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Originally Posted by ncuneo
We've been a little reckless and impulsive lately mainly because we have baby fever and I'm not sure I'm ready!
For one thing there are the weight issues. I just reached goal, I'm currently training for a half marathon and I need to figure out maintenance and enjoy my new body!
And then there is all the emotional stuff. I have such a special relationship with my DS and I'm terrified of introducing another that I know I'd love just the same but would require splitting my attention. How do you balance two? How do you deal with the weight gain. I've found a good site with calorie recommendations and I think I could continue to count and aim for 25 lb gain tha I would likely drop quite quickly with breast-feeding. It would be different then my last pregnancy as I weigh 50 lbs less and know a lot more. I'm just terrified of yet another life change...
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I like choices so I will offer you a choice that I didn't know about when I was pregnant with number one that I'm using to get ready for number two.
Lauren Brooks': (1)Ultimate Body Sculpt and Conditioning and (2)Baby Bells
She had two children by C-section and lost her core strength. The Russian Kettlebell instruction DVD she designed for pregnant women will make my second pregnancy completely different.
I weighed 352 lbs at my highest and lost over 60 pounds to get pregnant with my only child. After a very healthy pregnancy, we hit some last minute complications, I had an emergency C-section and my life spun completely out of control for 3 1/2 years. I had so much damage from my brain's reaction to the medications with the surgery that I didn't walk much for 2 years after my daughter was born. No matter how many doctors or alternative health practitioners I consulted, I found no answers. I got to a place with my daughter that I thought she'd be better off if I was dead. This was my breaking point...I told my friends and an attorney I was looking for potential parents for her and started trying to replace myself in her life in case I didn't make it. I prayed a lot and talked to people I respected about what I was feeling. Everyone thought that I was a great mom, that there must be a cure and my pastor wept with me while I planned for my death and for my daughter's potential orphaning and adoption.
Then after so many years without answers, a miracle happened. I discovered a new system of rehabilitation, featured on 20/20 (although I never saw the episode) for helping stroke survivors get more mobility and neurological functioning back. I had hired a personal trainer to help me melt 20" off of my waist. I wanted to try to reduce my weight thinking that it would reduce my pain levels, that I wouldn't suffer as much while I was deteriorating. She was an accomplished trainer in Z-Health and, in only 3 - 15 minute sessions over 2 weeks, eliminated all pain from my body and got me moving in a direction of greater mobility and functioning. It's been over a year and the pain has stayed gone and the functioning has only increased and that dramatically. Hope sprang to life, courage built up faster than the muscles that followed. I now have a healthy, functioning body that can run, play soccer, lift heavy weights gracefully, jump, dance and most of all...my body supports my ideal of the kind of mothering I want to give my daughter. I love life now.
I am very grateful to be able, crying as I sit here typing this, to tell you that all my dreams, laid aside due to various illnesses and injuries over 43 years are now clear for me to live out in this body. I'm on track, thanks to Jen Waak of
www.movefitfun.com, Z-Health and Russian Kettlebell Challenge hardstyle training, to return to college to live out my dream of becoming a doctor. I'm healthy enough and stable enough in that health to plan to have child number two. My goals are to reach my healthy weight (approximately 145 lbs), get my degree (DAOM - Doctor of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine) that I might practice the medicine that makes the most sense to me, and to pass the RKC certification process while I'm in med school so that I can incorporate Kettlebell instruction into my career plans as well. When I can pass the RKC, I feel that I'll be strong enough to survive another pregnancy, even if it leads to another C-section. This time, I have medical knowledge that could prevent what happened last time and a rehab system that would make a C-section, while very serious, a bump on the road to my perfect health and not a dead end. (pun not intended)
I don't know that the fears I had about my life and for my family are the same ones you're having about a second child but I will assure you with scientific proof of this available for your perusal, you need not regain any more weight with a second child than the child/pregnancy require for health and safety. You don't need to restrict calories to ensure this because new scientific advances in our knowledge of nutrition would allow you to eat to your health and not to the place you fear.
The secret is having a way to keep your metabolism burning at a marathon runner's level all through your pregnancy and we know how to do that with Kettlebells and VOX intervals and Tabata protocols, all of which can be zero impact in order to protect your joints during pregnancy. Also with moms like Lauren Brooks putting out DVDs like the above mentioned, someone has already done the hardest work of all for you...designing the system that you need and perfecting it to work for most pregnant and postpartum women. Because of all her hard work I, who couldn't do 10 pushups to save my life when I weighed 135 pounds in highschool, did 100 pushups on several different days the last two weeks while weighing around 285 lbs. Without her plank work training, which I got free from YouTube, my C-section would have left me crippled mentally, emotionally and physically.
In conclusion, you and I and anyone who is willing to learn a very simple system, can lose our unwanted fat, build incredibly beautiful and functional muscles from head to toe that work in an integrated fashion to give us life choices and sports performance that most people do not experience. They also make moms who can have a baby and perform better than elite military forces while they are 8 1/2 months pregnant. You won't believe me until you see it with your own eyes and experience it with your own body, but the moms who rehab with Z-Health and kettlebells, well...all women who haven't had babies would wish they looked and (for me, more importantly) felt that good.
Thinking about another baby - terrified!
Maybe you and 
Lauren Brooks, Kettlebells and healthy pregnancies
