Carrying love in your heart.. and on your hips

Your body changes after each pregnancy, not unexpected. But I was a little surprised at how my body was able to give the twins back to their dads once they were born, and then put all the weight back on!
Listen up hips, thighs and stomach, I know you enjoyed carrying the twins but it's time to move on and drop the extra baggage.

I have noticed my hips having a little extra padding after each birth which doesn't hurt when you are holding a baby on that hip! But after a surrogacy, there is no hip-sitting-baby, but oh those hips are still there.
I gained 30 pounds with my first child, 15 pounds with the second. Adjusting to having a toddler and new baby kept me active. Though when my doctor asked "Do you work out? On purpose.." I had to laugh to myself, since there wasn't much time for purposeful exercise with two young kids, working and being in grad school. I am not a fan of down time, if you couldn't tell yet :-)

With the first surro twins I was told to gain 35-50 pounds. I ended up gaining 25 pounds, with happy health babies (that belly was all them!),  and topping out at 180 when they were delivered at 35 weeks and 4 days.

Being on bed rest and not having much of an appetite after the C-section, aided me in losing all the pregnancy weight at my 2 week check in.
I patted my self on the back for getting a couple of pounds below my pre-pregnancy weight. Then reality kicked in. Once I was mobile enough to move but not stand for long I looked for quick and easy snacks and had pretty limited activity due to the pain. This resulted in the weight slowly creeping back up.
Working in a doctors office, there was a scale around every corner giving me easy access to weighing myself numerous times a day and realizing I was gaining 1-2 pounds a week after returning to work. I was gaining weight easier then in the beginning of the pregnancy when I was actually trying to gain weight.

This was probably one of the least expected things I was expecting after the pregnancy. Don't get me wrong, I knew I would gain weight. I knew I would have to recover from the C-section before working out again. And I had heard the older you get the harder it can be to loose weight, but it still surprised me that it was easier to continue gaining than to even out or loose.

Going into this next surrogacy I have to plan on continuing to focus on physical activity and my actual habits throughout AND after the birth. Making sure to have healthy options available after the delivery and not expect to have the weight fall off like it had in the past. For me, it was always much easier to eat healthy and really focus on taking care of myself during pregnancy. Even more so with a surrogate pregnancy since every choice I make is directly affecting someone else's child(ren), which just feels like you are held more accountable. Maybe skip that snickers bar or coffee you may be craving...

I ask myself, what would the mom be doing while pregnant? How would she be taking care of herself and the baby? And make sure I can follow each thing she would want to have happen during her pregnancy, because this is her pregnancy. My body, but her pregnancy.  I am just the Stork.

Current weight: 180 ... I guess it's time to return to my Pinterest page to review all those exercises I pinned while lying in the hospital dreaming about how I could not wait to get out and start exercising! Cheers to more Doing and less Pining!