Life On Our Terms: October 2011

If I said I loved being a pregnant lady I would be lying. Pregnancy has been kicking my ass left and right for the majority of the past 8 1/2 months. One of the hardest part for me is learning how to scale back, how to slow down. I really only know two speeds; full speed or dead stop. I don't know anything in between. It's a 'all in' or 'no thanks' for me. And so I have found myself in this situation over and over again during my pregnancy...

I extend myself way too far on the days I feel good doing inappropriate pregnant lady things like:

Pull-ups at 8 months

Remodeling work:

...and end up in bed recovering for days after. In my defense, I am also balancing out my inappropriate behavior with some very obvious pregnant lady activities like:

Filling up an entire room (and garage) with baby supplies....when do you stop?

Eating turkey sandwiches for breakfast, lunch and dinner

In preparation for Baby T I have found an obsession with garage sales and craigslist. I think I have enough clothes for him for the first year of his life, but I can't stop. It's like hunting for women. Like a sport and I can't get enough. I also am back to having meat aversion and weird cravings, like the first trimester, making strict paleo almost impossible. I'm still okay with it. I do my best and eat what I can when I can. Again, I am so thankful for AdvoCare, because I know that Baby is getting all the nutrition he needs even when I'm not being the best role model for food choices. That's very evident in his development pace, he has been a solid 2 weeks ahead in growth and development the entire pregnancy. The more research I do, the more I discover how important pre-pregnancy behavior is to baby development too. Chris Kresser, has an amazing program called The Healthy Baby Code that goes into all the specifics on how to raise a healthy baby, before, during and after pregnancy. Of course, it's paleo and natural. And of course we are planning on raising our son paleo following his guidelines. It's very amusing to hear reactions when I inform people that we won't be feeding our child grains, dairy or sugar. My favorite reactions and my responses:

Them: "hahaha good luck with that"
Me: "I'm pretty sure I'll be the one doing the grocery shopping"

Them: "Kids need milk for their bones to grow strong"
Me: "Really? who told you that? The dairy industry?"

Them: "What are you going to do when he doesn't eat what you want him to?"
Me: "He's not going to starve himself, he'll eat what I give him eventually when he's hungry"

Now once he is older and bombarded with ads for junk food, surrounded with his friends that eat crap and tastes sugar, I'm sure it will be a different story. However, I'm preparing myself as a parent and doing as much research as I can now to collect ideas on how to educate and empower my children to make the right choices when it comes to food. Everyday Paleo, is my all time favorite blog on how to raise children paleo, how to get them involved with meal time and hundreds of kid friendly recipes. Her podcast is fantastic.

Baby delivery news.... like I said, he's going to be a big one and we're doing it all natural. With the disapproval of most of my family and friends we are choosing to do a holistic water birth. Which means no drugs or medical intervention unless absolutely necessary. Next post I'll go into depth about what it means and why we choose to do it that way. Like everything controversial, it's about education, ask questions and learn. Never settle for the answer "that's the way we've always done it". Ha! Thinking about it...that's the reason I got fired from lululemon, still great advise to live by.

House news...with 5 weeks to go before Baby arrives we are currently a week past our move in goal date. New goal is to be moving in by October 15th. I don't want to ruin the surprise but I'm making a 80s montage video of our remodeling fun. Here's a sneak peak of the work we've been doing and when I say "we" I mean mostly Jeremie.