Choosing recovery

My sister shared a great quote on her blog the other day:

The problem is that you don't just choose recovery. You have to keep choosing recovery, over and over and over again. You have to make that choice 5-6 times each day. You have to make that choice even when you really don't want to. It's not a single choice, and it's not easy.
Marya Hornbacher

Choosing recovery is easy. Continuing to choose it is much harder. Things are still sailing along here, some days more smoothly than others, but every day I wake up to a clean slate and I do the very best that I can.

I've only lost one pound since my last post, but I'm okay with it - I had some fierce cravings paired with strong emotional swings, and chalked it up to stress related to Tuesday's job interview. As it turns out, I got my first post-baby period (I'm breastfeeding and wasn't expecting it for a few months ... surprise), so there's that.

The interview went well, by the way - because their semester will start in mid-August, there will be a quick turnaround on the applications. I'll find out early next week if I'm getting a second interview - this time on campus, so I'd be flying out there. Nerve wrecking, for sure. After the interview, I cried - just overwhelmed at the thought of leaving Matt and Noah for a day if I need to fly out, and depressed at the realization that none of the nice clothes I wore to my last interview are even close to fitting. My dad called, said that if all that stands between me and that interview is a pant suit then he'd make sure I was taken care of. Still, I hate needing help from my parents when I am a parent myself.

Speaking of which, Noah will be two months old tomorrow. (There will be a post on Kosher Lasagna some time in the early afternoon, as soon as I take his update photo!) He's getting so big so fast, I know I'm gonna blink and it'll be high school graduation. So I'm trying to soak up every little moment with him, reading to him,  snuggling him, laying next to him on the floor while he babbles and coos at the pieces hanging overhead from his activity mat. And going for walks! Lots of them, almost every day unless the weather begs otherwise. Most days we just walk around, and I point out things in the neighborhood - there is a tree, there is a dog, there is a truck, there is the swimming pool, etc. Sometimes we will go to the grocery store and pick up a few things. He is so curious, he loves it no matter where we go.

I was watching a movie or a TV show the other day (I don't remember which one, unfortunately) and one of the characters said something about his deceased wife, about how she'd been depressed even when she was happy. That resonated so deeply with me. I find myself happy with a lot of things - happy to spend days with Noah, happy in my relationships with Matt and my family and my friends, happy that the issues I spend the most time worrying about are all temporary. Inside, though, I still struggle very much with depression. I keep talking about getting help but not taking any action. When I see my midwife next week, I'm going to ask her for the phone number of the counseling center she's been urging me to visit since I was 8 or 10 weeks pregnant.

Hodgepodge

This has been a pretty good week. I'm trying to find my groove with everything, and things seemed to come together pretty well the past few days.

I still haven't been cleared to run yet - no fault of my own, I'm sure I've healed fine, but my midwife didn't have an open appointment until July, so my postpartum checkup is a few weeks overdue. I loved working with her, but the clinic where I saw her was endlessly frustrating like this. In the meantime, I am still trying to be active - Noah and I go for a walk almost every day, even if it's just a few laps around the block. I also reconnected the Wii Fit and have done that a few times.

In the meantime, I'm being diligent with calorie counting. I have been tracking on MyFitnessPal, aiming for 1650 calories a day. That gives me a few extra to play with since I'm breastfeeding and I know I would be unbearable at anything too much lower. Most days I finish with under 50 calories remaining, which is good - I feel satisfied, not starving or overly full at any point. A couple of days I've gone over, but nothing fatal - the other night, for example, I had a couple of snacks when Noah was up all night. Seriously, maybe an hour of sleep total, and it was 10 minutes here and there. The rest of the time, he was crying. A few people said it may be early teething or a growth spurt, but I'm more inclined to think the massive pile of broccoli I ate with dinner had something to do with it. Good for Mama, but not so great for Nono just yet. I'll have to experiment with eating a smaller amount and see if he's still affected by it. That night he nursed every 90 minutes to 2 hours, instead of his almost-clockwork-since-Day-1 routine of nursing around midnight, then 4 a.m., then 7 a.m. Paired with my lack of sleep, it made the scale jump up a bit, but it fell right back down the next day.

I'm getting better at dealing with seeing gains on the scale, especially in situations like this. I knew I had a rough night, and I didn't let it defeat me and snowball into something worse. That's an NSV, for sure. Another: after the Blackhawks victory parade this week, we went out to lunch with Matt's dad. Seeing that there were no even moderately healthy options, I just sipped at water and had my Lean Cuisine when I got home. I wasn't starving, so I was perfectly fine with waiting a bit and then eating something more in line with my goals.

I lost a few pounds this week, and am almost in a new "decade" of weight. Again, I don't have any specific deadlines for my goals, but I realized the other day that Matt's dad is getting remarried in two months. I'd love to be able to reclaim 100 pounds lost by then. As of this morning, this means I have 8 weeks to lose 16 pounds. That's entirely do-able.

Matt has been doing amazingly well with his weight loss, too. He had lost about 95 pounds before his paternity leave started; with all the visitors and the traveling, he put on about 20 pounds. He's down almost 10 so far! He runs a few times a week, and sometimes he will even do Wii Fit! Yesterday we went to the zoo together. It's still way too soon for Noah to comprehend the zoo, but it was nice to get some fresh air and a little light exercise. Plus, the Lincoln Park Zoo is free, which fits perfectly into our budget these days.

Speaking of which, I have a huge job interview tomorrow. Phone, not Skype, so I'm slightly less nervous, but still, it's got my stomach in a knot. I've been pretty quiet about it because I'm so anxious. I really want this job, though. I miss teaching so much, and the school is in a seemingly nice place - raising Noah there, at least for a few years, would be really nice. A much better life than I can offer him here, anyway. If it works out and I am offered the position, we will have to move pretty quickly - not quite the three days I had to leave for California, but still, with a baby and three people's belongings to move, it's going to be a much bigger challenge than last time. If I don't get an offer, I'm going to be upset, for sure, and I am trying to get a collection of ideas together of things to do instead of eating my feelings. I still have a few other active applications, but as the days go by, the move would become tougher and tougher, more and more last minute.

I miss Google Reader already. I switched to Feedly since it seemed like everyone else did and they were having a good experience, but so far, I like it considerably less. I'm sure it will grow on me, though - I didn't like Reader at first either.

How was your weekend? What are your goals for this week?