Well, Christmas time is here! I did a bit of a media fast over the last 6 weeks. Call it my Christmas-lent! I went off blogging, instagram and facebook. Though I have been checking facebook the last couple weeks, but not posting. I’ve learned that The bigger struggle for me is in the out-put on social media, not the in-put! Haha! It's not the first time i've done a media fast, so it's not super mind-blowing for me anymore. More of a necessary evil for every-day life. I have ADHD and I know that gives me an addictive personality. So to keep my social media in check, I tend to take breaks from it. It's the same reason I tend to do better with extreme diets (Like keto) as opposed to "eat well and exercise". One requires real focus, and one I can slip (get distracted) pretty easily. Anyways, that is that!
I'm also pregnant, in case you weren't aware. Baby #3, boy #3 :) . I am due January 30'th which makes me 35 weeks along in this photo! I am almost 36 weeks now.
There's two important "week marks" for me. 32 weeks (when i went on bed rest with Josiah) and 36 weeks (when Josiah was forced into this world by c-section cause of my pre-eclampsia). Date 1 has come and gone thankfully! and date 2 is only a few days away! This pregnancy has been much healthier than my other two so far. Though it’s not without reason. This pregnancy would have landed somewhere between my other two boys I believe, if I hadn’t made the decision to eat keto, and if God hadn’t blessed that choice. By 22 weeks, I was getting blood pressure readings of 140/90 at home, higher in the OBGYN's office. They wanted to put me on blood pressure meds, and I pleaded with them not to. That’s when I went on keto. My blood pressure dropped to 120/70 in the same day, that first day of keto during pregnancy. I shed the water-retention, and the rest is history. It was clear to me that this was an important part of this pregnancy. So now I take my blood pressure daily, so I have something to show my OBGYN to assure her the in-office readings are higher than my average resting heart rates at home.
It does seem as though my blood pressure is beginning to rise, now that I’m almost 4 weeks away from d-day, but the reality is, pregnancy hypertension is caused by a mal-formation of the placenta and there is litterally nothing you can do about it. My heart will continue to push harder and harder, as my placenta ages, trying to force nutrition through a slightly mangled chunk of space. (imagine trying to suck a very thick smoothie through a kinked straw. Thats roughly what's going on between my heart pumping and the "Notched" chunk in my placenta. They are able to test for these notches during a fetal assessment, so we do know that I have some.). No amount of diet and exercise can fix this. The only fix is to remove the placenta (aka child birth). What keto is doing, is keeping off the water retention and excess weight gain. This, at least, helps my heart to not have to work harder for THOSE reasons. But if my pressures are going to spike, they will spike. So please keep this in your prayers. As I’m phasing our my aspirin therapy these days, my pressures are definitely rising. If this keeps up I know I’ll be on blood pressure medication at my next appointment. So please pray. I would really like to make it to full gestation.
Anyways, i’m not going to waste this blog post on sharing all the wonders of keto during pregnancy. But safe to say it’s medically safe. My diet is approved by my obgyn and is only slightly lower in carbs than what a person on a gestational diabetes diet would be recommended to eat. So worry-not my medically stressed friends and family! Haha! What I am doing is safe and healthy for me and baby. I’ve gained about 15-18 lbs in this pregnancy and I hope to keep it limited to that if I can (But if I gain, I gain. Baby comes first). The change in my diet has also had an impact on my immune function I believe. So far this winter I’m the LAST person in our family to catch viruses as opposed to the first. As an asthmatic I’m generally the immune-compromised one around here. I’ve even skipped a couple of bugs all together. If you were around for Sammy’s pregnancy you will remember how insanely Ill I was with viruses and asthma. Lots of cortico-steroids, puffers, antibiotics, hospital visits, prednisone, bruised and popped ribs...etc... not pretty. I thank God for protecting me this time around. I don’t know what his plan was last time with all the illness... and that’s something He and I have had to work through... but I am thankful he’s sparing me so far this time.
If you pray though, please continue to keep this pregnancy in your prayers. I am having a difficult time keeping my numbers reasonable the last few days. I'm sure it has to do with the fact that by body is fighting the long-winded cold that the rest of my family has already dealt with... But none the less, it's raising my blood pressure readings to low 140's/90's again, and I see my OBGYN on thursday this week. If it doesnt' go back down before then, I'm very certain, i'll be on that slipperly slope of blood pressure meds, tolerance to them, followed by maxing them out before getting serious symptoms (usually from the meds more than the blood pressure) that require baby to be born earlier than it wants to. So please please pray! :)
To change gears a bit... It’s also Christmas time! We have had a very nice Christmas so far this year. Christmas went long for us this year, as we didn't have christmas with Curtis's family until the 29'th and an extended gathering yesterday still. So for us it’s been one of those 12 days of Christmas! Hehe!
So... on that note... as a generally self-proclaimed “maximalist” (opposite of a minimalist), we take advent very seriously in this home! :) my boys made themselves mail boxes last year. Painted them, decorated them... and every day of advent I put a little surprise in it! Usually a Hershey kiss, a dollar store craft, and a small letter about the day and our devotional reading for that day. The boys love it and look forward to it every morning. Saturday’s and Sunday’s are family-related activities instead of crafts. It might be a gathering, it might be decorating the tree together, playing a game together... we also did the Fred Penner Christmas concert this year and Prairie Theatre Exchange’s “munschtopia “ play.
So by the time Christmas Day rolled around, I’m pretty “Christmassed out”! Hahaha! But we carry on, because it’s important to me that my boys understand that a “day” isn’t Christmas, Christmas is about the season, and the time we spend with family, and celebrating Jesus birth. Just like each of them might have a couple of birthday parties (one with family and one with friends) on days other than their birthday, we can celebrate Jesus's birthday on different days too!
We’ve had lots of fun though. And part of that has been how well this pregnancy has gone thus-far. Curtis has also been able to take some time off work this last week, and that has been so good for the boys and I. They are both daddy’s boys 100% so they have been thrilled to have him around. And so have I. His patience and parenting skills are far less hormonal than mine these days! So it’s been a real blessing all around to have him home more.
Our next big adventure is New Years! We are actually going to a family-friendly party last year. We did one at our place last year and it was a lot of fun. This year, friends of ours took up the torch and are speer-heading things, which is wonderful! No it won’t go till midnight, but hey. Young parents can’t stay up past 10 anyways without passing out from fatigue haha!
I did decide to do some New Years resolutions this year. They mostly center around self-control and my addictive personality again. They sound extreme, but like I said at the beginning of this post, extreme works better for me than moderation. So my game plan is this:
1) no Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or BLOGGING for a full year. (social media fast)
2) no online shopping whatsoever for the year. If I really need it and can’t get it in store, Curtis can buy it. And if he won’t, then chances are, I don’t need it! Haha! But the main point will be to be more aware and get things in stores where I’m price conscious, and it’s inconvenient. :) Less impulse spending, if I have to drag a newborn and a 3 year old along to go buy it!!
3) no Netflix, movies, or YouTube-ing (other than to take my blood pressure) before the boys are in bed at night. This one I already do, but let’s be honest... I’ve been a "new" mom twice now. I know that the temptation for Netflix marathons during those sleep deprived breastfeeding days is strong.
The goal of these three resolutions is pretty clear. To reduce my screen time in a healthy way. And by doing so, increase my face-to-face time with my family, my on-the-floor play time with my kids, and to make my transition from 2-3 kids go smoother. Instead of sacrificing the time my kids get, by dividing it by 3 after baby comes, it’s my own personal distractions that need to go. Not their time with me. So I’m hoping this will help with that! And of course, when we remove the other pulls in life, it allows God to pull us deeper instead. When we remove the chaotic chatter of social media and all the voices that spin in our head as a result, things quiet down. We are forced to actually think our thoughts and process them instead of distracting ourselves from them. And in those moments, we can sometimes here a new voice, the voice of Christ... And that’s a voice I’d like to hear more and more clearly every day.
Well, I think that just about sums up life’s moments for the last while! I wish you all happy holidays and New Years! :)
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