Thing 3 was born at home in our RV on April 12th. It was by far the most painful but also one of the most beautiful and empowering experiences in my life. We had a birth photographer so as soon as I get those pictures and can find the time I’ll share the story.

I’m grateful to report that Thing 3 is healthy and thriving. Nursing is going well and he gained his birthweight back plus 2 oz by the time he was 10 days old. I’m recovering slowly and couldn’t be more in love with this little guy.

It’s really cool to have a baby and teenagers at the same time. Not only is it fun to watch them interact with the baby but I have a new much broader perspective and know how fast this time will go. I don’t mind getting up at 2 am for feedings and I’m spending every second I can cuddling and taking in his newborn smell.

An hour after birth.

Here are some pictures of our first week together.

My midwife has given me a “21 day rule”. Meaning I’m not supposed to do much for 21 days until my body heals. At first I was resistant but the more I thought about it the more it made sense. My body went through a lot the last 9 months and certainly during the 19 hours of back labor and pushing out a posterior baby. (I ended up with 15 stitches! Yikes!) Numerous times I’ve heard women talk about how quickly they were back on their feet and how quickly they “bounced back”.

I’m choosing to pass on that “badge of honor”. Instead, I’m going to give my body the time it needs to heal and spend this time bonding with my sweet new baby.

Also I’m not planning to start an exercise routine until at least 6 weeks postpartum and it will most likely be 8+ weeks. Again, I want to give my body adequate time to fully heal. I have nothing to prove. That doesn’t mean I don’t miss being active.  I’m really looking forward to swinging kettlebells and yoga again. In the meantime, I’m learning more about fitness by taking an online course to get some CEUs needed to maintain my personal trainer certification.

I know there has been a lot of baby stuff the last few months. It’s where I’m at but I do  plan to start posting more about fitness again. I have quite a few more videos to edit and I plan on sharing my journey about losing the baby weight. I gained about 41 pounds and two weeks after giving birth have about 20 pounds left to lose. Not only that but we plan to start traveling again in about a month. We are currently trying to decide if we want to head back out west, up to Maine, or perhaps up to Alaska. So there is definitely some interesting times ahead.  In the meantime, I hope you’ll stick around.

Hugs and High Fives,
Jenn

Keep up with my kettlebell workouts, real food recipes, and more in one of three ways! 1. Sign up to have posts emailed to your inbox. 2. Subscribe to the RSS Feed or 3. “like” Girl Heroes on Facebook. Simple dimple!

Journey with our family on the road at Newschool Nomads as we travel fulltime in RV through the United States.

The post Welcome Thing 3!!!! appeared first on Girl Heroes.

New RV!!!

I’m sitting in a hotel room right now. We’ve been living out of bags for the last few months since we sold our RV but tonight is the last night because tomorrow we pick up our NEW RV!!! I’m so excited that I can hardly sleep!!! We are heading over to Dixie RV tomorrow first thing in the morning. Let me tell you getting here was a bit crazy.  Driving through the Florida panhandle in the ice storm last night was no joke. Thing Two and I kept going because we were anxious not only for the new RV but to be with Brent and Thing One again.

We had been apart since we said goodbye at the Indianapolis Airport 11 days ago.  I had to get to a doctor’s appointment in Florida but the weather was so bad in the midwest and, at the time, we weren’t sure if we were going to go with a new RV or a used one in Michigan so I just flew down while we waited for the weather (and our minds) to clear.

Baby Nomad is Breech

The doctors appointments went well but I found out Thing Three is breech.  I reached out on my Facebook page about his breech position and got some good stories and advice. Someone mentioned Spinning Babies and I’ve been doing the exercises. I hope they help. I’m really hoping to have a second VBAC. It sounds like he has plenty of time to turn!

Growing Belly

While we are on the subject of babies, here are a few belly shots. These are not my most recent but they were the only ones I could quickly grab off my phone. I’ve grown a bit since then. I’ve been slathering my belly with coconut oil every day hoping to avoid stretch marks although, honestly, it’s more about genetics than any sort of oil or cream. I gained almost 70 pounds with my first kids and didn’t get any on my belly but I did get some on my hips. I’m 11 years older so I’m hoping that doesn’t change things but if it does it’s not the end of the world.

Bells

I got back to Florida to find my kettlebells corroding with rust! It must be the salty moist air. Oh well, I’ll consider them battlescars…kinda like the stretch marks on my hips. Speaking of hips, during my second trimester I started having terrible pain in my hips and lower back every evening.  At the time, my workout schedule was sporadic at best with about 1x maybe 2 workouts a week. About 6 weeks ago I decided to make my workouts a priority.  I’ve been strength training 2-3x a week , yoga 2-5x a week, and walking every day. After the second week of being consistent with my workouts the pain disappeared. So yeah, consistency counts!!

Well that’s about it. I can’t wait to show you our new RV. The kitchen is amazing and cooking will finally be fun again!!!

Hugs and High Fives,
Jenn

Keep up with my kettlebell workouts, real food recipes, and more in one of three ways! 1. Sign up to have posts emailed to your inbox. 2. Subscribe to the RSS Feed or 3. “like” Girl Heroes on Facebook. Simple dimple!

Journey with our family on the road at Newschool Nomads as we travel fulltime in RV through the United States.

The post Life Lately – Baby Belly, Bells, Bunches of Other Stuff like our NEW RV!! appeared first on Girl Heroes.

Hello!!!!

It’s been a while. This week is the first week I’ve felt almost normal. Besides a growing belly and some 7 pm “morning” sickness, I could almost forget I’m pregnant.

So much to talk about. Body image while pregnant? Expectations of others? Dealing with unexpected life turns? Accepting cellulite? Growing older? Missing my kettlebells?

I think for today I’ll just stick with the easy subjects, like missing kettlebells, since my brain is just now coming out of survival mode.

So back to missing my kettlebells. When I first found out I was pregnant I panicked decided I was going to have an amazing fit pregnancy and keep up my kettlesbells, yoga, and walking. I wasn’t planning anything hardcore, I was just planning to keep up a regular routine to maintain my fitness level.

Didn’t happen.

I worked out for a few more weeks (thankfully I got my Oregon, the last of the 48 states, workout in). Then one day I found myself unsteady and leaning on the side of the RV while my head and stomach spun and retched. My days of safely swinging kettlebells came to a screeching halt. For the next 8 weeks, it was a good day if I managed to get out of bed for a few hours and even then I usually walked around feeling like I had just drank a bottle of bleach. I tried ginger, lemon, magnesium, deep breathing, praying, begging, sleep, more sleep, and finally resorted to Unisom. It’s considered safe during pregnancy but as someone who doesn’t like to even take Tylenol, it was a hard decision. But was the only thing that made me felt like I wasn’t dying. (I never throw up with morning sickness. Instead I just feel like I’m going to ALL. THE. TIME. My mouth waters, stomach retches, head spins, and I feel this pressure on my throat making it really hard to swallow.)

Now at 15 and half weeks, I’m feeling almost fabulous and I think it may be time to pull those kettlebells out again. I’m a little sad I won’t have the fit pregnancy I had hoped for. I know I’ve already lost a lot of strength but I’m ready to maintain what I have left and hopefully gain a little back.

I’m also ready to start walking regularly again. I’ve been walking irregularly for the past 3 or 4 weeks depending on the day. It felt good to be walking again until I lost my Fitbit Zip. I’ve used a number of devices but have never liked one as much as my Zip. I was getting ready to buy a new one but decided to email the company just to make sure I could synch a new Fitbit Zip to my old account  (You can!) because I didn’t want to lose all my old data (I didn’t.). It turns our Fitbit has THE. MOST. AMAZING. CUSTOMER. SERVICE. EVER.

Let me say that again. Fitbit has the MOST AMAZING  CUSTOMER SERVICE EVER!  I was a loyal customer before but I’m a die hard customer now.

Not only did they give me an long list of ways to help me find my Zip (which I did but still couldn’t find it), they offered to replace my old one. What?!?!?!? A quick Google searched showed that this is not an uncommon practice of Fitbit.

I’m so happy to be tracking my steps again (I’m not tracking calories.) and I’m feeling motivated to reach my goal of 3,000,000 steps. Although with about 8 weeks of very little walking, 3 weeks of being Fitbit Zip-less, and only two and half months left of the year, I’m not sure I’ll make it. I need an average of 12,000 a day to reach my goal which isn’t impossible but could be hard depending on our travel.

Speaking of travel.

We have also been back in our hometown after TWO YEARS of traveling! CRAZY!!! It gets even crazier because we have decided to stay on the road. Yep, I’m going to be a pregnant traveling nomad. We have some big decisions to make. For starters where to have the baby???? We may come back to California for the birth or head to Florida or we are even considering going to Indiana so I can be close to my sister. It’s a bit more complicated because my first child was a c-section and my second was a VBAC (vaginal birth after cesarean). The hospital in my hometown has banned VBACS since my second child. My doctor who I have been seeing for the last 14 years said to give me a cesarean for this pregnancy would be “criminal” (his exact word) since my second birth was a successful VBAC. He wants me to be able to VBAC but his hands are tied due to the hospital ban. It doesn’t seem like doing something that women have been doing since the beginning of time should be so difficult but it is.  No too mention the complications with insurance. My current insurance plan is no longer going to be available come January since it doesn’t meet the Affordable Care Act requirements. If we don’t go to the insurance exchange we will automatically be moved to a plan with a higher deductible and higher monthly premiums. It’s a bit of stressful time to be pregnant in that regard. On the good side my pregnancy will no longer be a preexisting condition. So there’s that. Anyway, there is  A LOT more I could say (and will eventually say) about women’s birthing rights or our decision to keep traveling but for now I’m sticking with this simple update.

Well that’s my life in a nutshell. How about you? Anyone else love wearing a pedometer? Had a successful VBAC? Keeping up with your workouts? Is the Affordable Care Act affecting you in any way? (BTW I’m not necessarily “anti”…in fact I think we may be one of those instances where it is actually going to be helpful…I just don’t like this state of flux since that we need to make some major healthcare decisions over the next few months.)

Hugs and High Fives,
Jenn

Keep up with my kettlebell workouts, real food recipes, and more in one of three ways! 1. Sign up to have posts emailed to your inbox. 2. Subscribe to the RSS Feed or 3. “like” Girl Heroes on Facebook. Simple dimple!

Journey with our family on the road at Newschool Nomads as we travel fulltime in RV through the United States.

The post Almost Fabulous (and Fitbit’s AMAZING Customer Service) appeared first on Girl Heroes.