I am not up to par today so I am bringing back an older post. Hope you guys and gals have a Happy Hump Day.
You find out you are pregnant, and you spend 9 months experiencing all the wonderful and not-so-wonderful things a pregnancy offers. A beautiful glow vs. swollen hands and feet. All those foods you thought you could never enjoy vs. spending hours bent over a toilet. Feeling your baby kick for the first time vs. resting your plate on your stomach, having the baby kick it off into your lap. The nice fullness of your breasts vs. not being able to see your shoes, let alone, tie them. Sleeping whenever your body tells you to vs. being up all night due to nausea, heartburn, and endless trips to the bathroom.
Finally the day comes and your little bundle of joy arrives. And amidst all the happiness, you have already forgotten the above mentioned stuff. You spend the next few days recovering, and getting to know your child. All is great and right with the world, until…
You are ready for your first outing. You get baby ready, and then yourself. You go to your closet to pick out something to wear. On the left side of your closet, pre-pregnancy clothing and on the right side, maternity clothes. After trying on many different articles of clothing which either a.) make you look very like you are still in your ninth month or b.) makes you look like you are squeezing into clothing two sizes too small, you give in and stay home. As you leave your room, you resolve the weight is going to come off.
Now, I’m a mom of four wonderful children, I will say that anytime I ever got back down to my ideal weight, within a matter of what seemed like days, I would find out I was pregnant again. I think it was God’s way of paying me back for being a rotten child. I could just hear our conversation now…
“I will bless you with four healthy children, and give you the weight loss you want, but as soon as you get it, I’ll make sure you gain it back” he would say to me.
I would respond, “Why God, what did I do to deserve that?”
In which I am sure he would chuckle and respond, “Remember when you were seven Heather, and you got in trouble for sneaking the snacks from the forbidden cupboard? And when your grandmother caught you doing so, she went to spank you, and you got away and ran around the table, making her chase you? Do you remember what you said to her? Do you?”
I would then think back but before I can recall, he would speak up saying, “Does the phrase (insert maniacal laughter here followed by) “fatty fatty can’t catch me” repeatedly being chanted ring any bells?”
“But God, I was seven!”
And he would reply, “Doesn’t matter, Helen, this one is for you.”
So yeah, I’m pretty sure that’s how that conversation would go. Anyways, after my fourth child, to further my punishment of making fun of my grandmother’s fluffiness (did I mention I was SEVEN), he no longer allowed me to get back down to that weight. I tried countless diets, fads, and exercise programs, nothing seemed to work. That is when I came up with my own ideas to stay in shape. Not your basic exercises, no no, but ones to suit my lifestyle as a mom.
TIP 1
Buy a baby monitor. Now if you live in a single story house, when the baby is sleeping, which is quite often at first, put them in their own bedroom, preferably the one furthest from where you will be hanging out with your other children. The baby falls asleep, turn on baby monitor, and leave the room. Go to whatever room the kids are in, no matter how messy, and just sit and wait. Let them make a big mess and don’t pick up after them.
When your baby wakes up, you are going to start a new exercise called “The Gauntlet.” As quickly and as safely as you can, remove your shoes, stand up, get on your tip toes and start making your way out of the room to the other end of the house. With each day, the gauntlet will change depending on what your children have done to your house. Tip toeing through said mess will work your calf and leg muscles and is great for toning those out of shape legs. And it will give baby a few minutes of crying time to really strengthen those lungs which will come in handy at a later date.
Now if you live in a two-story house, you will move on to a more advanced version of the gauntlet. You will simply put the baby upstairs (don’t forget the monitor), add a baby gate at the bottom of the stairs to keep the younger kids from going up and down them. This will help keep the noise level down and you somewhat sane.
By adding that baby gate and the stairs, you are not only working to get your calf and leg muscles toned, but you are now adding in the gluteal muscles, or butt muscles for those of us who have know idea what “gluteal” means. It will also work your breathing and heart as you go up and down the stairs the fifty-million times a day that you will do this exercise.
I need to add in here, for safety reasons…as you are performing the gauntlet, there are small objects you should be wary of that are guaranteed to make you rethink doing this exercise more than once.
- Legos – Stepping on these little blocks of terror will most definitely break your stride as well as causing a block-like indentation into the bottom of your foot that may not go away for several hours. Might I add that it hurts like hell also?
- Crayons – I call these the colors of death. In the right hands and used properly, they can make some of the prettiest scribbles around. But when left on the floor, hidden (say under doll clothes), when you step on these, it will cause you to not only break the crayon, but to roll on said color, lose your balance and most likely end up falling. Now, if you have my luck, right next to these hidden colors of death will be a strategically placed pile of the blocks of terror, and you will land squarely on not just one, but the whole freakin pile, right onto those gluteal muscles I referred to earlier.
- Hotwheels – these are double sided. One side has wheels that does the same thing as the colors of death but when turned upside down, feels like the blocks of terror. You never know what you will get until you step on. Don’t you love the element of surprise?
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