Beginning to think about trying to consider beginning again

In the midst of everyone else making New Year's resolutions, I started the new year with very little hope or purpose. Have a baby sometime. That was it. And as the new year has progressed, I've pretty much stuck to that.

I have started over so many times during this pregnancy and in the end, utterly failed to eat in a manner that vaguely resembled anything like health or wellness. I just stopped giving a crap and ate what I wanted. And now I look like it. I weigh like it. I gained 40 or so pounds in the latter half of my pregnancy.

I am sitting at right about 230, after shedding baby and placenta and a week's worth of retained fluid. Not all of it. I still have pitting edema in my legs, can still poke holes in my shins, still have wretched carpal tunnel syndrome in especially my right arm. But that's where I sit.

I do not wish to do anything that will impact my milk supply. I don't want to make losing weight my focus yet. I am not ready to renew my vow of living a fasted lifestyle unto the Lord. But I can tell you this:

I ate salad yesterday, and it was good.

I made a single solitary positive choice, skip the pizza, have more salad, and making that good choice felt good, and I remembered what a good choice felt like and I liked it. It made me think I could make another good choice sometime.

I saw a picture of me from July, and I looked good, and I thought, that wasn't that long ago, and lots of people gain about this much weight when they're pregnant, and they lose it, and I think maybe I could too. I could get back to that version of me.

I could, once again, be that person I was, that ate healthy and exercised and couldn't imagine ever becoming exactly who I have become again.

I got rid of my fat jeans, now I wish I still had them. But not really.

I don't really want fat jeans. I want to be the skinnier me. I want to be the healthier me. Deep down.

We have a wonderful community here who, unbelievably to me, somehow provide meals to our large family for weeks after we have a baby. I am completely in awe at their generosity and kindness and at the immense blessing and favor they bestow on us. Don't worry about bringing a whole meal, I say. Just bring a couple loaves of banana bread, I say. Go in together with a couple friends, I say. They bring chicken pot pies and pizzas and our favorite soups and huge gourmet salads and brownies and cheesecakes and breads and muffins and send money or pay for us to have Chinese take out. Un. Be. Lievable. I am so grateful.

And I'm going to eat it. And enjoy it. And rejoice in it. But in the midst of that, I might make a good choice here or there.

I'm sorry. That's what I got. I'm eating and nursing and tired and that's just all I can commit to.

Those meals will end, though, and about then, I will be about ready to begin again, I think. My body will be all healed up, my baby will be sleeping better, and I should feel somewhat human.

I don't have much. I don't have strength. I don't have resolve. I don't have self control, or much of it. But I have hope. And that's something.