So… Why is my first blog about exercise and health you may ask. Well I have a perfectly good explanation for that you see.
I myself am a SAHM to a beautiful 2-year-old. My kid not only keeps me on my toes but as of late she has been running circles around me. I simply can’t keep up with her anymore and I really want to be able to play games like chase with my kids. This leads me to my second reason. I want to have another baby!
Here is the problem, during my last delivery I hemorrhaged badly. “Postpartum hemorrhage (also called PPH) is when a woman has heavy bleeding after giving birth. It’s a serious but rare condition. It usually happens within 1 day of giving birth, but it can happen up to 12 weeks after having a baby. About 1 to 5 in 100 women who have a baby (1 to 5 percent) have PPH.” According to Marchofdimes.org In my case it was due to my uterus not contracting down fast enough to constrict the flow of blood. I could speculate all day as to what led to this but there is one thing I know for sure. I was not active during pregnancy or prior to getting pregnant and so this time around I would like to do all I can to be as healthy as possible should baby number two decide to grace the Seifts household.
Now this is where the story gets tricky. I like many women have some vivid and some vague memories of my birth experience. Clouded by the Labor-land high this is what I recall. It was confirmed that they used Active Management during the birth of my placenta. They did this by putting traction on the cord so that the Placenta would detach and be birthed. In hindsight I did not want this method used but I was simply too busy staring into my child’s eyes to really say otherwise. I would have preferred the breast crawl, a sacred ritual where one allows baby to crawl to and latch on to the nipple themselves while in laid back position. Instead just a few short minutes after my daughter was born, she had to be taken from me and given to my husband because I was in serious trouble. The memory is faint as I lost about two liters of blood and this experience will ultimately be a foreshadowing of my next pregnancies if I don’t get my act together and fast!
I would say that I am a pretty disciplined person when it comes to setting goals and getting the work done. Then again, I absolutely love sweets (addicted and I hate it) I have also felt incredibly scared to start any workout programs because that means giving up my blissful free time to exercise! Add to that the fact that I would also need to really learn how to control my sweet cravings and well I am a recipe for disaster in the health and wellness realm sometimes. I have to overcome this…
The good news for me is that I absolutely love fruits and vegetables too so eating right is not the problem. Trying to skip the bad food is! This leads me to my third and final reason for starting this journey. I am a Doula and I am in love with being one. Doulas are non-medical helpers in birth and postpartum, assisting with an array of tasks that benefit the birthing person and family emotionally, physically, and informatively. See that physically part? Yeah that is the part I am focusing on now. 😊 So how do I plan to get physically fit and eat healthy while running after a two-year-old and following my dream of helping women find the WARRIOR within during labor? I am so happy you asked! The reason I have decided to make this a 4-part series is to not only show myself my result but to also give my readers the skinny on MommaStrong. Courtney Wyckoff the founder is a fun loving and accepting person who believes we should skip the talk about weight and jump into, “how strong do you feel?”
MommaStrong is a site filled with exercise videos that can be streamed. The workouts are designed to help women get in shape for pregnancy, stay fit throughout pregnancy, and then to help with issues during the postpartum period. Courtney Wyckoff even includes videos on how to help with Diastasis Recti and Incontinence. However, I think what I am excited most for are the very short 15min videos that I know I can fit into my very busy day! I encourage all of my readers who are going through these stages in life to check out the site and see if it may be right for you! Then keep checking back to this blog for my updates and feel free to reach out to me with your stories!