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.

Being pregnant has a lot of ups and downs, thanks to hormones. Or maybe that’s just part of being a girl. Or maybe it’s just life. Yeah, that’s what it is life. Making Videos

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to sell almost everything and hit the road in an RV with your family? We did and two and a half years ago we decided to follow that dream. It was risky. It was scary. It was crazy. But here we are now loving our life (when my hormones aren’t getting in the way) and creating memories.  If you’ve ever wondered what it would be like to travel full time in an RV watch this video Brent put together for Go RVing. It really captures the essence of what it’s like to live in an RV.

  Cooking

When we lived in a house friends from our church would bring over meals for a week or two after the baby arrived. It was awesome. Since we don’t have a stationary community, I thought I would try precooking meals and freezing them. At first I was going to try one of those 40 meals in 4 hours, i.e., cook all day things. I used to do that when we lived in a house but I’m finding this late in pregnancy it’s not comfortable to be on my feet for more than a few hours at a time. So instead, I’ve been doubling or tripling our week night meals. I’m hoping by the time baby gets here I’ll have at least a few weeks of meals in the freezer.

Working Out

Still doing kettlebells about 2x a week. I’ve given up that third workout and definitely slowing down. It must be because it feels like I’m carrying a 35 kettlebell around ALL. THE. TIME. Yoga is AWESOME even when there is a snakes involved. Yes, a snake! The other day I was doing yoga outside our RV when a black racer slithered out of the bushes up ahead of me. I must have been feeling pretty zen because my heart only raced a little and I finished the workout.

The Baby in the Belly

I was right! My midwife confirmed he turned and is no longer breech! However, he is still posterior so I’m still doing the spinning babies exercises, one of which is “rebozo sifting”. Don’t ask. And definitely, don’t expect your teenagers to find it funny. This past weekend we also decided we better take a few photos before baby gets here since he is technically full term at 37 weeks. (I’m 37 and a half weeks now!) We are trying  to save as much money as possible so we decided to take them ourselves. They didn’t turn out too bad considering our modest equipment and using a self timer and tripod for the photos with both Brent and I.

My favorite.

An RV is not everyone’s first choice for a background but I love it!

This one was really hard to get with a self timer. We must have looked like total weirdoes!  

My second favorite except I forgot to take the sunglasses off on the back of my skirt. Ooops!

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 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.