I see a light

A few weeks ago, I joined the online health information website my physicians offer. It lets me see all (most) of my health care in the last four years - depending on which MDs loaded it and are participating in the online program.

I thought it was interesting to see my weigh-ins throughout pregnancy. I always counted what my scale at home said because I wanted to be able to compare apples to apples after the baby was born. The online data said my last weight at the OB's office was 247. From one week after giving birth until I went back to work (three months) I hovered at 226. The last three weeks, I've stayed at 217, but losing .2 or .4 every week (on weight watchers still). So while I'm down 30 lbs from the highest point in my pregnancy, I still have a good 20 lbs to go just to be where I was pre-pregnancy. I'd really like to move past that number and be even more fit than I was a year ago.

The point of all this ramble is that I'm pretty sure my body doesn't have the "typical new mom" hormone set up. My body did produce some milk for my son, but even though we tried our hardest - and I truly believe that - it was not enough. It was ROUGH for the first few weeks and I visited/talked with a lactation specialist almost daily. Despite what we did, I only made enough milk to give him maybe three feedings a day - when he was eating probably 10x a day. Even when I started pumping at work I only had four ounces per pump session. By then he was eating six per feeding.

So combine the small amount of milk production with my inability to work out from my sciatic pain, I'm guessing that's why the weight did not just "fall off" like the books say it should while breastfeeding. I think my body didn't let go of a pound because I was so hungry while bfeeding that I ate more than I should have and couldn't really work out to make up for that.

I'm still not really working out like I need to, but I am walking almost every night and I often take the stairs at work. I finally feel like my body is returning to normal and that makes me happy because I know how to lose weight without all those hormones messing me up!