Unfit

“The miracle isn’t that I finished. The miracle is that I had the courage to start.”

--John “the Penguin” Bingham

At the time I got pregnant with Bo Bo, I was in decent physical shape. Granted, I had never lost all of the weight I gained when pregnant with Baby Chicken but at the time she was conceived I was unusually thin, having just successfully completed the divorce diet whereby one automatically sheds twenty pounds when their spouse suddenly walks out on them. When I got pregnant last year, I was in the midst of several sessions of fitness Bootcamps and was also working out periodically at the gym. Indeed, the day before I figured out I was pregnant, I had done two back-to-back fitness classes at the gym. Upon learning that I was once again with child, I vowed that this time I would remain physically active and physically fit throughout my pregnancy. Mother nature, however, had different plans for me.....

The signs of pregnancy hit almost immediately. Within two weeks of what I assume was the date of conception, I was out of town at an annual employment education event. With no spouse, no childcare responsibilities and having drunk myself into oblivion the previous two evenings (recall that I did not at this point know that I was pregnant!!!), I decided to treat myself to a spa day. (The prime rib dinner that I devoured following the spa day should have been a clue.....) During my 90 minute massage, I noticed that my breasts were sore, really, really sore, as I lay on my stomach. That night as I lay in bed, having not consumed any alcohol, I noticed that I was really, really nauseous and really, really dizzy, so much so that I cancelled a road trip with a girlfriend the following weekend. Little did I know that this was just the beginning.....

The following week I discovered I was pregnant, following which the nausea kicked into full gear for the next thirteen or so weeks. Looking back, I don't know how I managed to function, especially at work as I remained in court on my feet litigating throughout the entire pregnancy. There were times when I was on my feet sipping from a can of gingerale in order to prevent me from vomiting in court. The act of brushing my teeth every morning inevitably ended up with me retching into the sink. By the time I got home from work at night, I was so completely exhausted (and unable to fathom the thought of eating dinner), that I often curled up and passed out on the couch. Thank G-d for the Dragon and his Mom who cared for Baby Chicken during these weeks. By the time of my first pre-natal appointment at the end of the first trimester of the pregnancy, I had not done a stitch of exercise but had actually LOST weight. And sadly, between the nausea, the exhaustion, the just-turned-two-year old, the demands of a career in the law and trying to maintain some semblance of a healthy relationship with my partner, that did not change throughout the pregnancy. I had neither the time, the energy nor the inclination to exercise.

Overall, I gained less total weight the second time around. My body managed to keep everything in check until the final week weeks when the pounds started to pack on. Sadly, the baby, who weighed in at a healthy 8 pounds, 4 ounces, did not himself account for the total weight gain of thirty six pounds and, three months later, I am left with about 14 pounds to lose before I am the weight I was when I got pregnant with him, 34 pounds to lose if I want to be the weight I was when Chicken was conceived. Regardless of the number on the scale, the damage to my "mummy tummy" this time around is so much more extensive. Unclothed, it looks like my mid-section has been run over by a truck, a truck who then backed back over me!!!!! It really is a depressing state of affairs as I continually obsess over getting myself back into shape.

This appearance obsession is not something which is new to me or something stems from the changes to my body which come from having kids. It is something which has haunted me, seemingly, my entire life. Stemming first from the rivalrous relationship which was cultivated by my parents between my sister and I (I was the "smart" one, she was the "pretty" one - there was never any room for us each to be both), I have for years tortured myself over my looks and my weight, first obsessively comparing myself with my much thinner, tanner sister, then moving on to compare myself, seemingly, with every other woman on the planet.

My foray into physical fitness started when I was 19 years old. Having been dumped by my first love a few months earlier, I channelled my angst and my energy into an "I'll show him" obsession with working out at Hart House where I was a student at U of T. I recall spending endless hours on the Stairmaster, ruminating over my lost love, convincing myself that he would rue the day he dumped me once I got myself into stellar physical shape. The exercise obsession took on a life of its own from there. The exercise was addictive and a great way to deal with the stresses of academia. I was fortunate to have surrounded myself with like-minded friends who also enjoyed spending spare time with me at the gym. We did classes, we did cardio, we ran (I was running 10km at a time several times a week), we lifted weights. I look back at pictures of me taken at that time and I would KILL, KILL, KILL to have that body now!!!! I look at those pictures and ask myself, "What were you thinking you silly little girl??? You were so thin!!! So fit!!! So beautiful!!!" I can only conclude that youth is most definately wasted on the young.

Despite our frequent pig-outs at the Chinese Laundry Cafe, I maintained a gym membership and managed to stay in fairly decent shape throughout law school. When I became involved in what was to be my next serious relationship with the man who is now my ex-husband, I became too comfortable, too complacent and let it all go to pot. All of my years of fitness and exercise were all for naught as we combined overindulgence in good food and wine with zero physical activity. Most ironically, at the end of that marriage, I was the same weight I ended up being when nine months pregnant with Baby Chicken.

As I struggle with the current state of my body, I realize that I am at a very crucial physical juncture at this point in my life. Not only am I post-partum, but I am also within the next few years facing the daunting prospect of menopause. (How fucking depressing is *that*?!?!?) I recall an older friend of mine once telling me that the desire to get her body in the best shape possible to deal with menopause was what motivated her to begin running when she was in her late thirties. I want and need to be fit and healthy for my kids and for myself as I face the next major stage of my life as a woman.

In an attempt to shed the additional pounds, I have returned to the gym. In an effort to stay motivated, I am doing various group exercise classes. This morning's class was, for me, a retro workout - the step class. While it presented a challenging workout, it was also a very maudlin experience. In the 90s, I was addicted to step. I used to literally fly over the bench, risers stacked high to the sky. That most certainly was not my experience today as I struggled to attain momentum, to avoid hyperventilating and to avoid breaking any bones. (Even when I was fit, I once broke my foot as a result of a misplaced foot during a step class.) It was, for me, a sad state of affair as I mentally compared my current exercise ineptitude with my physically fit days of yore and berated myself for ever letting myself go in the first place.

I know that I am far from the only woman to ever grapple with these issues. Hell, countless mortals have made their fortunes on the insecurities of women such as myself. Books, therapists, talk show hosts, the entire diet industry...to name but a few. As I mentally run through the list of my female friends, I don't think there is anyone I know of who doesn't have their own schtick when it comes to their weight and/or their appearance. My bff, who is older than I am, and I recently lamented, as we have many times, the fact that it's so easy to gain weight but so difficult to lose. We each spoke of our lifetime battles with our respective weights and body images and our desire, just for a day, just for a moment, to not have to battle these demons. Another good friend and I have also spoken in depth about her battle not to be so hard on herself. Take it from me - this woman is stunning, a vision of physical fitness and female perfection. She is beyond physically fit (she runs marathons for g-d's sakes!!!!!) and is always perfectly coiffed. I would kill to have both her body and her closet! Yet I almost fell off my seat when she told me about some of her weighty issues. Hell, even one of my gay friends recently confessed to me his own appearance obsession issues, as he explained to me the "ranking" system that pervades the gay community. No one is immune!

I try to be gentle on myself. I remind myself that this time the weight gain is not because of over eating and/or physical neglect. I tell myself that the extra weight and distorted physique are the result of a recent pregnancy which produced my beautiful baby boy. I try to encourage myself as, mentally, I recoil from the image in the mirror beside me while I work out. Most of all, I try to think that this is the last time in my life that I will have to ride the roller coaster of weight gain and weight loss though internally I fear that it's an affliction which will plague me for the rest of my life.

Bo Bo

He came into the world obviously unsure of his place in it. Contrary to my expectations, I fell in love with him instantly.

Towards the middle of last year, the Dragon and I decided to take the next leap and expand our family, to give Baby Chicken a sibling. While I have always wanted more than one child (my ideal was three), the Dragon at his advanced age was motivated by the desire to ensure that Chicken would have someone to accompany her on the journey of life were something to happen to her parents. I just wanted more kids. So, last June we abandoned all birth control and threw caution to the wind. As I had the first time, I got pregnant immediately. And I do mean immediately. The signs and symptoms were seemingly instantaneous - sore breasts and constant nausea. Suspecting that something was awry, the night before Dragon, Chicken and Dragon's mother were to leave for Vancouver for the weekend to visit his sister, I woke up in the middle of the night and did a pee test, the result of which was disappointingly negative. Given my age, I began to mentally prepare myself to ride the monthly roller coaster of trying to conceive.

I will never know what possessed me, two days later, to reach into the garbage can to look once more at that first pregnancy test. I was in the bathroom minding my business when a voice suddenly told me to reach in and pick it up. Much to my shock, when I looked at the test the second time, it indicated a positive result, albeit faintly. Figuring that the passage of time, perhaps the sunlight in the bathroom, some unknown chemical reaction because I swear the first time I looked at it that test was negative!!!!!, had skewed the result, I did not allow myself to get too excited. Rather, I waited for two more days, re-tested and, sure enough, received an instantaneous positive result. I was pregnant again.

This pregnancy was the antithesis of the first. I suffered from every pregnancy side effect in the book, most notably nausea and exhaustion. Fourteen weeks of it to be exact. I threw up every morning like clockwork as I tried to brush my teeth. My taste in food changed and I developed aversions to nearly everything I had enjoyed eating pre-pregnancy. No meat, no Chinese food. I survived on pasta and vegetables. "Perhaps this baby is a 'different flavour' than your first?" suggested my local Starbucks Barista.

Being somewhat of a hypochondriac, and having surpassed the magical age of 35, I opted this time to undergo amniocentesis to ensure that all was genetically in order. The test also had the added advantage of certainty insofar as the baby's gender was concerned. Being one of two girls myself, I hoped for a second daughter. As has been my mandate in life, I wanted to prove, to myself and to others, that I could raise two daughters in a healthy, happy environment, without them being pitted against one another. The Dragon wanted another girl because he simply likes girls. Imagine our shock and surprise when I was advised that the baby I was carrying was a BOY. A BOY. A BOY? A BOY?!?!? A healthy baby BOY.

We reeled at the news. My family history was not going to repeat itself. Baby Chicken was not going to have a baby sister. There wasn't going to be another baby girl to wear the mountains and mountains of adorable pink clothing that Baby Chicken had amassed. And while I am always up to the challenge of shopping, I just could not come to terms with the fact that *this* baby was a boy. As many second time moms-to-be do, I feared I would not love this baby as much as I loved Baby Chicken. I feared that I would not love him at all. Because he was a boy. Because he was not what I thought I wanted. Right up until I gave birth to him, I both harboured and expressed concerns that I was not going to love this child. Friends and family and the Dragon all told me I would love him, that I would love him just as much as I love her. One friend told me that there was nothing like the mother-son relationship. My sister suggested that that this was perhaps an opportunity for me to cultivate a healthy relationship with a member of the opposite sex. I remained skeptical and unconvinced right up until the very end. Or should I say the very beginning?

Giving birth to him was for me a very different experience in so many regards. Unlike when I gave birth to Baby Chicken, my relationship with the Dragon was far more established, far more serious, far more committed this time around. The Dragon and I barely knew each other when I gave birth to Baby Chicken. We had been dating a matter of months when I accidentally got pregnant with her. The months which followed were a scramble to figure out where to go from there. At the time of her birth, it was far from a given that we would be or stay together. You could have plucked a stranger off the street and thrown him into the delivery room, that was about how well I felt we knew each other at that time.

But this time was different. This time we knew, and loved, each other. Though we've had our trials and tribulations, the relationship had evolved and was one which we both chose to be in. This pregnancy was planned, we were a family and were choosing to grow our family and move it forward.

Physically and mentally, labour was different the second time around. Unlike the first time, I knew what to expect, something which both relieved and terrified me. When push came to shove (literally!) I knew to just bare down (literally!) and push through it, that the more focused I was, the sooner it would be over and he would be here. After fifteen hours of labour, the last three fraught with frustration and complications, my body and my baby kicked into action and, like the scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark where the giant boulder comes crashing down with people scrambling to get out of its way, my body and my baby kicked into action and he came barreling down the birth canal. I knew when it was time to push before the doctors told me and push I did - he was out of there in six pushes, arriving at 12:04 a.m. on April 7, 2010.

Unlike when I was pregnant with Chicken, I had not this time had a 3D ultrasound to see what he looked like. When all was said and done, I wanted something to remain a surprise. I think everyone, myself included, assumed that with the generally dominant Asian features, he would look just like his sister. We were all wrong. He looked just like me. Rather, my side of the family - my estranged father and my deceased grandfather to be exact. Oh, the power of genetics!

B2 came into the world obviously unsure of his place in it. My doubts and second guessing had clearly imprinted themselves on him. Contrary to my expectations, I fell in love with him instantly. Completely and totally, head-over-heels in love. He was slow to reciprocate, and understandably so, having literally grown in such an environment of uncertainty. He was sad and sullen, he woke up crying. Never had I seen a grumpier little man. He looked like a grumpy old man whose little shoulders bore the weight of the world on them. We started to call him "Grumpy". My sister put an end to that, chastising me not to stigmatize him with such a negative label. We stopped, I stopped and the difference was instantly palpable. I described it as follows in an email to my sister the following day:

Most important about our conversation last night, and what I took most from it, were your wise words about O. and not stigmatizing him. Your words obviously took affect (sic) and impacted my approach to him because this morning - for the very first time - he woke up and..... just woke up!!!!! No crying, no screaming, no pouting. He just opened his little eyes and looked around. I know in my heart that it was because of my internal shift. So I thank you for that.

The Little Man is now just over ten weeks old. He is starting to sleep through the night and I am starting to emerge from the "newborn fog". There are no remnants of his former unsure, grumpy self. He is a happy, beautiful baby boy who is welcomed, accepted and loved by all, even his older sister who has given him the moniker of "Monkey Bo Bo" or "Bo Bo" (which in Chinese means treasure) for short. My Bo Bo he is as I could not imagine our lives without him.

The Blog is Back

New name, new format (what happened to the old Blogspot formats????), my blog and I are back. In a much regretted moment of pregnant stupidity, I deleted my previous blog and then failed to resurrect it before the 90 day expiration period. What can I say? Dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb!!!!! Having not saved or backed any of it up in any other format, some of my best (and most personal) writing is now lost but maybe that is not such a bad thing as some of those posts are better left unread.

Onwards and upwards as, two years later, the cast of characters pretty much remains the same with one very important exception - the Dragon and I took the monumental leap of expanding our beautiful family and ten weeks ago welcomed our son, let's call him Bo Bo as that is what his sister calls him. Lawyermummie is currently on a government funded maternity leave. Contrary to all expectations, including my own, I am absolutely LOVING my time off as this time with my family has been some of the best of my life. That's not to say that there have not been ups and downs - indeed, that is what you will read about here - but after nearly tens years at the Bar with its attendant workaholic tendencies, the opportunity to be a full time mummie simpliciter is one which I cherish.