It’s Day 56 of the miscarriage. And, hallelujah, I’ve begun
spotting. I started yesterday. And what a difference a day and a week make
after losing so much blood in that last push to rid my body of pregnancy tissue.
In celebration, today I went to belly dance class. I’ve been thinking a lot
about being blessed to be in this age, as far as care and feeding go on
this healing journey. We know so much now, and are privy to so much information
in regards to health, wellness, and nutrition. Please join me on the ramble
through my mind. I know people have been curious about what our athletic family
eats as mostly vegetarians (sometimes vegans who every now, okay, once a week
crave meat and every day crave cheese). So I’ll share.
Technically, they did my blood work prior to the additional
hours of fast blood loss, and from what I’ve read it takes a while for your
body to realize it’s anemic. So, even if you’ve lost a lot of blood at once,
the labs don’t reflect reality right away. I was bloated from the IV and my
body replacing the lost blood volume with the water and electrolytes I’d been
drinking for 2 or 3 days. Then it sort of realized that it’s not quite at
homeostasis, and then that’s when I noticed it with feeling weak and having no
(not little) energy as well as decreased blood pressure and dizziness a few
days later.
I’ve approached my healing and recovery a little like the assessment
you take upon exiting the water on a triathlon. In a triathlon you run into the
water, swim, and as you’re running to your gear, and slipping your bike shoes
on as you run, clip in, and take off for the bike portion of the race you
assess how to fuel your body and grab gear to help you through the bike leg of
the race. What feels good and what hurts?, am I hungry, do I need gel, water, or
tape? And off you go. Except I’m really slow right now, so my situational
awareness scan lets me philosophize too, joy of joys.
Maybe it’s from being a cyclist and triathlete at the Naval
Academy—and those endurance athlete days…, but my body just isn’t happy unless
it’s moving. And the last eight days about did me in emotion-wise. If my body
can be worked out 2 hours a day, then I’m in heaven. Veritably I feel as if I’m
walking on water. Just kidding, I hope I didn’t offend anyone. I just understand
my body best and what I need to eat when I’m fueling for workouts.
Before the miscarriage, belly dance Wednesdays was my active
“rest” day for the week. Deciding to go today was big—I know that lifting is
still out, so is Zumba, and so is a run. However, my body is craving movement.
And, belly dancing is all about the hips, and the unilateral movement…yaddah
yaddah. Really, I missed spending time with my friends, and being isolated was
really doing a doozy on my emotional well-being.
Before I ramble on about nutrition—I digress. I love
literature from the 17- and 1800s. Subsequently, I’ve been devouring the
Outlander series since September---the 1000 plus page books (I’m on book 5 I
believe) set in the late 1700s, ooh-la-la. There is a lot written in there
about women and the complications of pregnancy. And, it’s actually been quite
helpful in putting things into perspective for me.
Understanding natural childbirth—of which that’s been a
journey for me—has led me to where I am now waiting out this natural
miscarriage. Of this I know—both of my two previous miscarriages ended in
emergency D&Cs, because I was losing too much blood too fast. In any other
time, I most likely would not have survived. That is sobering.
Modern medicine is miraculous, but I think you also have to
remember that birthing children is a normal, natural thing that women do—and many
medical interventions are out of convenience, not necessity. As consumers of
modern medicine we have to be informed and educated—after all we’re the ones
that will live with the scars or trauma.
So back we go to last Tuesday. After 7 weeks of continuous
bleeding, and careful medical monitoring—when I began filling 3 overnight pads
within 2 hours—once my husband got back from the gym—off we went to the ER. And
there I did a lot of bleeding, and getting monitored. My CBC was okay, I didn’t
have clotting issues, and I wasn’t anemic, but my iron was borderline low. And,
the doctor wanted to do a wait and see approach after the lovely internal
pelvic exam.
Any visit to the ER can be traumatic, when you see blood
splatting everywhere, when you lie there and you’ve soaked through everything
and it’s going up your back, yup, a little scary. However, apparently, what I’ve
been assimilating—this sudden blood loss is normal, like a mini-birth. It does
need to be monitored, but does it need to be intervened? And, as the testing
showed…I was still in the normal range. Holy cow, right?
Ok, so this is
normal. It’s okay to be freaked out by the blood, and the OB joked that I was
good at listening…, I came in right when I needed to be monitored. Ha ha ha,
no. What gets me—as I read Outlander and “rest”—is that in earlier society if a
woman was having a miscarriage like the one I’ve been having there’s 3 or 4 things
that were different back then, and I think it’s actually for the better:
1—a woman could lie down and rest, if she had family and friends to take up the burden of her family responsibilities. Thank you ladies for the dinners. Thank you sooooo much. I am very grateful.
2—the art of mourning and wearing black; it not only indicates without speaking your period of grief, but allows you to go about your day subdued. You weren’t required to participate. You could listen to conversations and not have to be witty and join in—especially when your mind is miles away on what the heck is going on with your insides…, and as you grieve.
3—the blessing of not knowing. You could chalk it up to a heavy period. Except the continuous bleeding for 7 weeks, I’m sure there would have been leeching and blood-letting somewhere in there; which may have resulted in some complications. However, lots of old wives remedies…, still good today! But, again, you may be put to bed as people guessed at what was going on.
4—women are tough. If you didn’t have the luxury of idleness (very few of us did then, and many of us continue not to have this now…), then up and at ‘em. Think of the amazing women dropping babies in the rice paddies and fields. Hence, deciding to belly dance today, rather than waiting until next Wednesday.
Returning to the little chores and errands slowly over the
last few days let me justify why I could begin working out again today. I’d
like to think I’ve blended in some common sense by incrementally returning to
activity. My body is conditioned to move. Therefore, my recovery will be better
if I do what it’s accustomed to rather than staying inert and feeling off. A lot of fueling your body with nutrient dense
food relies on listening carefully to your intuition. It means being very
intentional about what I’m doing and eating. And, probably more important
during this period is to be at rest when my body says it needs to rest. That’s
a hard lesson.
On the days I don’t work out, I’m lost in the sauce. I
cannot figure out the caloric intake. All the yummy food friends have been
forcing (just kidding—but it really is sooo good) us to eat and no workouts has
meant losing muscle tone and weight gain—oh I love being a woman… Right now my
life—like yours—is too busy, and I have no inclination to weigh food and count
calories.
Bean counting doesn’t work, never has in the past when I’ve
tried. And, anyways for me, since I’m still nursing—there really are no accurate
calorie-for-calorie counters when you’re nursing—I’ve looked! And the 500
calorie a day increase they tell you to eat, honestly, is for when you’re nursing
a newborn up to about 6 months, not nursing a pre-toddler.
No workouts since last Tuesday is huge, and I know from
understanding depression, that the best thing is exercise to get your
endorphins revved up. However, since I am still nursing and raising 2 little
crazies—I need workouts not just to stave off depression, but for my sanity and
to feel my soul. As part of natural bereavement
you have foggy thinking and low energy like with clinical depression. Moving
your body also allows you to stay in the present moment; which also helps you
to emotionally heal as well, because it’s life affirming. And, if I’m going to
eat nutrient-dense food, I better start moving again!
I have my eye on 2 a days—and going back to aerial yoga,
lots of running through my Zumba choreo, and long runs. I know this will keep
me from falling head-first into a depressed puddle. I did that with my first miscarriage, we were devastated. Still are except we know the value of staying connected to our community, humor, and that it really is okay to have the crappy feelings and off days. Looking forward as I
grieve, I’m choosing to focus on savoring my for now once a week long work-out
days…and to look forward to them again more frequently once the boys are older.
They don’t know it yet, but I’ve got big plans involving us and mountain bikes,
skis, roller blades, running shoes, and rock climbing gear.
If not for family and friends…
Friends continued to bring dinner over for us over the
weekend and the past 2 days, and I will say this—I firmly believe their kind
intentions and nutrition-dense meals are what have helped me to bounce back
from the blood loss. There is no way I had the energy to cook that way this
past week. Sunday I tried a foray to the PX, and got nice and dizzy, fully
believing that continued rest was for the birds. Then, Monday and Tuesday this
week, I felt like a bag of smashed a$$.
I didn’t feel up to doing anything, and that is not me. I
literally laid low. I wheeled our 30 pounder in his push car to the bus stop so my kindergartener could be
waved onto the bus, and then strolled the pre-todd into daycare from the car
chuckling at our shuffling, then I climbed back into bed. On Monday it was a
HUGE success just to scrub, wash, and cut all our raw veggies for the week. Writing
thank you cards and taking containers back—those have been my other “activities,”
which make me laugh, because in any other given day it’s not a big deal. That
was Monday. Tuesday was a repeat, but I made it to the commissary to shop for
groceries with Graysen in tow. He may have pulled out some of my hair, & I’m
now officially balding, but we made it!
I may be a pro (definitely tongue in cheek) at this point in telling you what vegetables
and legumes have the most iron, B vitamins, and magnesium (zinc, not so much—still
learning)… Friends also reminded me to OD on the vitamin C when taking the
lovely red iron tablets…to help in the iron absorption. Thanks for the reminder;
I’d definitely blanked on that one. However, I started drinking a liver cleanse
with blended parsley, chlorophyll, spinach, and black cherry juice…and added 3-5 drops of lemon doTERRA essential oil to get more Vitamin C. Did you know your body
can never get enough of Vitamin C—and in the presence of an abundance of
Vitamin C; it’s hard for your body to get sick. If I correctly recall, Vitamin
C is one of the only vitamins you can safely overdo without side effects. Which
was (is?) a real concern to me in the last few days, because of the sepsis
threat and dizziness is one of the first symptoms of sepsis.
Upon deciding to do belly dance this morning based on how
whacky my energy was yesterday, I began fueling my body the way I know best—as if
I’m getting ready for a workout. This morning I was so excited when I glanced
at my Vega protein shake with almond milk’s nutrition information. I knew it made
me feel great, but it also has really high levels of both iron and magnesium. A
friend had suggested (thanks Christine!) I focus on magnesium intake too—so I
had ramped that up in the past day—and that seemed to really make a difference,
in addition to increasing my B vitamin intake (hello kombucha and lipovitan!). I
did have coffee…(I know—good for you or not?) and a vegetarian “sausage” pattie
on a piece of unbromated sourdough so I wouldn’t get shaky. Then, before the class
I added Vega pre-workout to my water.
My lunch today (see pic below) was a 15-bean veggie soup
(thanks C), doTERRA vitamins (took other
half before breakfast to give my body time to absorb), iron tab, my fav red and
yellow beets, hydrating with my liver cleanser and a few sips of kombucha (Bs,
antioxidants, and enzymes).
Skinny pop popcorn as a mid-day snack and a malta goya
(thanks F)! I’ve taken Fenugreek for nursing, but had never heard of this for energy (and to increase milk production).
My 20-month old is up!! And 6 year old is home from school. Back
to work!!
And for dinner we had yummy leftovers! Some more 15 bean veggie soup; lots of raw
veggies—beets, carrots, cucumber, avocado, and celery; along with a bowl of
Thai noodles, cilantro and veggies (thanks L!); and then some vegetarian “chik’n.”
[If you’re curious Alex also had more of the “chik’n,” hummus, and cheese pizza—this
guy EATS!)
Reading through this with G on my lap..., I admit he hand fed me his trail mix--so I got in more nuts (protein and fat whoopee!) and raisins (iron!!). Totally unexpected. But I saw without any tagging of keywords almost 400 people have read the previous posts, so I guess someone is interested?
And although our pumpkin from Halloween is staring at me—we didn’t
have the chutzpah to carve it earlier I wonder why--I'll have to save harvesting the seeds for magnesium until tomorrow.
After writing everything I ate..., that's a lot! Now you know why I like working out, especially lifting weights...shoot! In all honesty though when i don't workout it's either just the Vega shake in place of chewing food breakfast, or no Vega that day--which is where the superb nutrition comes in to place. On the days I do heavier cardio & lifting for 1-2 hours I also have energy gels, electrolytes, post-recovery drink,. and either a bar or shake (all Vega) as well. Complicated?
After A's hockey, we're in the home stretch for bedtime routines. whew! Peace, love, & blessings to you.