My body after pregnancy (the hot mess it is)

In my early twenties I took a lot of pride in my appearance. At the age of 23 I was a self-confessed gym junkie. I would be at the gym by 5:30am (as soon as they opened) and would work out for an hour. I’d then shower and get ready for work before setting off for my 12 hour shift. After I finished work at 7pm I would then head back to the gym for around another hour or two, depending on what classes they had on offer and how many calories I had already managed to burn. It was the first time in my life that I actually started to like my body. I realised I had control over how it looked and was determined to not only make it look good, but to ensure it was strong and athletic too.

By the age of 25 I started to realise the balance between food and exercise and realised that I didn’t have to work out as much and was actually a lot healthier if I ate better as well. At this time I was trying to fall pregnant so holistic health was at the forefront of my priorities. I still kept up regular gym sessions and watched everything I ate. As far as body image goes I thought I had a fairly positive one, there were things I didn’t like about my body and wanted to change but I didn’t despise the way I looked. There were also a lot of things I liked about my body – I loved my boobs, loved how strong my legs were and the muscle definition they had, I loved my stomach and the abs that were showing and I loved my arms and how strong they were.

When I fell pregnant I was so excited to see my tummy swell and take shape as the life inside of me grew. Little did I realise what was ahead of me. During my first trimester I had Hyperemesis Gravidarum, a condition described as extreme morning sickness. I lost around 7kg and looked pale, gaunt and ghostly. My pregnancy was sucking every bit of energy from me. After week 12 I finally started to feel a little better and was able to start putting on weight. By the end of my pregnancy I had only gained 10kg above my pre-pregnancy weight. I loved the way my body looked while I was pregnant, and as an added bonus I never had to worry about feeling bloated because you could never tell with a pregnant belly! Woohoo!

Pregnant with Alexander 35 weeks

After I gave birth to my gorgeous little man I started to see the massive changes that had taken place in my body. My once toned and firm stomach was now squishy and soft, my once perky boobs were becoming engorged with milk and I could feel the skin itch as it was stretching (I knew stretch marks wouldn’t be too far behind) and my once strong body now was feeling the effects of not going to the gym for months. But you know what? I have never loved my body more. Sure, there were times where I looked at my stomach and wished to see the abs I had before, but this body carried life. This body had now achieved way more than it could ever achieve in any gym session.

Now, 18 months later, I still have a squishy tummy, I have diastasis recti that refuses to heal, my boobs have shrunk and sunken and resemble something more like elongated ski slopes now and who has that much time for the gym with a toddler to chase after? I have never been more proud of my body and what it can do. I am still breastfeeding my son, 18 months later. I have lost and gained my milk supply over and over again. My body is amazing. To be honest, I’m even a little sad that the few stretch marks I had on my tummy are starting to fade – they were a beautiful reminder that I carried my perfect little man inside of me for 9 months.

So to all the mums out there who shy away from their stretch marks, huff over the few extra kilograms they are carrying around or sing the ode to their once perky boobs, just remember, you body is amazing. You are amazing. Take some time to truly think about what your body has achieved and stop being so hard on yourself. There’s so much to love about you.

Let us know what you love about yourself, whether it’s post baby or not, there’s a whole lot to love.   

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How to say NO to drama

In keeping along the same lines as my previous story, this post is dedicated to the kind of people who always seem to have some sort of drama surrounding them. You know the ones I’m talking about – they are the person who you ask ‘how are you?’ and you can never get a simple answer. It’s always something along the lines of ‘well you wouldn’t believe what so and so did to me’ or ‘didn’t you hear? So and so has done this and now I’m some sort of victim.’ They are the people who always have something going wrong, are always disadvantaged by something in some way and everything is always someone else’s fault.

I know you know someone like this. I know you also try to avoid people like this. They are exhausting. Despite how nice they may be to you, they consume so much time and energy and that’s why they don’t have very many close friends at all. If there is no obvious drama currently in their lives, they start making things up and creating drama because they struggle to function without it. It is their life source; it is what drives them and feeds them. Without drama, they simply don’t know what to do.

Unfortunately, for some of us, we cannot avoid these people. They integrate themselves into our lives and despite every effort we make, we still have to deal with them.

I’ve got a particularly dramatic one devoted to entwining herself in every aspect of my life at the moment. She puts so much effort into taking a swipe at me from every direction she can, whether it is using people we both happen to know, using her kids or even having her solicitor send letters (for some reason she thinks that by putting something in writing it makes it so…). She is the kind of person who has always gotten her way, manipulated people into doing what she wanted and failing that, used her parents money to buy her way through life. It seems in all her years she has yet to learn that money cannot buy class or happiness.

So after her latest attempt at attacking me it made me think, ‘What impact is she actually having on my life?’ To be honest, she has had more of a positive effect than she could ever know. She is so intent on brining me down that she wouldn’t even realise that her efforts are actually building me up. Each time she makes some half minded attempt to thwart me in some way it gives me this overwhelming drive and determination to do better and to be better and to prove that I will not let anyone stand in the way of my happiness.

Reflecting on it even more, it has been directly after the times that she has made attacks at me that I have achieved the most. I have set up this blog, written posts I am incredibly proud of and driven more traffic here than I ever thought possible. While I am sure I would have achieved all of this without the drama, it has been because of the negativity that I have been determined to be the best I can be. It has made me take more control of my life and what I want.

I will meet her negativity with nothing but a positive attitude and be happy while she thrives only on others misery.

I will not allow her, or anyone else, to stop me from doing what I want to do in life.

I will say NO to drama!!!

We have a choice when it comes to the people in our lives that thrive on drama. We can both encourage and feed their drama, giving in to their idle threats and allowing them to intimidate us. Or… we can use their drama to fuel our motivations, we can prove to them that our lives can be happy and drama free and we can chase our dreams regardless of what anyone says.

How do you deal with drama? Leave your comments below and let me know your tips and tricks on how you deal with the dramatic people in your life.

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Who is holding you back?

It has been a massive leap for me to create this blog and make my life public. I have spent the last 18 months or so hiding any form of personal information I could. I had even deleted my Facebook account, made any other social media account private and cut off a lot of people I knew. In doing so I thought I was protecting myself, my relationship with Steve and more importantly, Alexander. There was so much negativity around I didn’t want it to weave its way through my life again when I had just used so much energy in eradicating it in the first place. What I realised was that hiding myself from the world was preventing me from doing things I wanted to do, keeping me from making my dreams and ideas a reality.

I had tried to write a few different blogs before, however when I created them I over-edited. I didn’t want people to know too many details about my life and I was a little scared of putting myself out there. I didn’t know if what I had to say was interesting enough, I didn’t know if I could write well enough and I seriously lacked self-confidence. Prior to my relationship with Steve, when it came to following dreams and achieving goals my support network was largely self-generated. I never really opened up to my family and being in a relationship that was emotionally abusive and manipulating eroded any self-confidence I once had. I was, in a way, ashamed of my life and how I had become so reliant on someone who did nothing but tear me down. The most difficult part was that to anyone watching on we looked like a normal, happy and healthy couple – he exuded a sort of superficial charm and for the most part appeared to be the doting, loving and supportive husband. It was behind the scenes where the damage was done. What started out as little snide remarks and subtle put downs eventually turned into outright denigration. I had so many ideas for businesses, ventures and hobbies, none of which came to fruition because I had taken from me the self-confidence needed to pursue my dreams. I finally built up the drive needed to escape this toxic relationship I was in, but repairing my sense of self and positive attitude towards my place in the world took some time.

The turning point is a complicated story, but a story nonetheless. I came into contact with a woman who inspired me, who had a similar past experience to me and who had overcome any set backs to put herself and her several successful businesses out there. She now uses her experience to coach others in making their business dreams come true. I thought to myself ‘if she can put herself out there, then why can’t I?’ I realised I was allowing my past to hold me back from creating a bright and successful future for myself. How can I let these people indirectly stop me from achieving my goals and following my dreams when the reason they are in my past is because they have nothing positive to contribute to my future? 

Which direction are you heading in?

Then it all started falling into place. 

The ideas started to flow… and kept going. I knew the stories I wanted to tell and I knew how I wanted to do it. I launched myself into learning everything I could about blogging and what I needed to do to get my site up and running, and running well. I am still learning, it is a whole new language and at times it makes me wonder why I am doing it, but then I see how many people are visiting my site or I see my site transforming and coming together and experience a massive sense of achievement. I couldn’t do any of this without the support I have from Steve and my family. Steve has been more encouraging and supportive than I could have ever asked for. He encourages me to keep going, helps me when trying to understand and writing html frustrates me, cleans and maintains the house when my head is busy buried in my laptop and tops up my glass of wine at night. I was a little hesitant in telling my family about this blog, I wasn’t sure how they would react. My Mum has been nothing but encouraging to me throughout my life, but she is also a realist and lets me know when she thinks an idea won’t work or if she thinks it may be a waste of time (she doesn’t realise she lets me know this however after many years I have learnt to read her body language and can tell when she doesn’t approve of something). When I told my Mum I didn’t know what to expect. I was so happy when she smiled and told me she thought it was a great idea. My parents and my brothers have been amazingly supportive, reading my posts and letting me know what they think. 

I cannot believe how lucky I am.

Reflecting on all of this I realised that I have had Steve and my family supporting me for quite some time now. The only thing that was holding me back was me and my hang ups on what I did or didn’t want people to know. It took an inspiring woman to make me realise that I couldn’t let my past hold me back from my future. I am wondering… how many people are letting someone else hold them back from what they really want in life? What are your goals? What are you dreams? Are you moving towards achieving them? If not… then who is holding you back?

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I could never do your job...

I find it interesting when people say to me ‘oh I could never do your job’. As a paramedic, a lot of people assume my job involves saying lives day in and day out, going to horrible car wrecks and being there at peoples worst possible moments. While this is part of the job, this certainly isn’t the majority. There is a lot of waiting around. It’s not exactly the kind of job where you can go and create work to do. In that waiting time we make sure we are up to date with our skills and knowledge; there is constant study and revision. Medicine changes, all the time. There is always more research being done to help us do our jobs better.

So a typical day for me at work, like today, involves me rushing to drop Alexander to day care then get to work by 7am. I stock my vehicle for the day with items I may need, drugs I may need to use and equipment that could be required. I call over the radio to our communications centre to let them know that my vehicle is operational and that I am here and ready to go. Then I wait. Some days we could be so busy that I don’t get back to station, I may not even get to eat lunch or have a break. Others I may not turn a wheel for the entire day. I work in a small rural town and quiet days are far more common than busy ones. I have also worked in a busy city before where every day was jam packed and full on. I have to admit, there are some days when I miss being busy. I spend time with student paramedics too, helping them learn the skills they need to do the job, answering questions and mentoring them. It’s not the kind of job you can learn from a text book, you need to experience it to understand it. I may do a job or two in a day, perhaps treat a patient with chest pain or a child that has fallen over at a school and grazed their knee. These are our usual standard jobs. Then there are days where there is nothing standard, a day when you’ll get a job that challenges you, makes you work hard and think even harder, when every skill you have will be tested. These are the days that keep me coming back.

I’ll never forget one evening at work a few years ago. We hadn’t done a job all day, I was 9 hours into my 10 hour shift and was fully expecting this to be another whole day without a single job. Then the pager went off – we were being sent code 1 (lights and sirens – our fastest response to a generally [potential] life threatening condition). Our job was a 9 year old girl having an asthma attack. It was winter at the time so we recent had an influx of respiratory conditions and this was looking like it may have been another one. My partner for the day (a man who started working as a paramedic 3 months before I was born, this guy had seen everything) jumped in the driver’s side of the ambulance and we were off. The house wasn’t too far from the station and on our way there I quickly checked the drug dosages for a 9 year old – just to be sure.

We arrived at the house and no one was there to greet us, which usually happens when people are panicked or really worried. We headed up the stairs and knocked on the door ‘Hello, it’s the Ambulance’ I called out. I received a grunted ‘come in’ in return from what sounded like an older female. I walked into the house and it was a mess, there were food scraps everywhere and cockroaches having the time of their lives, there was animal dander all over the place and a general mess and stench that came with a house that was not very well looked after. ‘In here’ the voice called again and we trudged on through to the lounge room. I saw the young girl in the corner, sitting on a lounge with a nebuliser mask over her face – a quick visual assessment of her caused no alarm, she was breathing well, had good colour, acknowledged my presence and seemed to be aware of what was going on. I looked for a place to put my bags that carried our supplies but there was no place that seemed either clean or free from food scraps. I went over to the little girl and started carrying out my assessment while my partner asked the parents what had been happening. They stated that she has a history of asthma and anxiety and today her father had been teasing her so she had been getting quite anxious. This evening it became worse and she started having an asthma attack. She was on all of the usual medications and her mother gave them to her, which was the nebuliser we had seen her with. I switched it over to our oxygen bag and added our drugs to the nebuliser mask. Further assessment of the girl showed that she was having a mild asthma attack, she was still breathing well and was able to talk to me clearly. We decided she needed to be seen at hospital anyway and started to assist her to the stretcher that was waiting outside for her.

When we started moving the young girl she became even more anxious, screaming out ‘I’m going to die’ repeatedly. I did my best to keep her calm ‘you aren’t going to die sweet heart, just keep taking deep breaths, it’s going to be okay, let the medicine work’. Nothing I did would calm her down. Her heart rate started going up, beep, beep, beep, went the monitor, faster and faster. As we loaded her into the back of the ambulance I knew something was wrong, she looked very panicked. She clutched at the mask on her face and tore it off. I saw her eyes were bulging in fear. Then I saw that she wasn’t breathing anymore, she had deteriorated so fast that she could no longer move any oxygen at all. I grabbed my drug kit, I could hear the beeps from the monitor slowing down. I gave the young girl an injection of adrenaline, then grabbed the oxygen bag and ventilating her, I was breathing for her.

The caduceus my parents gave me when I started as a paramedic over 5 years ago.

I have never worked a shift without wearing it.

All of this happened in seconds, my partner was helping the little girls mother into the passenger seat of the ambulance at the time. I called out to him ‘we need to move fast, we need to transport hot (code 1) and can you call the hospital and let them know we have a 9 year old girl in respiratory arrest coming in’. Everything started moving faster then, my heart rate included. I continued to ventilate the girl, I could see that what I was doing was working and that the adrenaline was starting to take effect. He heart rate started to rise again, back to a normal pace. We arrived at the hospital and I continued to breathe for the little girl, I told the nurses and doctor the particulars of the case. They recognised the patient – they had seen her before for severe asthma, she once had a complete cardiac arrest out the front of the hospital. Her parents failed to mention this when we asked if she had any previous medical history.

The hospital was as a small country one so we stayed and helped the nurses and doctor treat the patient. The adrenaline had started to work and she was able to start breathing on her own, it was nowhere near adequate so I continued to help her breathe. For another 40 minutes we helped treat this girl, things were looking good and it looked like she was starting to breathe well again. All the medication was working.

I left the room to go and complete my paperwork, we have detailed reports to write for each job we go to. It took me around 30 minutes to finish my report, there was a lot to write about. After I was done I went back into the room to see how my little patient was going. I walked in and couldn’t believe it. She was sitting up and looking around. This girl, just one hour ago was fighting for her life, I was breathing for her and giving her drugs that would literally save her life. I was amazed. I introduced myself to her ‘Hi, I’m Krystal. I’m one of the paramedics that looked after you, do you remember?’ She smiled and nodded, ‘thank you’ she said. I still couldn’t believe it.  

There aren’t many times when you can say that you actually saved someone’s life. This was one of the times when my actions, what I did for this little girl, saved her life. It is a feeling like no other. It’s funny, it’s something people expect that we, as paramedics, do this day in day out, and it is something that you associate with the job. But when it does happen… there are no words to describe it.

So when people say to me ‘oh I could never do your job’ I simply smile and tell them ‘I could never do anything else’.

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Goals and Achievements

Our lives are a series of goals and achievements. Some people are far more set on their goals – they have clear direction, a plan and a time line to achieve them. Some others are a little more laid back but still have goals nonetheless. Even if you don’t recognise the small goals you have, I guarantee you have at least one each day without even realising. Do the grocery shopping, see Kate for coffee, post the card to Nan… each day is made up of several small goals. Which means each day is also made up of several small achievements.

Unfortunately, a lot of us focus on the things we didn’t get done or didn’t achieve. We don’t give ourselves enough praise for what we do achieve. I am guilty of this and a little too often. We also don’t recognise our goals, I mean actually list them as being a goal. How much better would you feel if you ticked off a list of things to do in a day and looked at that list realising what you had achieved, versus just going about your daily tasks without marking them as achievements?

So this is where we come to one of my favourite things. Lists!! As I have mentioned previously, I love lists. I even love having a list of lists I need to write. They make me feel like I am organised, like I have direction and I know what I need to have done by when, as well as helping me to not feel like I have forgotten something all the time. One of my staple lists is a daily To Do List which can include everyday tasks such as sweeping the floor, doing the groceries or cooking dinner, or even fun things like catch up with Grace for coffee, research a new camper trailer to buy (yes please) or most importantly, take 30 minutes out to relax. Lists help keep us organised and help us plan our time effectively.

Daily lists can help us with our smaller goals and achievements, but what do you do when you have a big goal in mind?

For me personally I take a big goal I have, then break it up into smaller goals to achieve, and give myself a time frame. For example, one of our goals is to buy a new camper trailer for ourselves. While I would love to go out tomorrow and buy one I know this isn't the best option overall, so I have broken it into smaller pieces so my goal feels more achievable. It is quite a simple example and it looks a little something like this:

Goal

 To buy our 'perfect enough for us' camper trailer

Time Frame

6 months

Budget

 x amount of $$

How To

• -      Research camper trailers and create list of what we definitely want in, what we would like in but are willing to negotiate on, and what we absolutely do not want.
• -      From this, create a budget of what we are willing to spend
• -      Using our existing fortnightly budget, agree with Steve as to how much from our ‘savings’ we would like to redistribute to our ‘camper trailer’ fund.
• -       From this, work out a time frame to achieve.
• -       Bonus mini goal – attempt to obtain 1 overtime shift per month in order to save for camper trailer faster. 

As I mentioned, this is a pretty simple example but this is how I set out all of my larger goals. Sometimes when we look at the big picture it can be overwhelming, so much to do and in such a short time. This breaks things down into smaller goals, which means as you tick them off you also have small achievements along the way. I have even used this template for how I want to set up and run this blog and what I want to achieve with it.

So in a nutshell:

• -      Give yourself a daily ‘To Do’ list so each day you can see your goals and achievements
• -      Praise yourself for what you achieved each day
• -      For larger goals, set out a plan – give yourself clear direction, a time frame and a ‘how to’
• -      Break your large goals into smaller, bite sized pieces so you can see yourself moving forward towards your goal with smaller achievements.
• -      Again – give yourself praise for what you achieved.

So what are some of your goals and how are you working towards them? Do you think this template could help you achieve your goals sooner?

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