As I write this, the two main loves of my life are napping: one is Seren, my beautiful baby daughter (born on 13th October this year) and the other is her hard working, doting, amazingly attentive father. All went extremely well with the birth and with post-birth recovery, and I feel extremely lucky and blessed. I am so in love with Seren and with motherhood, and yes, all the clichés are true: the love you feel as your baby is placed onto your chest immediately after giving birth, and how it is all very very worth it. Truly was the best day of my life, and one that I won't forget in a hurry. I won't go into the gory details here, as it's not that kind of blog, but suffice to say it was indeed gory: the most rugged, raw and brutal experience that results in the most amazing outcome. I will say that I had exactly the birth that I had wanted and worked towards: a short (relatively speaking, about 4 active hours in the hospital), drug and intervention free, natural birth (luckily with no stitches/surgery; feel so blessed). I am convinced this was mainly to do with working out (weights classes and yoga) and running up until 40 weeks of my pregnancy (apparently keeping physically active and working out throughout the pregnancy can lead to a shorter labour than otherwise) and my near-religious date-munching regime from about week 36. (Dates have been shown to reduce the length of labour, lead to spontaneous labour/less induction risk, and ripen/soften the cervix: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21280989.)
Since the birth however, I have not been running, obviously. Instead, I've been taking the time to recover and heal via good, healing food and rest (when possible, this is Seren dependent of course). They (the powers that be) recommend not resuming normal exercise until about 6 weeks after birth, so until then I will just be walking with the pram, and not running or doing anything more vigorous. Mind you, there wouldn't be much chance of it anyway at the moment, given that the majority of my day is spent breastfeeding my baby girl. A full-time job for sure, with added bonus night shifts thrown in for good measure. Who knew breastfeeding would cause such hunger too?! More like intense 'runger', I have been crazy hungry most of the time. Hey ho, just gives me more chance to get in as many healing foods as possible. So, just like after a race or long run, I'm focusing on nourishing, healing foods such as dark green, leafy veggies, citrus fruits, eggs, complex carbs including lots of oats, brown rice and potatoes, salmon, avocado, blueberries, beans/chickpeas, mushrooms and dark chocolate (for regular readers, this list will be nothing new: it's my go-to list of recovery foods). Oh, and water, water , water, of course!
While breastfeeding, my energy requirement is slightly higher than normal (roughly about 500 calories more or so per day) as is the need for iron, calcium, vitamin C, and water, as well as ensuring that my diet has enough folate, vitamin B12, other B vitamins, zinc, and so on. Having a balanced, healthy diet that focuses on mainly plant-based, colourful, varied options, with a little seafood and eggs, means that this will be achieved and thus hopefully the breastfeeding can continue for the next year plus plus. My next major challenge will be timing runs and workouts with Seren's feeds. Hopefully, they start to space out a little longer than every hour and hour and a half soon.
For now, it's back to my baby bubble to soak up time with my daughter and fiancé before he goes back to work: it's been so wonderful having him on paternity leave allowing us to share the newborn parenting and Seren-cuddles, oh and enjoy lazy, late brekkies together as per this delicious one:
Since the birth however, I have not been running, obviously. Instead, I've been taking the time to recover and heal via good, healing food and rest (when possible, this is Seren dependent of course). They (the powers that be) recommend not resuming normal exercise until about 6 weeks after birth, so until then I will just be walking with the pram, and not running or doing anything more vigorous. Mind you, there wouldn't be much chance of it anyway at the moment, given that the majority of my day is spent breastfeeding my baby girl. A full-time job for sure, with added bonus night shifts thrown in for good measure. Who knew breastfeeding would cause such hunger too?! More like intense 'runger', I have been crazy hungry most of the time. Hey ho, just gives me more chance to get in as many healing foods as possible. So, just like after a race or long run, I'm focusing on nourishing, healing foods such as dark green, leafy veggies, citrus fruits, eggs, complex carbs including lots of oats, brown rice and potatoes, salmon, avocado, blueberries, beans/chickpeas, mushrooms and dark chocolate (for regular readers, this list will be nothing new: it's my go-to list of recovery foods). Oh, and water, water , water, of course!
While breastfeeding, my energy requirement is slightly higher than normal (roughly about 500 calories more or so per day) as is the need for iron, calcium, vitamin C, and water, as well as ensuring that my diet has enough folate, vitamin B12, other B vitamins, zinc, and so on. Having a balanced, healthy diet that focuses on mainly plant-based, colourful, varied options, with a little seafood and eggs, means that this will be achieved and thus hopefully the breastfeeding can continue for the next year plus plus. My next major challenge will be timing runs and workouts with Seren's feeds. Hopefully, they start to space out a little longer than every hour and hour and a half soon.
For now, it's back to my baby bubble to soak up time with my daughter and fiancé before he goes back to work: it's been so wonderful having him on paternity leave allowing us to share the newborn parenting and Seren-cuddles, oh and enjoy lazy, late brekkies together as per this delicious one:
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