5 Simple Steps to Losing the Baby Weight

Don't eat crap like this!

People often ask me for advice on losing the baby weight.  The answer I give is usually not what they are looking for: win the genetic lottery and/or eat less, exercise more.  If the former doesn’t apply and the latter doesn’t appeal, here are 5 other things you can do to help lose those pesky baby pounds:

1.              Breastfeed

Everyone tells you that breastfeeding burns a bunch of extra calories . . . blah, blah, blah.  That’s not what I’m talking about.  What I’m talking about is how for the first couple months of your adorable baby’s life, inevitably they will get hungry the minute you sit down to eat a meal.  I used to joke that the baby could smell my food and it made her hungry too!  So you take a couple bites of your delicious warm meal, take a break to nurse and when you get back to your food, it’s gone cold and you have to reheat it – why does food never taste the same when it’s been reheated?

2.              Work out with the baby

No, I don’t mean mommy & me yoga or any other ridiculously adorable workout geared toward baby and you. (I’ve tried mommy & me yoga and it was a disaster.  Turned into mommy & screaming baby yoga – not very Zen!)  What I mean is the inevitable workout your arms and legs will get while you hold and bounce a fussy baby throughout the day.  After a couple months, once they are not quite so floppy, you can become a master at doing everything one-handed.  Seriously, who would have ever thought you could go to the bathroom while holding a baby?  Believe me, carrying around your 10-15 pound bundle of joy can add some definition and tone to your arms! Just be sure to switch arms every now and then, otherwise one arm will look like a body builder’s and the other will look like a chicken leg.

3.              Pick the right topic of conversation

Remember how before baby, you could go out for a nice dinner with your spouse and have adult conversation about politics or gossip about friends?  Yeah, now conversations often revolve around poo, pee and spit-up.  Not very appetizing.  If there’s a sure way to not want to eat that chocolate ice cream sitting in the freezer, it’s discussing your child’s poop – especially if you are covered in the baby’s spit-up while having that conversation.  All you want is a shower and some sleep!

4.              Catch your baby's cold

If you haven’t lost all the baby weight by the time you go back to work, don’t fret, those little germ factories will bring the weight loss to you – in the form of a cold, or the flu, or some other illness.  Honestly, this is how I finally lost the last few pounds after baby #1.  Not really the way I wanted to do it, but there you go!  Get sick for a couple days and you’re on your way to your pre-baby body!

5.              Chase the toddler

If you still haven’t lost the baby weight by the time your kid is a toddler and/or you decided to have yet another kid while your first is still a toddler, don’t worry about trying to get to the gym.  All you have to do is chase around your little energy machine and poof those pounds will melt away!  Seriously, where do two year olds get so much energy?!  My toddler can run in circles around the house ALL day long (usually screaming/squealing with delight the entire time)!  And when they get tired, they ramp up even more and require even more energy!

*Disclaimer:  I am not a doctor or a weight loss expert.  None of the above is to be taken seriously – except the part about getting sick after your kid goes to daycare.  That WILL happen whether you like it or not.

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Malcolm at 3 Weeks

3 week old Malcolm chilling in his Mamaroo.

It’s hard to believe Malcolm’s been here for a little over three weeks already!  The days really seem to fly by when you end up stuck under an adorable sleeping baby for hours at a time.  Sure, there are days when I’d like to get laundry done or cook dinner, but I know that he won’t sleep in my arms forever, so I’m trying to enjoy it as much as possible now.  Laundry (except burp cloths) can wait.  We can order dinner.  We’ll make it work.

Malcolm is a little cuddle bug.  He LOVES being held.  I’ve found that if I don’t set him down in the bassinet shortly after he falls asleep, he wakes up and gets cranky when I do eventually try to set him down.  When he’s awake, we call him Mr. Floppy. Poor guy likes to toss his head around and bang it into my collarbone, which inevitably lead to him yowling in pain.  I am not a fluffy mama – you can’t ram your head into my collarbone without it hurting the both of us!  His life will get so much easier once he gains some head control! 

He’s a very good eater. At his last check up, he was already 8lbs 15 oz!  That’s a pound and a half above birth weight at only 2 ½ weeks old!  Guinevere was almost two months old by the time she weighed that much.  It explains why he’s already growing out of several of his newborn clothes.  His weight and height currently put him into the 50-60%.  (For reference, G tends to hover around the 5%.)  Who would have thought that I could have such an average size baby – guess Aaron’s genes really are in there!  J

Malcolm HATES having a dirty diaper with a passion!  Guinevere never really seemed to care when her diaper was wet.  This one, however, the moment he wets his diaper or poops, he starts wailing.  The wailing doesn’t stop until after the change is complete and we have picked him up and given him cuddles.  Seriously, the way he cries during diaper changes, you would think someone is murdering him!  I guess he just doesn’t like being cold and having his nether regions exposed.

So far he tends to sleep a little better than Guinevere did at this age.  I hate even putting that in writing because inevitably, the next couple nights, he’ll decide he just doesn’t want to sleep at all!  Guinevere woke up every hour on the hour almost every night for the first three weeks of her life.  Malcolm has given us several 2-3 hour chunks of sleep throughout many nights, which makes a huge difference in our exhaustion levels.  However, when he doesn’t want to sleep, he REALLY doesn’t want to sleep and it is exhausting!  When he does finally fall asleep, he makes all kinds of crazy noises.  I remember my parents saying that my sister sounded like a Guinea pig when she was a baby.  Malcolm kind of sounds like that.  Guinevere was either silent or crying, nothing really in between until she started cooing, so these weird grunting and whining sounds emanating from our child in the middle of the night are a new thing for us.

Malcolm was so much calmer than G in the first couple weeks after we brought him home that somehow he lulled me into a false sense of security that maybe we would get to skip the “witching hour” phase that we had with Guinevere.  Guinevere would get fussy any time from 5pm on and there was pretty much nothing you could do to calm her down.  Malcolm’s witching hour seems to start closer to 7pm – just in time for dinner/bed time routine with Guinevere.  The worst is when he wakes G up with his crying and then they both start crying!  So far, we’ve managed to deal with it with what I call the 2 “P’s”: pacifier and patience.  Following the “Happiest Baby” techniques seems to work pretty well too.  We swaddle him, hold him tight, sway and “sh” in his ear.  It definitely seems to help calm him down.  What techniques did you use for your baby’s witching hour?

Adjusting to Big Sisterhood

First picture of our new 4 person family!

The night Malcolm was born was the first (and only) night I’ve ever spent away from Guinevere.  I was a little nervous as to how she would do.  But then, I’ve come home after she’s gone to bed before and left the house before she’s woken up, so I guess it’s not a completely new concept to her to be put to bed or woken up by someone other than mommy.  Fortunately, she had familiar faces surrounding her during her time away from me.  My mom came up to help out and our roommate, “Aunt” Whitney, also helped enormously. 

Perhaps the evening away from each other was harder on me than it was on Guinevere!  Granted, I had plenty of other things to focus on, but there were moments when I lay awake in my hospital bed wondering how my other baby was doing and missing her.  I secretly wished I could just hit a button on the monitor and see her sleeping in her crib.

My mom brought Guinevere over to the hospital to meet Malcolm.  Because we were being discharged that day, we had the great idea that mom would bring G and then we’d all leave together as our new nuclear family of four.  Guinevere was so excited to see me when they arrived!  Her little face lit up when she saw me and she ran over and gave me a huge hug.  Then I introduced her to Malcolm.  She looked at him and said, “baby!”  Then she turned to me and said, “Mommy!” and gave me another hug.  Unfortunately, all the tests and check ups that needed to be done at the hospital caused us to be discharged significantly later than G’s bedtime, so the plan to leave together didn’t work out.  So we had to deal with the separation pains that accompany removing an almost two year old from her mother after they haven’t seen each other much in the past 24 hours (i.e. toddler screaming “Mommy!  Moooommmmmyyyy!” as she is carried out of the maternity ward).

 

Guinevere was almost more interested in the tumbler of water than in meeting her new brother!

The adjustment to being a big sister seems to be going relatively well.  I will admit that I was a little concerned over how Guinevere would react to having a new baby in the house.  She’s such a mommy’s girl and demands much of my attention.  So far, though, she’s taking sharing me really well.  She seems to enjoy having her little brother around.  Every time she sees Malcolm, she goes up to him and says, “Baby!  Malcolm!” When he’s sleeping, she says, “Sleeping!”  She’s even brought him blankets and tried to share her toys with him.  This morning I was nursing him on the couch and I ended up under a pile of books and toys that she brought over to share.

The main issue we have with her is explaining that the baby is fragile and trying to make sure she is gentle with him.   She likes to climb up on the couch next to me as I’m nursing him, but then will often end up almost sitting on his head because she wants to be close to me too.  We try to limit her to just touching his feet – to try to mitigate the toddler germs, but we’re not very successful.  She often ends up gently poking his belly or head.  She likes to point at his head and say, “hair.”  

Here's a video of G and Malcolm "playing" together:

Having two kids so close together is definitely going to be a challenge.  I am five years older than my sister, so by the time she came around, I could play by myself and could understand when my mom couldn’t pay 100% attention to me.  I have a feeling this baby will end up being worn in a carrier a lot more around the house than G ever was.  I’ve only had to take care of both kids by myself twice so far.  The first time, I strapped Malcolm to me using a cloth carrier (like a Moby wrap, but I can’t remember the exact brand).  That enabled me to follow G around the house and have the use of both hands.  I even attempted to nurse him in it . . . though I think carrier nursing will take a bit more practice.  If anyone has any tips on that, please feel free to share.