncomfortable to go.
All of these things are making it hard to feel like “me” right now.
Confession: Running, for me, has become more than just a way to stay fit. It’s also away to keep anxiety at bay. A couple years ago, I didn’t deal with it as much. Today? It has a tendency to rear its ugly head at the worst possible times.
Throughout my pregnancy, I’ve been trying to run two-milers where and when I could. I had a great maternity support belt and near the end of my second trimester, I felt really strong when I ran.
That was until a couple weeks ago when I suddenly started getting sharp pains in my abdomen where baby girl is currently taking up residence. I thought, maybe, she was starting to kick up in my ribs. I stopped running and took a shower, then sat down on the couch for awhile.
The pain didn’t let up. I ended up calling the advice nurse. I’ve also had some foot swelling, which means my running shoes aren’t fitting me as well, and other “symptoms” during the week. My husband and I were kind of freaking out. Turns out it was likely just Braxton Hicks contractions, which are painful and not really threatening.
I was told to keep my feet elevated. Drink a lot of fluids, as I normally do. And maybe ton it down on the workouts.
The downside is that the activity has been really helpful in keeping my weight in a “good place.”
That’s my bump at 27 weeks. I’ll be 29 weeks tomorrow. I’m getting bigger and bigger each day. My center of gravity is WAY OFF what it typically is when I run marathons.
I’m also noting some atrophy of my leg muscles, which is making me a little sad. I’m gained about 15 pounds so far. The numbers keep inching up on the scale, closer to the 200 mark that I fought so hard to come down from four years ago. But this is a different kind of gain, obviously. I know that she’s gaining if I am.
The bottom line of the pain? My pregnant running is likely over. I stopped yoga for a couple weeks too, just to be safe.
The problem, though, is that the anxiety is starting to creep up again. In horrible ways.
Someone asked me the other day if I was “worried” about anything leading up to baby girl’s arrival.
I’M WORRIED ABOUT EVERYTHING.
The first trimester all I thought about was the risk of miscarriage. After regular bleeding the first eight weeks it was on my mind all the time. My husband, the optimist, kept telling me not to worry. But I had more ultrasounds in those early weeks than I want to admit. I kept going back to my OB just to make sure everything was going well. My blood pressure was high when I went in for those first appointments because my anxiety was through the roof. I just wanted to get in and make sure baby had a heartbeat.
The second trimester all I thought about was viability. Unsolicited advice often leads to worries, particularly when people who are trying to be helpful (I think), start talking about pre-term labor and preemie babies. I started to think to myself “I just have to make it to 26 weeks,” which is when baby’s chance of survival outside the womb increases dramatically. Every week after just adds to her chances.
I can’t say it’s not without cause that I’m worried. My doctor has noted my past diabetes diagnosis and those high blood pressure readings as reasons to worry. I’ve been told I likely will be induced if I don’t go into labor by my May 4 due date. In fact, baby may come early if my OB becomes worried about her at all. But ALL of those things just adds to my anxiety.
The third trimester all I think about is stillbirth. Statistics put the number of stillbirth at 1/160. When I spend time on my Baby Center birth board, though, I’m confronted with the reality more and more. It’s scary. It’s more than scary, it’s petrifying. My doctor and my husband told me to stop reading forums. I should know that myself after moderating forum comments for more than a year as an online editor.
If I distract myself during the day, I don’t think about it as much. But every now and then, if I don’t feel her wiggling around. Everyone keeps telling me that as much as I worry before she is born, I will worry more once she is here. I believe it.
Running kept all those ugly thoughts away. Now I’m relying on yoga to calm me. Baby girl isn’t quite sure she likes the yoga anymore either though. She’s been kicking up a storm when we do our last meditation exercise. And I’ve had to run to the bathroom more than I’d like. I’m thankful the yoga instructor has been very supportive of teaching a pregnant student.
On that note, we’re very much preparing for her to arrive. Her room is done, one of the things I made sure I did before I went back to school. Last weekend, my husband treated me to an early Valentine’s Day gift and we splurged on a 3D/4D ultrasound in a nearby city.
We found out that she really, really looks like him. I love the image above because she looks exactly like him when he’s sleeping. He has a closely-shaved haircut and that same nose. I was excited to see her face. We also confirmed, definitely that she is a girl. I’d been worried since our anatomy ultrasound.
It’s good she’s a girl because her name is already up above her crib.
My baby shower date is set. My best friend Jennie and my sister are throwing it. I’m so thankful for that.
And my husband is getting nervous/excited. He bought her some baby leggings a couple weeks ago.
The green is the color of my glider rocking chair. Her room is a mixture of sage green, chocolate brown and pink accents. Nothing over the top girly.
I’m excited that I’m “almost there,” but I’m also truly missing running and it’s ability to keep the bad thoughts at bay. I am starting to put together a plan for after she comes. Today I found out that I will be a See Jane Run Ambassador into the 2014-15 year. So baby’s first race will be the 5K in Alameda on June 22. I’m excited about the journey to get to the start.
Dec 31
I’ve started and stopped this post so many times in my head that I decided I had to finish it before 2013 was over. So today, on the last possible day I could, I decided it needed to come out.
A year ago exactly, I was 24 hours from an emergency room visit that led to another one, seven days later, where my gallbladder was removed during emergency surgery.
I remember looking down at the holes on my stomach realizing that the scars would never go away. More emotional wounds would open up in the following days, but my husband and I had decided, in my hospital room on Jan. 8, that I would not be returning to my job at the newspaper I once loved so deeply I could only imagine being dragged out dead.
My heart was broken because I knew no other way.
My wounds, in those early days of 2013, were both physical and emotional. My nerves were ravaged. My body was spent.
But those very trying early days of 2013 were also filled with an overabundance of love: From my husband, who promised me I’d find my path and things to “keep me busy.” From my close friends who helped me through and offered guidance. From my students, who showed me there was more to journalism than a city newspaper with declining circulation and staff numbers. From a former colleague who, without seeing any of my work, jumped on a chance to hire me as a freelancer.
Love surrounded me.
That love healed me in ways I will never, ever be able to explain.
And that love led me to her:
When I found out I was pregnant in August, I thought I would blog every single milestone of it on here. I worried about this blog becoming less workout related, more mommy-ish.
I would start posts over and over again, but something kept stopping me: a new-found need to keep private matters very close to my heart, between my husband and I.
I’m not ending this blog by any means.
In fact, I have posts about running during pregnancy written (of note, there hasn’t been a lot of running because baby doesn’t seem to enjoy it and likes to remind me of that) and yoga (that has been essential in recent weeks). I’m yearning for my 10-milers, while only being able to squeak out two at a time right now on the treadmill.
I surprised myself last week when I register for the 2nd Half Marathon of the San Francisco Marathon for 2014. My due date is May 3. The race is July 29. I’m hedging my bets on a hope that I’ll have a natural delivery and be able to get back to running quickly, for my self and my sanity. I’ve been missing my mid-length runs of six to eight miles especially.
But my center of gravity has recently shifted enough to cause me issues. My saving grace has been my Gabrialla Elastic Maternity Belt. I bought one on recommendation from another blogger. I can’t recommend it enough.
I’m getting bigger and bigger, obviously, as I get closer to my due date. My first trimester was rough. I slept a lot. I’ve never been more thankful for a forgiving freelance schedule and part-time teaching position. I was sleeping 12+ hours a day at one point. I fell asleep nearly everywhere I sat down. I also had to stop running as a precaution, for awhile, because of bleeding. (Sorry for the TMI, but sometimes this sort of thing is linked to running. My OB told me it was likely not the running. It happens to a lot of women.)
As I worked through all this, I realized that I didn’t want to share, let alone overshare, things about my life. Call it innate need to keep my private life private, but I just felt like not blogging every element of my life was the most appropriate action.
My husband has always been a more private person than me. Part of the reason I used my maiden name professionally for so long is because I wanted him to be able to keep that privacy. Scary things happen to journalists. My grandmother used to get phone calls for me because she was the only person in the phone book listed with the same last name.
I didn’t want that happening at home.
So when my husband asked me not to blog specific things, I listened and understood.
At 20 weeks, though, we found out that baby is a girl. Or at least according to our ultrasound tech, who said: “I wouldn’t tell you if I wasn’t sure.” I’m still having moments where I think we should maybe have that checked again. That’s my anxiety peaking up …
In any case, at 22 weeks I’m feeling as good as someone who is watching all her running clothes slowly shrink up can. It’s kind of been funny to figure out which of my workout clothes still fit me on any given day. As much crap as Lululemon has received recently for comments made by the founder, my Lululemon clothes are stretching nicely over my belly.
A different in belly shots, though you can’t really see much since both photos are shot at different lengths from the mirror. On the right, I’m wearing my 2011 California International Marathon shirt and a Lululemon Run: Swiftly shirt in my regular size 10.
I’m still very grateful for long tank tops that have extended the life of my regular clothes, though by the time I go back to teaching in late January I’m pretty sure it will be ALL maternity clothes for the next few months.
So there’s been a lot happening in my life over the past couple months.
I’m finally getting to a point where I’m ready to share my triumphs, fears, successes and apprehensions again. But after sharing so much in late 2012 and early 2013, I really wanted this first part of my pregnancy to be private and special to my husband and I.
I can’t promise a quick return or regular posts again, particularly because I still very much want this blog to be health and fitness centered. But I am letting myself add in the stuff about pregnancy and our baby girl on the way.
As can be imagined, I’m extremely excited for 2014 to begin. I’m excited about some potential (as in I’m crossing my fingers tightly) career happenings on the way later in the year, the amazing work I’m doing now (so many website builds, so little time) and, of course, our little one coming.
I’m also looking forward to eventually getting back to running more frequently. One step at a time. Always moving forward. Because now I know another way.
Copyright © 2024 Tara Cuslidge-Staiano. All rights reserved.
