Looking Back on My Back Surgery

I can hardly believe it that this week marks the sixth anniversary of my two spinal fusion surgeries. (It's also the fifth anniversary of getting my surgeon's approval to get pregnant). It's amazing to me that time has flown by so quickly. Good grief I've had rods in my back longer than I was Jr High or High School aged! Incredible!
Of course I miss having the range of motion that I once had (especially at times like today when Christian wanted me to do a handstand). But overall, I am so thankful that I was able to have the procedure done and with such success so that I could not only breathe in the shower (big plus) but I could be pregnant without adverse effects on my lung capacity (which before surgery was 50%).
I had a check-up this past week and it turns out that I may have a piece of broken rod in the lower portion of my back but so far it's not causing pain so I just need to keep a close eye on it.
I am more astounded now than ever before at the trust that Jared and I put into Heavenly Father's hands that everything would turn out according to His will.... Of course I didn't rule out the possibility of death or peralisis and spent the months waiting for surgery putting together Jared's mission scrapbook together so that he would have evidence of my affection and desires for his happiness whatever happened. Thankfully all went well!
I am incredibly grateful that Heavenly Father led me to my surgeon and guided his hands to better my future!

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Sent from my Verizon Wireless mobile phone

Maybe a little exclusive…?

Warning:  Personal venting session

So I got this invitation from some girls that are in the mom’s group in my ward.  It’s for an Easter Egg hunt.  It instructs each parent to bring their favorite treat to fill eggs with.  At first I thought.  “Oh how fun for the kids” until I read what was written on the bottom of the invitation which reads:

This hunt is for Children ages 0-2.  Older siblings may help younger siblings hunt but they will not be allowed to do so for the first 10 minutes.

Do you see any problems with this?  First of all, Christian is the only, and I mean the one and only child above the age of two that comes to the mom’s group so this means that they are basically saying that this hunt is really for everyone but him. Secondly, what about children (who are really babies) ages 0-1 having eggs filled with candy anyway??

I totally understand giving younger kids a head-start but honestly, it seems a little rude to put it that way especially on an invitation that is supposed to invite people to come to an event.  I really wish they hadn’t sent it to me at all because now I just feel excluded, annoyed and a little bitter.  This is yet another example of why I don’t feel that I fit into my the mom’s group in my ward…I am the only girl with two kids and my oldest is the only one over 2.  I feel like they like to make such a big deal out of Christian’s age when he plays great with the little kids and is really good at helping them and the other moms so it just makes me irritated.

Maybe I’m being over-sensitive but I really do feel excluded for reasons that would never even come up in any Utah ward I’ve ever been in.

Exercise, Over-Analysis and Hypnosis…

When I started my personal campaign to lose weight after Vivian was born I was stoked at first to begin ‘moving’.  I felt like a huge weight had been lifted from me (which in fact it had) and I finally could move with a lot less effort.  It felt nice to not have a belly to hit every time I did any large movements.

Sadly the euphoric effects of having delivered a healthy baby with my own amazing body started wearing thin and I had a more difficult time staying motivated.  I started “over-analysis” of every workout I did.  I would be moving along with my video (since that’s what I find is easiest to use with two kids at home), and wonder why I was doing this or that and what was the difference anyway?!

This negative thinking started making my workouts feel more like drudgery than anything that could possibly be rewarding and my motivation lasted two days….then I realized something….I have been through this cycle before when I was in high school and an early morning “morning-side” speaker had the topic of “Enduring to the End”.  Not that enduring to the end is a bad thing, quite the contrary…but it was my attitude about enduring; that because I was merely enduring it was drudgery!

For example, when I was in P.E. in high school, the whole time I ran around the track I literally said “Endure to the End” in my mind to the rhythm of my slow jog.  Then I would look down at my feet and think “Gosh, I wonder how many of these measly steps until the end!”  “I wonder how I’ll ever get my pace up…maybe I’ll never get my pace up!”  I would get slower and slower with all of this over-analysis of what I was doing.

Then I read something about a runner who doesn’t run because she wants to lose weight or because she wants to win.  She ran for the sole purpose of “Feeling the strength of her body in movement”.  She wasn’t enduring to the end of each run…she was enduring well because she was enjoying just the simple act of “being in the moment” and not worrying about the future per se. 

It reminds me of a quote by Joseph B. Wirthlin that I have on a plaque in my Living room that reads “Come what may and love it.”

Some things do not seem possible to find the good things about them… such as I have rods in my back which make it so I can feel every storm system that passes by and I have limited movement which sometimes makes things a little tricky.  On the positive side, I can have children without dying of suffocation, and I can breath well in the shower (which I wasn’t able to do because of the steam being too thick before my surgery).  As a side note, breathing is good!

My point is that you can convince yourself of anything.  Either you can choose to be negative and paralyzed because of your mindset or you can choose to be positive and motivated because of your mindset.  My favorite high school teacher Mr. Wendel used to say “Never say Don’t because then you Can’t”.

The mind is such a powerful thing.  I really have learned this with my hypnobabies studying that your perceptions of the way things are has a direct link between how things will be played out.  I absolutely loved the affirmations C.D. that came with the hypnobabies course because it helped me think positive thoughts about childbirth and pregnancy.  This isn’t to say that your mind is so powerful that it can make things turn out perfectly for you—I still don’t make enough breast milk but I can rejoice that I have other healthy options for my babies.  Undesirable things happen to positive people too.   The point is that both positive and negative thinking are powerful markers for capability.

I know that people think aerobic videos are really really cheesy but I have news about them.  That cheesy positive attitude is motivating if you just let it be and don’t waste your energy feeling silly about it.  Confession:  I have this cheesy aerobic workout video that really boosts my motivation to work out and continue working out.  It’s the Denise Austin Fat Burning Blast.  During the video she says some lines that when I first got the video I was rolling my eyes about, such as: “Put a smile on your face, because we’re going to burn fat naturally by exercising!”  “If you rest you’ll rust” “Think strength”  “Think graceful” “Now have a little fun”.  They seem pretty corny at first but they actually are phrases that I think when I do other workouts as well which is good.

For one, when you smile during an activity, even a difficult one, your brain signals catch that and send out endorphins which make you feel happy about what you’re doing so you want to continue doing it more.

Secondly it helps you focus on the positives of what you are doing with your body and according to a Cleveland Clinic Foundation study that “for 15 minutes a day, five days a week, volunteers imagined exercising certain muscles as vigorously as they could.  After 12 weeks, the muscles had strengthened by as much as 15 percent… Visualization may send signals from the brain to the neurons controlling movement; the stronger the signal the stronger the muscles.” [Parenting, March 2010, p.22]

Besides all of the positive things that are said in workout videos I am of the opinion that when we exercise we are training ourselves to be under a certain level of hypnosis.  When I used to run three miles a day I realized that thinking about other things while running made my run feel so much easier than actually thinking about running.  It’s just like when you’ve driven to the same place everyday for a month and then one day you get there and realize that you don’t even remember driving there.

If I just do what I need to do (i.e. exercise) consistently and with acceptance and ideally excitement, (“I get to work out!  This is time for me that no one can take away”) that it needs to be done, it becomes a lot less of a drudgery.  Hooray for positive thinking!  I am virtually what I think about….whether it is negative, positive, cruel or benevolent.  It’s all in choices that I make whether consciously or not.

Here’s one of my favorite little mantras that hangs in my home given me by a friend who’s a life coach.

I choose

to live by choice

not by chance

to make changes

not excuses

to be internally motivated

not manipulated

to be useful, not used

to excel, not compete

I choose self-esteem

not self pity

I choose to listen

to the inner voice

not the random

opinion of others

--Anonymous

Hopefully I will keep reminding myself of positive things as I work towards my goals and never quit.  Because…

“Winners never quit and quitters never win”.

--unknown

Sizing Myself

So, I’ve been thinking ( a lot) lately that I would really  LOVE to be into my regular pre-pregnancy clothes.  I keep watching “What Not To Wear” (yes, this is how I spend my Friday nights) and I think… “Well, I could pull of that look with such and such that I have in a bin under my bed”….  I hate it that I have been so many sizes in my life. 

I actually have worn more sizes than I’ve actually been because I was so embarrassed by my body from about age eleven to seventeen that I would wear pants from the men’s section and incredibly large T-shirts for my frame in order to hide every single curve I might have had.  I am so glad that in my junior year of high school I started realizing that I should wear clothes I want to wear even if I might not have a perfect body.  I started wearing clothes that were actually my size, and started looking instantly smaller. 

Someone had mentioned that I had somewhat of a tummy when I was eleven (when I really just needed better posture) and I did all kinds of exercise programs to “get skinny” which never happened but I was in actually in pretty good shape. I just didn’t happen to have a pretty shape (due to scoliosis that never was diagnosed until my junior year).    Anyway, I would run around the track at the school, I’d run down the canal road behind my house, I would run everywhere that I could to get in shape.  I also weight trained and did kick-boxing.  By the time I was 20, I would run 3-5 miles 4 times a week, and alternate kick-boxing, yoga and weights on the off days.  I was pretty much a maniac.  The frustrating thing was during that whole time from sophomore year to the summer I turned 20 I never even changed sizes.  It was insane literally.  I could not get down past a size 12.

Around the time I met Jared, something magical happened I limited my self to one treat once a week (so anything sugary) and I started only working out 3 times a week.  I was having too much fun playing tennis with Jared and my running began to be substituted for tennis 2-3 times a week and I dropped all of my other workouts to be with him.  Starting at that time I started losing weight with almost no effort at all.  I was down to a size 10 by mid-July and an 8 by early September when he asked me to marry him.  I stopped working out at about that time because of the difficulty of mixing school with exercise and I miraculously fit into a size 6 wedding dress by October!

I pretty much tapered off on weight loss after that but I was incredibly comfortable with myself.  I think it’s because I could see myself as a worthwhile person who someone loved.  I wasn’t worried about what anyone really thought because I was so happy with my life and I had found a true best friend.  I was really in seventh heaven.

Fast forward a year and a half.  It turned out that I needed a spinal fusion from my sacrum to the bottom of my neck.  I was so sick after surgery that I lost about 20 lbs just from a lack of nutrition.  That was nice (in a way) but the doctor had messed with my hips to make them not have to move too much during childbirth and so I became permanently a 10 or an 8 in regular pants no matter how little weight I carried because that was my lowest weight in 20 years.

Fast forward two more years.  I gave birth to a beautiful little boy and my hips spread so much in one day that I went from a size 11 to a 16!  I got stretch marks on the side of my hips they spread so fast.

After having Christian, I slowly (and I mean slowly) went back to a comfortable size for me which was 20 lbs heavier than I started out pregnant with him.  Then we decided it was time for number two.  I steadily gained weight at an okay rate and then I had my appendectomy and couldn’t lift anything and so I gained 10 lbs in two weeks.  After that my weight gain was steady again but all-in-all I weighed 54 lbs more than I did before I ever got pregnant with Christian in the first place.   

Here I am just having had baby number two.  I watched an episode of “Martha” where her trainer mentioned that if you don’t lose the “baby-weight” within the first year after being pregnant, it will become doubly hard to get rid of the weight.  I started with the “’Special K’ Challenge”  and started working out the next day after seeing that.  I have actually lost 24 lbs since giving birth and I only need to go down another 10 to be back to my pre-pregnancy weight (from this time). 

The only thing is, I really would like to get back to the weight I was before I had Christian.  Will I get there?  I don’t know… It depends on how much motivation I can muster.  So, I’m continuing my efforts to lose 30 lbs but I’m going to post periodically about what I’m doing to lose that extra weight and maybe any fun healthy recipes that I may being using as well.

So far, I’m on the South Beach Diet and I’m doing some kind of aerobic exercise 3 times a week and some kind of strength exercise 2 days a week.  Hopefully I’ll stay motivated and get  to a place where I feel more comfortable in my skin (and most especially, my old clothes) as soon as I can (Maybe by Summer?!).