dessert-free week

so I have officially avoided all processed sugars in the form of desserts for one whole week. sunday to sunday. I thought I should do a little update about how the week went!

on the first day, I had already resolved to not have any treats, so when treats were offered at church I declined. that made it easier to then say no to the cheesecake that my sister in law had made. and after that it felt like I could say no to any treats! seriously just having the determination to decline treats for one whole day made a huge difference.

the only time for the rest of the week that I reeeeally wanted something was on Thursday when I was babysitting. it’s always hard to spend a lot of time at someone else’s house because I don’t really know if I should make real food so I find myself just loading up on snacks. but I stayed strong and didn’t give in to the temptation! then on Friday we went out with our friends and we got dinner at food trucks and then went to a festival downtown. my husband definitely has a sweet tooth so he wanted to get a treat. we walked around to all the booths and he got his treat. well, lucky for me one of the booths was serving fresh thai coconuts! so that’s what I got as my ‘treat’ and it really was delicious.

having my homemade sugar free chocolate sauce and banana ice cream has been a huge help I’m sure in curbing my sugar cravings. and my popcorn. love my popcorn.

I think the main motivator for me is that even though I love sweet treats, I don’t want henry to eat them. and I can’t be stuffing myself full of them and then turn around and tell him he can’t do the same. the best way to teach your children about the world is through example. I’ve actually been meaning to change my diet since he was around 6 months because that’s when we kind of started introducing some fruits, but just haven’t had the determination to stick with it. now he’s 9 months, and i’m feeling good about the pattern I’ve started.

I think another factor in my success so far is that it is something that I decided all on my own, and came up with an accountability plan that didn’t include jared. I needed to do it all by myself. I didn’t tell him about it until I had already completed one whole day of no sweets.

I think I will continue on the path of no desserts, and no refined sugary sweets. I don’t include honey in the sugar category because it is a naturally occurring product that doesn’t require much refinement, if any at all, to be edible and delicious. I will keep making daily food journals to help myself be accountable. I haven’t decided if I will choose to have treats on occasion, but to be honest, i’m not really missing them.

cheers!

living in ego

Jared and i got into a fight today. it’s a fight that we have gotten into many times, I guess that means that it is ongoing. maybe a disagreement is a better word. either way, we were both unwilling to listen, and defensive. Jared thinks that I am too controlling and manipulative with henry. he feels like his role as a father (according to his views of what his role should be) has been taken away by me. by me being overbearing and controlling and manipulative with who what how where when and why when it comes to henry. I admit I have a hard time being apart from him, especially since he still relies so heavily on me for his nourishment. and he wont take a bottle. nevertheless I do believe that I could have a more equal view on how to parent henry.

I was so mad at that jared was offended by the fact that I wanted to keep henry with me. he shouldn’t be mad, I thought. it just makes so much more sense to me to keep henry with me since I am the one who provides physically for him. and then of course the argument turns into jared thinking that I am turning away from the gospel because I am interested in books and ideas that have been published by non-lds people, when in reality, I believe that all the ideas I am interested line up perfectly with the gospel. I think the real root of that problem lies within the fact that jared nor I have been very good at keep our little family centered around Christ and the gospel. he also thinks that because I think multiple ear piercings are cute that I am not following the gospel. but that is aside from this point.

after jared left for work I, of course, was having some very negative thoughts about him. such as: how dare he call out my imperfections when he is most certainly in a state of imperfection. and sarcastically, how lucky am I to have found a husband who is so willing to point out everything that I do wrong and is never found at fault. and wow am I so lucky to have him to tell me what to do all the time, surely I wouldn’t make it through the day without him directing my every move. and every time I suggest scripture reading, or temple going he is never willing to do those things with me, so how can I possibly be at fault or falling away. all these thoughts and more I had bouncing around in my head. and then it didn’t help that when I finally looked at my phone, I had a text message from him telling me to call and get insurance. well thank you, jared, i didn’t want to say anything nice to you either. needless to say i was not very pleased with him.

but of course, i had to have a moment of reconciliation with myself which came after a long while spent outdoors with henry. i came home to let henry have a nap, and decided to read the book that apparently is filling my head with nonsense ideas, according to jared. this book is supposed to help become conscious in the sense that you accept yourself fully and authentically and therefore allow your children to accept themselves and everything is fine and dandy. well the chapter that i started reading was all about ego, and how everyone approaches life from a point of ego, and there are a couple of general egoic positions. i realized, while reading this information, that i am totally living in a state of ego. i am not allowing myself to be authentic, and am therefore emotional, commanding, dominating, and, like jared said, controlling and manipulative. the text is supposed to help situations with children, but i realized that i am completely treating jared poorly because of the image i project about myself.

i need to accept that i am not perfect. that my ideas are not the law. that jared has opinions, views, and wants that are just as validated and true as the ones that i carry. when he is pointing out that i am acting such a way, and then i respond in an overly emotional way such as i am being attacked, i really am acting out in the way that he sees i am. today he told me that since becoming a mother i have become blind. and in a sense, i think that he has made a valid point. i have such a strong image of the kind of mother, and overall person, i should be that i am not allowing myself, jared, or henry, to live authentically. and it is creaing some very bad feelings. i need to surrender my ego on all levels and from all points to allow harmony and understand to flow in our relationship.

that is not to say that jared is perfect in this, and that he does not also approach life from a point of ego and expectations previously decided, however, it is not up to me to point out his flaws and force him to be who i think he should be or how he should act. it is up to me to surrender my own ego and become a more harmonious person internally, and then create the space for jared to realize he wants the same for himself. once we are in harmony with each other it will be so much better.

birth

i want to write my birth story today. my babe is going to be eight months old tomorrow and i still haven’t written the story of how he came into this world.

i had the easiest of easy pregnancies by anyone’s measures. i never ever got morning – or anytime- sickness. i stayed extremely healthy and fit and overall i hardly gained any weight that wasn’t necessary. i walked every. single. day. and did yoga. and squats. and i never had a so-called ‘pregnancy craving’ (they don’t actually exist in my book, but more on that later). i didn’t get huge, even when i was 39 weeks pregnant. seriously, the only thing that happened to me that could be called a typical pregnancy related symptom was that my feet swelled up a couple of times. that was it.

i knew even before i was married that i wanted natural childbirth. i myself was born at home. i was the only one of five kids that my mom birthed and home, and she always said that it was her best one. i had a longing for a comfortable, natural, childbirth with people who were loving and supportive and wanted the same things for my birth. after all, it was my birth. i wanted a homebirth, but my husband refused. “what if something happens. especially since you’ve had heart surgery… i would feel much better if we were in a hospital.” i don’t know why i let him decide where i would give birth, but for whatever reason, i agreed. i think in the back of my mind i knew he would never consider a birth center or water birth. the main reason being that it was too expensive and probably not covered under our insurance, and the second being for the safety of myself and the baby. regardless of the arguments that a birth center could be a fantastic option, we chose LDS hospital in salt lake city for the birth of our son.

i originally chose an OBGYN as my care provider for my pregnancy and birth. she was really a great person who was supportive but not necessarily knowledgeable about natural birth. i eventually decided to switch to a midwife who was more familiar, although in the end was not the kind of provider i had envisioned for myself during this time. nothing against the midwife, but now, having experienced everything, i would have been much more adamant about finding someone i truly loved to help me bring my baby earthside.

on the subject of hiring a doula: i was all for it. i would have loved to have someone there who was solely there for me. i wanted that additional support of someone who was truly versed in the ways of natural, intuitive, motherled childbirth. however, husband was absolutely opposed to hiring a doula.

he had very strong opinions about how birth should be. in fact, the first fight of our marriage, coming home from our honeymoon, was whether or not anyone except him and the doctors should be present in the delivery room. he was the only one who should be in there according to him. i, on the other hand, thought it was fine, maybe even a good idea, to have other people in the room. over time, though, i gave in to his pleas to be the only one there. “there are only a few things in life that you get to experience for the first time,” he told me, “and i don’t want to share that moment with anyone except you, me, and our baby.” so having family there, a doula, or anyone else for that matter, was out. how ironic that was.

my ideas about birthing naturally were so foreign to him. his ideas about birth had been shaped by society; what he had seen in the movies, and what he had heard from other people. the typical ‘woman on her back, screaming, pushing, and crying because she was in so much pain’ type birth is what he had ingrained in his mind. i knew that that was NOT what i wanted, and i knew that it wasn’t natural. “women have been giving birth since the beginning of time,” i thought to myself, “i know that there is a better way.” and there was. and i researched it. i signed us up for two different classes; a Lamaze class at the hospital where i would give birth, and a hypnobirthing class that i practically had to beg him to take with me.

i LOVED my hypnobirthing class. i would take it again in a heartbeat. and even in the end, husband was glad we had taken the class. hypnobirthing is all about using the mind to relax the body and allow everything to flow naturally, the way nature intended. learning different techniques for relaxation, and different positions to try for the body preparing for birth, and the birth itself. it was seriously right up my alley. i listened to my hypnobirthing tracks every day on my walks, i almost had the memorized. “my body can birth this baby,” i repeated in my head, “everything about my pregnancy is healthy and normal.” “my body knows exactly when and how to birth my baby.” the affirmations were wonderful and i longed for my mind to truly believe them.

as my pregnancy progressed i was feeling excited about this new adventure. i would start to think about how it could be anytime that my baby would decide it was his time to come earthside! husband and i decided last minute that the best option for us would be to move in to his parents basement- i was 38 weeks and a few days pregnant. but we did anyway. afterall, i wasn’t about to let being pregnant stop me from anything i would do normally! other than the obvious things i couldn’t do anymore. so i helped pack, move, and clean. and in the end, i probably pushed my body too hard, but i wouldn’t have known that because it was all so new to me.

on the day we finished moving, saturday august 15, the waters in my belly started to leak. a few days prior, on thursday, i had started having labor surges. they weren’t very strong but they were consistent. in fact, my husband and i actually spent the night in the hospital thursday-friday because of the consistency, but in the end went home because i wasn’t dilating. so then when my waters started leaking on saturday i called my midwife and she said the only way to know for sure would be to go and have the fluid tested. so off to the hospital we went! we were so excited to finally have something happening.

we got to the hospital and were shown to our room. the nurse was very kind and i undressed and had her test the fluid. she came back and said that it was, in fact, amniotic fluid. we were going to be having our baby! this was so exciting for us. i was not dilated, but i was having contractions. we walked the halls, i bounced on the ball, and we did everything we could do in the hospital while we waited for my body to do it’s thing. husband went and got food for us, café rio for him and smoothies for me, and we walked some more. and waited some more. i requested to check if i had dilated and unfortunately, i hadn’t. it had been probably 8 hours by this point and my water kept leaking, but i wasn’t dilating.

against all my dreams and wishes i decided it was time for an epidural. i could feel exhaustion kicking in, and new that if i couldn’t relax, my body definitely wouldn’t dilate. so i got the epidural and waited. i was confined to the bed at this point, but i mostly just wanted to see some progress. i knew that there was risk of infection with my water having broken but the baby not coming. after i got the epidural by body dilated… to a 1. 1 centimeter is all that happened after the epidural. i was feeling extremely defeated at this point. the external monitors showed my contractions and the baby’s heartbeat. my contractions were consistent, however, the were not nearly strong enough to allow my cervix to open.my baby’s heartbeat was also not rising and falling like it should be with each contraction. in fact, it seemed as though it was dropping with every contraction. it was decided that i needed internal monitoring so they could really see the strength of the surges.

so there i was, iv in hand, epidural in back, catheter in urethra, and they wanted to stick more wires up me. i was already a total mess because my worst fears about childbirth had come true, and my body just wasn’t living up to my expectations for it. i felt totally and completely let down. mu husband was obviously such a wonderful support but he had just as much experience with this as i did- none. we were alone and helpless and at the mercy of the nurses and doctors. between switching the monitors one of the nurses accidentally unplugged the monitor and i thought my baby’s heart stopped beating. that was the worst point. and that nurse was not nice. i did not like her before that happened, and when that happened she was pretty much the devil in my opinion.

i was a total mess, crying and worrying and stressed beyond belief. after many stressful hours- all day and now into the early morning of sunday- my midwife came in and confirmed what we had already feared: we had to get the baby out right away. i was going to have and emergency C-section. my husband called and told our parents what was going on. they prepared me for surgery which included shaving my pubic hair where the incision would be made, and took my husband to get his gown on. they took us to the operating room where the anesthesiologist immediately put more meds into my epidural to numb me completely. i kept asking for more and more nausea medicine because i knew i was going to be sick and probably pass out. i was shaking uncontrollably. was my baby going to be ok? after a few seconds, dr. tilly asked if i could feel where the incision was being made. i could. so they put more meds into the epidural. after a few seconds she asked again, and i could still feel pinching. she then put her head over the curtain and said “we are going to put you out. we need to get this baby out now.” they took jared out of the room and put a mask over my face and that is the last thing i remember.

when i woke up in the recovery room i was so out of it. my baby was no longer a part of me, and was no where in sight. i was so groggy. i couldn’t do anything. they told me that my baby was in the intensive care unit and that i could go see him once i could get myself into a wheelchair. i couldn’t see my baby. i couldn’t see my baby. until i could get into a wheelchair? what kind of a sick joke was this.

i didn’t get to see my baby until 5 hours after he was born. 5 hours of loneliness for my poor brand new baby. forcibly taken our of his safe haven and protection and kept away from me for 5 hours. and when i could finally get myself into a wheelchair and finally got to see my baby, i couldn’t even pick him up. i balled. he was all connected to wires and tubes everywhere. he had an infection and he needed to stabilize before i could hold him. i was utterly and completely heartbroken. my poor, poor baby. the best thing that i could have probably done for him to stabilize would have been to hold him, but i couldn’t. it makes me cry even now thinking back to that.

we spent a week in the hospital together. henry’s first meal was formula. i pumped colostrum and we worked on breastfeeding every day. by the end of the week we were breastfeeding and we got discharged on the same day.

all in all it was a nightmare of an experience. and now i have to deal with the fact that i have had a surgical birth; the furthest thing from what i had so desperately desired. 8 motnhs later and i am still disappointed in how my baby was brought into this world. i truly believe that my water broke prematurely because i was too hard, expected too much of my body when it was protecting such fragile life. i have spent 8 wonderful months bonding with my baby and our bond is stronger than ever. we are still breast feeding and will be until henry decides to wean.

it feels so good to finally put into words how awful my experience was. i am positive that i will be mentally recovering from the trauma for longer than it has taken and will take for my body to heal. but one thing is for certain- i will have the birth i desire when and if we bring another baby earthside. i am not going to submit to someone else’s views on how my birth is going to happen. i will be strong and firm.

rediscovery

i feel like there are many times in life when rediscovery is necessary. no matter the reason you’ve just lost yourself. in my life i feel like i am at a point of not only rediscovery but new discovery. my life has changed drastically in the past two and a half years and i’m not sure who i am anymore, although i do know who i would like to be. i want to become my most authentic self. it seems as though i have lost myself in my marriage, motherhood, and insecurities that those bring. i was just telling my husband last night that i feel like the reason he fell in love with me because i was different, mysterious, and wild to him. but now that we are married he doesn’t want those qualities in a wife because to him it translates to unpredictability and unstability. but i truly believe that if i can rediscover those parts of myself – the yoga loving, homeschool wanting, plant based eating, all natural hippie – he will love me even more than when i am trying to become something that i think he wants me to be.

so here i am. starting this new journey of rediscovery and new discovery. i yearn for spontaneity and creativity to flow through me. i need to feel alive and curious again. mainly for the sake of myself, but also for my marriage and my motherhood. i am interested in learning new subjects, getting out of my comfort zone, and truly having a passion for new things. i feel as though i have spent the last two years doing what my husband wanted and convincing myself that it was ‘our’ dream, and ‘our’ plan, but i have realized that i have completely let myself become swallowed up in this idea of who i should be, or who my husband wants or thinks i should be. who is he to determine who i am? who am i to let him? i am myself. i am individual. my dreams, ideas, loves, curiosities, they are real. they are important. i am a woman and i am proud.

why am i so prone to let others decide who and what and where i am and should be doing? it is not anyone’s business but my own, and whomever i desire to share it with. unsupportive and corrosive behavior is not tolerated in my life. no longer will i allow anyone or anything to determine where my life is, or should be going. what direction i choose for my spirituality, love, body, and life is mine and mine alone. starting this blog is the beginning of this outlet where i can authentically discuss and express everything i feel and desire for my life. there are many things that if i told my husband, he would disagree or feel attacked. that is not my problem and i should not have to tiptoe around his feelings or views of life. i will not conform to anyone’s ideas about my life. i am a unique soul residing in a unique body and my mind and thoughts are mine alone.

i want to become someone who is unapologetic in who i am. therefore i repeat this mantra to myself:

i am me. the universe is me. i am god. god is love. god is everywhere, and therefore god is in me. i am enough. i am wise. i am strong. i am unbending to the whims of others whose interests are not my own. i stand firm in my beliefs. i am me.

a new beginning

ah the freshness of a new beginning. it feels so good to finally have an outlet that i can claim as completely my own. i had another blog, but to be honest it didn’t feel like mine. i started it three years ago and never kept up on it. on this blog, however, i intend to make an entry every day. it seems as though i have many things every day that i would like to express, and for whatever reason, i don’t get to. no one except me knows about this blog and i like how that feels. it really is something that is totally mine. i don’t plan on telling anyone in my personal life about this blog. i won’t be sharing links on facebook. i won’t be trying to be what anyone thinks i should be. this blog will be totally raw and unfiltered. i won’t be sparing anyone’s feelings, or sharing or not sharing because of others opinions. i am my own person, and as such i feel the desire to express exactly how i feel at any given time. i am truly excited for this journey! like it says, this is a journey to self. i have gathered my supplies and am ready to embark. wish me luck!