Chaya's SO very two now. No questions about that (though there are questions about everything else, because despite her articulate two-ness, sometimes spending time with a two year old is like playing angry drunk charades). Going on three. Rocking the starry eyed wonder. The sing-songer self-story omphaloskepsis of children and her parental lineage. Running with the abandon of a teeny kiddo. Taking excellent, albeit violent, care of her animals and friends. And otherwise being amazing.
Her birthday has been an unfolding celebratory wave. We began with amazing Indian with the Uber Aunties on the 14th (Happy Due Dateaversary)
(the phone was a lender not a gift. She named it CHAYA due to the selfie-camera, and she thoroughly blew Siri's mind)
On the day proper, mommy and Chaya had an amazing time with balloons, stickers, and all of Chaya's favorite foods.
Peanut-butter rice krispies for breakfast (Rice Krispies in milk with hempseed and then scooped in PB). Mac and cheese and three kinds of popcorn for dinner. Baby corn and mushrooms and cheese for lunch. We even had a strange power outage in the morning for a little extra adventure.
As she's currently refusing to drink anything that I've laced with the increasingly necessary Miralax, her week has been a little intense (anyone who thinks I cringe when she's offered cheese or highly refined baby-crack-crackers... it's not the inner health nut, it's the inner "but she ALREADY WON'T SLEEP because she's backed up... please just slather that wonderbread and corn syrup in metamucil and we'll call it even). With high moments. Good sleeps. Then bad.
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| Head Shoulders Knees and Toes! |
And of course, she's two, so there are no middle-grounds between agony and ecstasy.
Ok enough of the cute child.
Almost. Here she is with her cousins. She was a bit intimidated at first, until she was able to retreat to her crib and hold court for several hours, while they returned various animals and toys to her. Then it was love at fifty-millionth sight (we have a photo calendar of them that is one of Chaya's most cherished toys)
I think they fit right in together, don't you?
OK, but moving on...
How about Humpty Dumpty (but ne'er DUMPY) Mama?
Did I mention I'm falling apart?
Not exactly, but this August lead-in has some serious hangover to add to my self-reassembly project. Dental work, done. PT begun but derailed by several spine mangling postures in the hospital bed and at home. And now...
I don't really know what triggered off the bodymaggeddon. If I had to guess I'd say that I'm sensitive (duh) for whatever reason. Underlying condition may exist or sensitivity may be the underlying condition. The smoke and heat gave me a wonky GI tract in addition to a stuffy head. It all made me lose water in any variety of ways. Then Chaya, little sweat monster, started nursing in triplicate to add to the load.
I tried to make that up drinking more water, but just-water. This essentially continued flushing out electrolytes and the water itself wasn't retained. So, dehydration escalated. Meanwhile the GI discomfort meant I wasn't eating much, which threw things off further. Then all the symptoms made it harder to sleep. Which made the idea of sleeping more stressful, especially when I felt like i was maybe about to kick the ice-bucket at any moment. Re-enter heartburn, upset stomach, insomnia related lightheadedness.
I had a visit with the cardiologist On Wednesday. My blood pressure was like 45/75 or something like that (I'm usually more in the 55/85 range, so not crazy drastic, but low). The Doc so helpfully said "oh no, don't lose sleep over this. It's really a simple thing. You'll be fine."
You'll never guess what the medical prescription is for the cardiac issues.
Ok, you might not know what a Ziopatch is, or exactly whether I get to do a stress test in a month.
But the main advice could have been culled from so many medical files over the last decade...
( I'll start this the less ubiquitous one: I need to be consuming significantly more salt. When he said 8 grams, I was a little shocked, until I did the math and realized that's "just" 3100 mg of sodium. While that's pretty par for the American diet, I imagine it's still lower than what I often get. And I'm sure the imbalance was pretty nuts when I was almost exclusively consuming unsweetened iced rooibos tea and cucumbers.)
Oh yeah, but back to guessing... He wants me to gain 10-15 pounds by our follow up in November. Deja entende?
You'd think the number of times I've been told to gain weight, it woulda stuck by now. And actually it does kinda. I am definitely less scrawny than four years ago. I have pictures to prove that point but I'd have to download them.
There's a litlte sinking feeling in that. I did in fact gain 10 pounds in the past (per doctors' orders) and it didn't magically clear up all my fertility issues, etc. I also feel like I have been pounding the saltwater and caloric intake this last week, while issues intermittently persist. My resting pulse seems to have shot up, at any rate. I don't know about my blood pressure. But I'm not magically rehydrated in a way that makes all the lightheadedness and occasional weirdness pass. There may be more to it. But I suppose we have to start somewhere.
Since I'm not walking astronomical miles on the treadmill everyday, It feels like I'm starting in less of a hole. You only need an extra 500ish calories a day to gain that kind of weight in that timeframe.
Oh yeah, but back to guessing... He wants me to gain 10-15 pounds by our follow up in November. Deja entende?
You'd think the number of times I've been told to gain weight, it woulda stuck by now. And actually it does kinda. I am definitely less scrawny than four years ago. I have pictures to prove that point but I'd have to download them.
There's a litlte sinking feeling in that. I did in fact gain 10 pounds in the past (per doctors' orders) and it didn't magically clear up all my fertility issues, etc. I also feel like I have been pounding the saltwater and caloric intake this last week, while issues intermittently persist. My resting pulse seems to have shot up, at any rate. I don't know about my blood pressure. But I'm not magically rehydrated in a way that makes all the lightheadedness and occasional weirdness pass. There may be more to it. But I suppose we have to start somewhere.
Since I'm not walking astronomical miles on the treadmill everyday, It feels like I'm starting in less of a hole. You only need an extra 500ish calories a day to gain that kind of weight in that timeframe.
And I also know that I lost about five pounds in the last few weeks, which I am 90% certain is water weight. As soon as I got back from the hospital, I'd gained it all back (though it didn't remain). I'm holding at that same steady and a little more this week after an insomnia related dip on Wednesday
I imagine adding a teaspoon of salt to two electrolyte recipes a day should handle a lot of that..
Not to mention the salted nuts Dr. Parmar's prescribed on my chocolate ice cream. I swear doctors LOVE talking to me. They're all frustrated chefs and i think they get extremely sick of telling people to knock off the salt and eat more celery. When they get to lay it on with healthy indulgences, they get incredibly creative! I should write a cook book of "Delicious Delicacies Docs Swear Will Gain You Weight in No Time!"
For now I'm adding tablespoons of nut butter to my usual snack breaks and channeling my grazing behavior with heavier ammo. Have almond butter on a cracker instead of a carrot stick, dried fruit and larabars instead of cauliflower etc etc. Sprinkling everything with hempseeds, chia, and other ground nuts. Doubling up my dairy (cottage cheese is pretty darned salty, after all), adding a glass or two of milk, and adding fruit juice back into the electrolyte mix doesn't hurt. And going with "when I usually would take a nibble, I will take a HUGE bite." It sounds minor, but I need sustainable lifestyle changes. And I still really just don't need to eat an ice cream every day. Though of course there will be some birthday ice creamery in there somehow.
There certainly was birthday cornbread with strawberries. And then cornbread with chili. And then cornbread because there's still cornbread and probably that needs some chocolate.
As for the sleep, well... that's going to be a slow process.
Since just before the ER, I was getting to a point where my heart would start pounding, my mind racing, and my body jittering as soon as I hit the pillow. I could feel utterly fine and drowsy until then, but as soon as I hit the bed, it all went acidic. Recently I've alternated between falling asleep fairly immediately, but then waking up feeling shaky AND just not falling asleep for a really long time and sleeping fairly lightly between restfulish chilling.
I should add that I have fairly fastidious sleep habits, due to a youth spent with bouts of insomnia. I unplug well before bedtime. I unwind. I turn off lights. I use the oft recommended sound machine (to Andrew's angst). I deep breathe. Write away my thoughts before bed. Etc. etc. But honestly, until I was married, my one hands down cure for riding out these periods was going into the living room, putting on tv/netflix and just passing out on the couch. That's not exactly workable when I want to go to bed ninety minutes before Andrew usually does. And the inevitable in and out of the bedroom is fairly disruptive to any light sleepers.
On many nights I've realized that as long as I'm not technically trying to sleep, I can coax myself into it. Sitting in bed with the light on. Laying on the couch and reading with my head propped on a pillow. If I can just trick myself into a certain coma, I might be able to transition. But of course, if I wake again.
It's seriously like self-sleep training. Learning how to fall back asleep again and again! It's actually gotten better the last couple of days, but I don't want to jinx anything.
And with that, we're off to the races, off to third and thirty-sixth year amazingness, and I'm off to uplink my fancy new Garmin (thanks to my very sweet husband who made an emergency birthday stop at Best Buy yesterday evening)
I imagine adding a teaspoon of salt to two electrolyte recipes a day should handle a lot of that..
Not to mention the salted nuts Dr. Parmar's prescribed on my chocolate ice cream. I swear doctors LOVE talking to me. They're all frustrated chefs and i think they get extremely sick of telling people to knock off the salt and eat more celery. When they get to lay it on with healthy indulgences, they get incredibly creative! I should write a cook book of "Delicious Delicacies Docs Swear Will Gain You Weight in No Time!"
For now I'm adding tablespoons of nut butter to my usual snack breaks and channeling my grazing behavior with heavier ammo. Have almond butter on a cracker instead of a carrot stick, dried fruit and larabars instead of cauliflower etc etc. Sprinkling everything with hempseeds, chia, and other ground nuts. Doubling up my dairy (cottage cheese is pretty darned salty, after all), adding a glass or two of milk, and adding fruit juice back into the electrolyte mix doesn't hurt. And going with "when I usually would take a nibble, I will take a HUGE bite." It sounds minor, but I need sustainable lifestyle changes. And I still really just don't need to eat an ice cream every day. Though of course there will be some birthday ice creamery in there somehow.
There certainly was birthday cornbread with strawberries. And then cornbread with chili. And then cornbread because there's still cornbread and probably that needs some chocolate.
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| (Also, cars) |
As for the sleep, well... that's going to be a slow process.
Since just before the ER, I was getting to a point where my heart would start pounding, my mind racing, and my body jittering as soon as I hit the pillow. I could feel utterly fine and drowsy until then, but as soon as I hit the bed, it all went acidic. Recently I've alternated between falling asleep fairly immediately, but then waking up feeling shaky AND just not falling asleep for a really long time and sleeping fairly lightly between restfulish chilling.
I should add that I have fairly fastidious sleep habits, due to a youth spent with bouts of insomnia. I unplug well before bedtime. I unwind. I turn off lights. I use the oft recommended sound machine (to Andrew's angst). I deep breathe. Write away my thoughts before bed. Etc. etc. But honestly, until I was married, my one hands down cure for riding out these periods was going into the living room, putting on tv/netflix and just passing out on the couch. That's not exactly workable when I want to go to bed ninety minutes before Andrew usually does. And the inevitable in and out of the bedroom is fairly disruptive to any light sleepers.
On many nights I've realized that as long as I'm not technically trying to sleep, I can coax myself into it. Sitting in bed with the light on. Laying on the couch and reading with my head propped on a pillow. If I can just trick myself into a certain coma, I might be able to transition. But of course, if I wake again.
It's seriously like self-sleep training. Learning how to fall back asleep again and again! It's actually gotten better the last couple of days, but I don't want to jinx anything.
And with that, we're off to the races, off to third and thirty-sixth year amazingness, and I'm off to uplink my fancy new Garmin (thanks to my very sweet husband who made an emergency birthday stop at Best Buy yesterday evening)
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