bearing blog

Doublestufthink.

Even worse for me than a plateful of Oreos is an evening full of Oreo-induced self-flagellation.  So rather than grumble at myself for standing in the kitchen eating Oreos out of the bag at 9 p.m., I have decided to give myself credit for the fact that I stopped after only five.

Yay, me.

Did I mention they were chocolate-filled?

They don't make 'em like they used to.

Popular Mechanics remembers five banned toys of yore, including the "Atomic Energy Lab."

Called "the most elaborate Atomic Energy educational set ever produced" by the Oak Ridge Associated Universities, this sophisticated science kit contained four types of uranium ore, its very own Geiger counter and a comic book called Learn How Dagwood Splits the Atom. A form on the back of the instruction manual allowed a burgeoning Ernest Rutherford to send a note to New Haven, Conn., bearing the message, "Gentlemen: I need replacements for the following radioactive sources, (check which): ALPHA____, BETA _____, GAMMA ______ or CLOUD CHAMBER SOURCE____." 

Sweet.

Mechanical engineer and inveterate tinkerer Bill Gurstelle fondly recalls the Atomic Energy Lab, saying, "everybody wanted that kit." Nowadays, he adds, "science kits are just sugar and salt." This kit appeared 21 years too soon—the as-yet-nonexistent CPSC never got a chance to ban it.

Ah, those were the days.

Declining, again.

Much to my surprise, it turned out to be pretty easy to start my weight creeping downward again.  

The whole time I was losing weight for the first time, back in 2008, I kept expecting that "it" would "stop" -- whatever kind of magic was working on me.  Mark laughed at me and pointed out that the weight loss slowed when my habits got loose, and resumed when I turned back to my habits.  "IT" wasn't something external to me, but was the sum of my actions, my choices.  That didn't exactly cure me of wondering when "it" would stop, because I couldn't understand how I had gotten the power to make the choices I was making, and I would also wonder when that was going to desert me as well.

But.  "It" stayed.

Now here I am four weeks postpartum, and after the usual (I've come to expect it) two weeks of starts and stops, I'm well into practicing the habits I know I need to practice to drop the postpartum weight (roughly twenty pounds, allowing for keeping a few extra pounds to support breastfeeding).  Two pounds came off in those two weeks.   What do you know, the laws of nature are the same in 2010.

Plenty of vegetables.  Enough protein and fat to satisfy.  Go to bed a little hungry.  Eat on schedule.   Have just enough to feel the appetite growing in that hour before the next meal.   It works, it really does.  And I think I've done it enough that I can pick it back up again, even after the childbearing year.  I do have my moments where I drop control -- nibble the kids' plates, that sort of thing -- but I'm mostly "on."

So.  I think I've lost, already, the fear that I'll stay heavy postpartum.  I'm not sure where I'll decide to stop, but I'm more confident that it'll be where I decide to stop -- not where "it" decides for me.

Leo's birth story (III).

Part I.  

Part II.

"Should we move Mary Jane?" Mark asks.  Our three-year-old daughter is sleeping only about fifteen feet away, in the dark bedroom, on the pink "girl sheets" we bought her a couple of weeks ago to encourage her to relocate to the twin bed that's always pushed up next to ours.  

We're both hoping she sleeps through what's about to happen.  "No, don't move her -- leave her alone."  I am moaning a little through these contractions.  

Somewhere in there, Hannah arrives -- I see her peek around the closet door, and the rest of her follows.  "You're wearing the birth overalls!" I say, pleased.  She wore those to at least one of my other births -- they are black, a fuzzy knit.  All sorts of slime will just wipe right off!  "Did you hear -- the water broke already?"  She's beaming.  I'm glad to see her.  

Also somewhere in there, V____ has gotten her things all up the stairs.  They are a trail leading back to the warmth and light of downstairs -- some are in the bathroom with me, some in my closet passage, some further out in the bedroom.  Probably more in the kitchen.  I don't know, I'm always in the deepest part of the house, being the laboring mother and all.  I know what's supposed to be there.

"Should we move MJ?"  

"No," I answer.  Someone closes the outer door leading to the bedroom, and my world shrinks:  a bathroom, a closet.  The work is beginning.  

The floor is slippery under my feet.   I want the bath mat moved in front of the door frame; it is done.  I stand on the bath mat, place one hand on each side of the door frame.  I stand in the door, lean on the frame for the contraction.  And again, and again.  

Time passes.  I begin to feel a little lightheaded.  I need calories.  Mark brings me a bowl of plain yogurt, a glass of grape juice, a bagel.  I frown at the bagel and wave it away, but I eagerly take the bowl.  I glimpse myself in the bathroom mirror, hurriedly spooning yogurt into my mouth before the next contraction can hit me, and I almost laugh -- I'm eating over the sink in my pajamas, like a rushed weekday morning.  Time to get to work!  I set the scraped-clean bowl down with a clink on the counter, brace myself against the door, and work through the next contraction.  

I growl through them ("Should we move MJ?" "No.") and lean my head forward and turn it from side to side as the pain grows, sharpens, subsides.  Yeah, it hurts now.  I try bending my knees a little, try to open up and feel the descent and the widening.  I know that it is possible to fight each contraction, to tighten and hold in.  I want to make sure that when I feel the  tightening happen, I do the thing that is opposite to that.  It seems to take a fairly strong effort of will, of concentration -- it isn't coming naturally to me to open up right now.  I keep waiting for the involuntary pushing to take over but it hasn't started yet.  So I don't push.  I've learned my lesson.

V_____ reminds me not to push anyway.  It doesn't irritate me -- she has a calm and soothing voice, and is gentle.  She does not touch me.  She reminds me to wait and let my body do the pushing when the time comes.  I know that somewhere between "tighten" and "push" there is a thing that is just "let go and open."  That's the place I am supposed to be.

My brain is a little too busy, scratching at the doorposts to be let out.  I can tell I'm still doing a lot of thinking about what I'm "supposed" to do, a lot of expecting and waiting for recognizable signposts that will tell me how far down this road I've gone, how far there is to go.  One contraction -- it is only one -- comes in which it occurs to me:  What if this goes on for a really long time?  Hours and hours?  And this sudden thought frightens me badly, but only for a moment.  After the next contraction it is gone and I am just living in one contraction at a time.

At the back of my mind I am still worried about the sticky shoulders.  It doesn't come forward to my attention because at this point there is nothing more I can do about it.  I have made my decisions.  I am in my own home; there is no going anywhere else now.   I have called my people.  J____ is not here; we called her too recently for her to get here on time.   V____ is here and she is the one who will be helping me, if it comes to that. I just have to get there and find out what happens.

No, that's not true -- I can help.  I can bend and stretch.  And I do.  I try a very deep squat, clinging to the door frame, and that feels the best of all -- I can feel the baby descending.  "Almost there, you're bulging,"  I hear V____ report. 

 Perfect!  I will do a lot of deep squats, I decide.  "You're giving him lots of room," encourages Hannah, and it's just what I want to hear.  And then I feel it -- the push expands like a bubble, a globe, from the center of my chest, down through my body, up through my throat in a low groan that rises to a roar.  I sink almost down to the floor.  That's good, good!  I'll do it again.

Except I can't, because now my legs are all jelly.  Never have I felt them so tired, shaky, aching.  But that's what I want to do!  That's what I have to do!  I stand up, wobbly, and order people around:  Mark, you get behind me and support me on your knees -- Hannah -- in front, I'll hold your hands.  I can feel Mark behind me changing position, and I remember I have a little stepstool -- "Hannah, the stepstool, up on the shelf, grab it, give it to me."  I pass it back to Mark.  "Here, you sit on this -- spread your knees apart -- good --"  and I try to sit back into Mark's lap, leaning on him, a supported squat with my knees wide apart.  I still feel kind of unstable but I am almost in the same position as before, and it seems to work okay.   But I can't seem to trust that Mark won't drop me, and I give up after just one or two contractions and go to hands and knees.

To be continued...

Attention Amy F

You're wanted in the comments to Flipping the Switch below.  Everyone wants to know how you fixed your diastasis.  Go ahead and discuss in the thread to this post here if you wish....

Yoo-hoo.

Rich Leonardi gripes about On Eagles' Wings, this time pointing out that there are no eagles in Psalm 91.  

I, the ever-cheerful curmudgeon, join his gripe.  I also hate On Eagles' Wings, and am pretty sure that hatred of On Eagles' Wings is a prerequisite for membership in the orthodox-Catholic-blogosphere -- although come to think of it, if the orthodox-Catholic-blogosphere ever had an anthem, maybe it ought to BE On Eagles' Wings.  Because that would let us all be grumpy and curmudgeonly together.  What better way to cement the bonds among us?  We could all hold hands, sing On Eagles' Wings, and, I don't know, wave streamers or something.

For years I have thought of this as the "Yoo-hoo" song, based on a demonstration performed for me once when I was an alto in a "music ministry" at a parish that shall remain unnamed.  Try singing the first two notes and see what I mean. 

Actually, the main reason I hate OEW is because I love Ps. 91 so much.  I would go around singing it all day if it weren't for the fact that every time I try, I can't remember any other arrangement because the ingrained memory of OEW, which is an earworm if I ever met one, crowds it out.  (And I know that there are other compositions, including one I like, but I've been trying to remember any for the last 5 minutes and I can't.) 

I tried  to come up with a way to include Ps. 91 at my wedding.  It may seem an odd choice to others, but it expressed a lot of what I was feeling about entering into marriage at the time.

God will rescue you from the fowler's snare, from the destroying plague,

Will shelter you with pinions, spread wings that you may take refuge; God's faithfulness is a protecting shield.

You shall not fear the terror of the night nor the arrow that flies by day,

Nor the pestilence that roams in darkness, nor the plague that ravages at noon.

Though a thousand fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand, near you it shall not come.

"Though a thousand fall... near you it shall not come."

Shrinking, or at least, rearranging.

Hannah's sick and not coming over today, making this the first day I'm home all day with 4 kids and no other adult.  I pondered calling up one of my friends who has offered a play date, but I have to drive out to the midwife's house this afternoon and I don't want to add another drive in the other direction.  So we're going to have a light-school day -- I'll teach reading and history, and assign a few pieces of independent work, and read aloud.  Then I'll spend some of my work time doing planning instead.

I hope to spend a little bit of that time working on the next installment of the birth story, to be released this evening after I return to the internet.  For my Lenten discipline, cheesy as it may sound to you, is to ban myself from the Internet, and as much as possible from the computer, between 8 AM and 4 PM and then again for a couple of hours after dinner.  I just don't see a total ban being feasible or charitable in this day and age.

Last week sometime I posted a photo of my (clothed) postpartum belly.  I was thinking about how rare it is to read birth stories that extend into postpartum and then I realized that the belly photos rarely do either.  Time has made a difference.  Here's that photo reposted, and then a more recent one.

     
 You see? Definitely a change over the course of a week or so, and incidentally, there wasn't any meaningful weight loss between these two photos.

Pregnancy is crazy weird.

Hard sourdough pretzels.

Thought I'd try something a little different with a batch of sourdough pretzel dough, so I made hard pretzels last week.

I used the same dough recipe as for my soft pretzels.

But then I cut the dough into much smaller pieces and rolled it into (mostly) thin ropes.  Hannah helped me twist them into different shapes, like rings and braids and pretzel-shapes.  We made them lots of different thicknesses and lengths, to see which came out best.  I made a few that weren't rope-shaped too -- some shaped like Pringles, for instance.

I boiled them a few at a time for 30 seconds in the baking-soda bath (1/2 cup baking soda for every quart of water) and placed them on nonstick-sprayed parchment on a baking sheet.

Online advice conflicted, so I brushed some with olive oil and others with an egg yolk-water wash and then sprinkled them with kosher salt.

These called for a lower, longer bake time:  350 degrees F for 60 minutes.  

 

Kinda funny looking, aren't they?  Well, this picture was taken several days after I made the pretzels.  Meaning that the best ones have already been eaten and only the runts are left.

Verdict:

* Thinner pretzels are generally crunchier than thick ones, which remained a little chewy.  But a few that were too thin burned, or were too hard to bite.   A variety of  thicknesses is nice to have.  Long twisty ones look the prettiest, and would be impressive served in a vase-like arrangement at a party.  Ring-shaped ones fit best in the boiling pot.  The Pringle shape turned out very nice, but didn't look like a pretzel.

* They were best 24 hours after they were made.

* Both the olive oil and the egg yolk washes made the salt stick nicely to the pretzel.  Some people like the egg yolk wash better, some people like the olive oil wash better.  Note that if you use olive oil, the pretzels will be vegan.

* Very nice with mustard and a cold beer.

Flipping the switch.

I'm slightly embarrassed to admit that, three weeks postpartum, I'm already recommitting to the eat-less habits that I cultivated in 2008.

Embarrassed?  Well -- I keep imagining voices chiding me:  

• "It's only been three weeks since you gave birth -- wait a few months.  Breastfeeding will surely take off some of the pregnancy weight without you having to think about it."
• "You need to eat plenty of good food to nourish yourself and your baby."
• "It takes time, thought, and energy to do all that planning and analyzing -- why add more stress right now, while you're still getting used to all the changes?"
• "People won't notice you're heavy again -- they'll notice the cute baby on your hip."

This is the sort of thing that I said, or wrote, to a number of new mothers who expressed to me a desire to drop their post-pregnancy weight.  Privately I wondered what was the hurry.  

Well.  The shoe is on the other foot now.  It's really remarkable how demoralizing the postpartum body can be!  Blah blah blah, perspective, gratefulness, patience.  (Platitudes!)  I am who I am, and as ever I hate lagging behind the person I want to be.  

But!  I will follow my own advice anyway -- the good part of it.

• Breastfeeding surely will take off some of the weight I've gained without my having to think about it -- but I can get back in the habit of thinking about it now, of eating mindfully instead of mindlessly, so that when (if) I do "have to" think about it, it comes naturally to me.
• I surely need to eat plenty of good food to nourish myself and my baby -- but I don't need to eat food that doesn't nourish me, and I don't need to overeat even healthful food.
• Indeed some of the things I did to lose weight required time, thought, and energy that I don't have right now -- but many of those good habits reduce my stress rather than raise it.  I feel less stressed when I am successful, so I deserve to have opportunities for success right away.  
• People surely won't notice my weight -- but the habits of moderation and mindfulness are worthy for their own sake.

All that being said, I do recognize that I should not lose weight rapidly.  For most of 2008 I lost about a pound and a half a week, which is roughly twice as fast as would be healthy for the mother of a newborn nursling.  Rather than try to calculate how many calories I need and count them daily, I'll keep an eye on the scale and make corrections as necessary.  That's one of the old habits, of course, although now "too fast" would be a bigger problem than "too slow."

So what am I looking at doing now?

• I'm back in the gym three days a week.  I'm the type who's always trying to do too much too soon (hard to believe, I know ;-) ), so I swore that until Leo's 6 weeks old I would do nothing but brisk walking around the track.  So far, so good.
• Weighing every morning and charting the weight.
• Lots and lots of vegetables at every meal.
• Scheduled snacks, prettily presented on a plate, perhaps prepared in advance.
• Stop after the first helping at meals and take time to evaluate satiety.
• Plenty of fluids.
• Reading about healthy, moderate eating to keep it front and center.
• Noticing my successes, several times a day.
• Responding to my frequent impulses to eat unplanned food or excess quantities with my old mantra:  "I don't do that anymore."

None of that is bad for the nursing mother of a three-week-old baby.  None of that causes stress.  I can do all this right now.

Neat real-food picture book.

Here's a wonderful find from our local library:

Bring Me Some Apples and I'll Make You a Pie:  A Story about Edna Lewis, by Robbin Gourley. 

Great book that follows young Edna Lewis (later a famous chef and champion of regional American cooking) through the seasons as she and her family harvest the bounty of gardens, forests, wild meadows, and orchards, and plot what delicious dishes they're going to make from their gatherings.

After breakfast, Edna and her sister head out to the fields to pick wild strawberries, the first of the season.

Mama says, "Better hurry!  You'll need to outrun the rabbits to get all the berries."

Daddy says, "Fill as many baskets as you can.  Larder's empty."

Sister says, "One for the basket and one to taste!"

Edna says, "There'll be strawberry shortcake for dessert tonight!"

We don't even HAVE a garden and Mary Jane wanted to hear this book over and over and over.  I don't know if I will buy a copy or not, knowing that it will always be in the library up the street, but I heartily recommend it.  It made me hungry.  Great pictures, too, and a portrait of a loving extended family.