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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When your plans just don't work out

When things don’t go the way you planned them to, how do you get yourself out of the rut?

This week just gone we were supposed to have our family camping holiday at Brunswick Heads, a gorgeous little coastal town in northern New South Wales. We had spent the last few weeks planning what to take, and spent the last few days packing and repacking. We drove the four and a half hours to get there, excited the whole way about what the week would bring. We arrived and the sun was out, the water looked gorgeous and our camp site was perfectly situated, right on the water. We hurried out of the car to stretch our legs and have a look around, Alexander ran around excitedly and I was eager for our holiday to kick off. We had noticed it was a little windier than we had anticipated but didn't really think too much of it.

 Alexander and Steve about to have a quick swim

So we started unpacking…. We unrolled the tent, only to have the fly blow away (insert image of me chasing after the fly which acted more like a giant parachute…). Packed the fly safely in the car until we were ready for it and started setting up the tent. That didn’t take too long – we have done it a few times before and Alexander even wanted to help. Once the tent was up we gained a better understanding of just how windy it really was. The wind was blowing so hard the tent was bent on a 45 degree angle. Hmmm…. I’m not one to give up that easily so we persevered. Threw a few items into the tent (these will help weigh it down, surely), set up Alexander’s cot because I knew it would be nap time soon for him after running around like crazy, and then took a break and went for a swim, hoping that by the time we were done the wind would have settled a bit. Big mistake. We came back up to the tent to find it, and everything that was inside, full of sand. Urgh!!! We thought we would put the fly on to stop the sand coming in, and hopefully just ride out the wind. After an hour of fighting with the fly, pegs being pulled out because of the force of the wind gusts under the fly, and tears starting to form in the tent we decided to call it. The forecast was predicting wind all week and a little rain. I was devastated. We had this trip planned for months and months. We had been talking about camping here all year. Now we had to pack up and go home because of the wind?? I was not happy.

Alexander trying to help me set up the tent - if only it was as calm as the picture looks.

I (hopefully understandably) became quite cranky and upset. We had worked all of this into our budget, knowing things were going to be a little tighter coming up to Christmas. We had taken this time off work specifically for this holiday (because we have penalty rates – taking holidays for us means being paid base rate which is usually around half of what we would normally get paid). We had also just spent around $70 in diesel getting here and would cost us the same to get back. Alexander was clearly having a blast, loving the water and loving being outdoors, now he had to go back into a car and drive another four and a half hours home. Steve and I were both looking forward to our lovely days by the water, fishing, relaxing of an evening with a glass of wine and some lovely soft cheese. I was in a mood and in a rut and I didn't know how to get out of it.

After repacking the car in almost silence, we all climbed back in and set off for home. I asked Steve to stop at one of the service stations on the way back, they have a Krispy Kreme store and I figured I’d just make myself feel better with doughnuts. (They were delicious and did everything but make me feel better). We didn't talk much except for the occasional dig at how unfair it was that this happened and how upset we were. After about an hour and a half of driving like this I realised I had enough. Was I really just going to spend the next week of my holidays wallowing in self-pity over what could have been a fantastic holiday? Was I going to be grumpy and whingey? No way! What example is that setting for Alexander? How could that be healthy for me to be so upset and angry for that long? Not going to happen.

I had two things that I need to think about and overcome. The fact that our camping set up wasn’t exactly weather resistant and what could we do to make it more so for future camping trips and what could we do this coming week that would be enjoyable and fun and make up for the fact that we weren't away for our holidays.

After talking about our camping set up we decided to save up and buy ourselves a camper trailer. It would be far more weather resistant and with Alexander growing up, would provide us with more space for him and ourselves. This was a massive turn around for us in attitude. We became positive and motivated to have our new camping set up. I researched while Steve was driving and within minutes I could feel the mood shift and our positivity start to come back. We also started talking about what we could do this week – Steve and I had our first yoga class last week and decided to go again, we thought we could spend some time at home getting a little more organised around the house, we could go to my parents place and have afternoon swims in the pool and best of all, we could just spend time together as a family.

It’s easy to get into a rut when your plans don’t work out. Especially when plan A, plan B, plan C and plan D all fall through. I've been there. It can leave you frazzled, without direction and without any motivation to keep going. I believe it is also important to acknowledge that it really does suck that your plan didn't work. Get a little annoyed and get a little cranky, then move forward. If we constantly walk around with a ‘la de da’ ‘everything will be fine’ attitude we can find that when we do burn out, we crash hard. If we acknowledge the crappiness of the situation at the time, we don’t allow it to build and fester. We can move on knowing we have dealt with it. For us it was as simple as being moody for a while then asking the question ‘So what do we do about it?’ What about you? How do you move forward when your plans fall through?

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Have you got your Sh*t together?

WE HAVE MOVED

You can now find this post at

http://www.perfectenoughforus.com/2014/11/have-you-got-your-sht-together.html

Well do you? I don’t. Not always anyway. Sometimes I feel like I am failing and feel like I am the worst mum/fiancé/sister/daughter/employee/person. You know the days I am talking about – where from the moment your feet hit the ground you’re running late, you pour sour milk into your coffee and wonder just how many days have you been drinking off milk, you realise you forgot to feed the dog yesterday and he is looking at you with those begging eyes, you get into your car to do the daycare or school run and the empty tank light is flashing at you… and the day has barely begun. So why is it that some women look like everything just works for them?

I was driving to see my cousin a few days ago, I don’t get to see her very often as we live a few hours apart and we don’t really talk too much because sometimes life just gets in the way, but on the drive over I was thinking to myself ‘she really has her shit together.’ My cousin is a gorgeous woman, she is a stay at home mum who  just had her third child, a gorgeous little girl who is all smiles, she posted on Instagram a few days ago that at just 11 weeks old she started sleeping through the night (my 16 month old son still wakes at least once), her kids are always happy, they are always doing things, building things, being creative and she seems to be that mum that just makes me feel like the one who is doing something wrong. On top of all of this she also drives 25 minutes to drop her eldest at school and collect him each weekday and her husband works away at random times. She does all of this with no family close by and has her friends to help out on the occasion that she needs it. I was envious. I am envious. 

When I arrived at my cousins house she greeted me at the door, looking amazing of course and invited me in. We had our chats and caught up on what had been happening in our lives. She had lunch made in next to no time for her two year old and Alexander and they both sat and ate their lunches. She was telling me about how her husband was away for most of the week. I couldn’t imagine how she was coping with it all so I had to ask. I blurted out ‘How on earth do you do all of this? Three kids and a husband away – you are amazing.’ Her response was so simple – I’m organised. She explained to me what her days look like and how she makes sure things are set out for her oldest son to then help out his little brother with their night time routine, that she starts cooking dinner at lunch and you know what? When she laid it all out like that it seemed so simple, so methodical. I still think she is amazing, I just now see the real kind of amazing she is.

Sometimes I take the opportunity of a drive to reflect on where I am in life...

So on my drive home my train of thought wrapped around my day to day life with Alexander and Steve, thinking about how we organise ourselves and our work. It made me realise I was being way too harsh on myself earlier. Some days I really do have my shit together. Some days our routine just falls into place, everything clicks, we get to daycare and work on time, Alexander is happy when I pick him up and our afternoons are fun, dinner (a healthy one too) is served at a reasonable hour and bedtime goes smoothly. Some days everything just works. I realised that sometimes I need to just give myself a break, cut myself a little slack and know that things are going to be okay.

In a nutshell I realised:

 - Sometimes it’s okay to give your kids nothing but crackers for lunch because that is all they will eat and you’re just not up for the argument.

 - It’s okay to hate your job some days and dream of bigger things.

 - Sometimes it’s okay to feel like you are not moving forward and all you’re doing is paddling like mad. 

The key is to recognise these things, give yourself some grace and have ideas and ways to move forward, to get around them and to keep going. Not all days are happy but most of them should be. 

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