women

I Think of You: A Note from a New Mama

Posted on by Kaylin Stravalli

In the past three months, my life has forever changed. It has been a dream come true … and it has also been one of the most difficult times – mentally and emotionally – of my life.

While I am typically pretty good at keeping in touch with friends and family, in these past weeks, people have probably wondered what world I’ve been living in because it certainly wasn’t my usual one.

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They’d be right. I’m living in a whole new world in the white house at 6729. It consists of my husband, our dog Frank, one tiny human whom I love more than life itself, and me.

We have all been adjusting to our new life, and, for the most part, it has been an easy adjustment to make.

I have always wanted to be a mama. I’ve spent my whole life dreaming of it, watching and learning from other mamas before me, and figuring out what kind of mama I wanted to be when – God willing – the time came.

So when we found out I was pregnant, my heart was overjoyed. My prayers had been answered. My dream was coming true. When our daughter was born, it was like one giant puzzle piece in my life and in my heart fell into place. I slipped into my new role like a new dress tailor made for me. It fit perfectly and felt wonderful, powerful, and joyful.

But as my husband and I say, “It’s not all puppy dogs and rainbows.” First, labor and delivery is no joke. Second, recovery is no picnic either. It hurts. You’re sore. You’re tired (read: even more likely, you’re flat out exhausted). Not to mention, there’s a tiny human who is completely dependent on you for love and survival.

There are no breaks.

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Motherhood is diaper changes and nonstop nursing and a nap here and there – if you’re lucky. It’s learning her cues, so when feeding time comes, she’s not already ticked and starving.

It’s figuring out which diapers give the most coverage and the least likelihood of a blowout or diaper rash.

It’s tummy time – an activity she didn’t mind it in the beginning and now hates. That means you now have to find creative ways of getting that time in to build her muscles, so she can hit that next milestone and prevent a flat head.

It’s waking up at all hours of the night, then truly waking up sometimes and realizing you’d picked up and nursed your baby in your sleep. You know this because you’re holding her and your breast is out and near her little mouth like she’d passed out after she got her fill. It’s both amazing and a bit scary.

It’s learning that my body was built for this. I can survive on little to no sleep; finally, all those years of having trouble sleeping are paying off! My body can produce enough milk to feed my baby (something I know not everyone can do, which makes me extra grateful that I can), and I love being able to breastfeed her. My body handled pregnancy, labor, and delivery like a champ and has recovered quickly and well. For all of this, I am forever thankful.

It’s watching for signs of postpartum depression, so I monitored my mental and emotional state.

I also sat up thinking and praying and planning. I multitasked and kept the house (decently) clean. I took care of and made sure to give Frank love. I navigated my relationship and the changes that come with now being a wife and a mother. I racked my brain for any and everything that could be done from home to bring in money for the household, so I could stay home and be with my daughter because the thought of someone else watching her makes me cry and feel physically ill.

Through all of this, I have thought of my friends and family with whom I am typically good at keeping in touch. Lately, I haven’t been so good.

You may have wondered where I went. You may have been gracious enough to know that I was busy trying to learn how to be a mama and take care of a tiny human and just needed time to figure it all out.

You may have been worried about me, about how I was doing, about how I was dealing with everything, about how I’d do when maternity leave ended. (In fairness, I was asking myself all of these same questions.)

You may have thought I was too busy to think of you.

Well … some of all of that is true and warranted.

You may have asked yourself these questions but kept them in your heart; or you may have let it go long enough and checked in on me and asked – even if I didn’t always give you the full truth in return.

Know this, though, I did and do think of you. It’s just that:

  • It was at 2 a.m., I was up to nurse, and it wasn’t an appropriate time to call or text.
  • I got a free minute and a free hand, got ready to call you, and the dog needed to go out, the baby woke up again and needed fed, and/or I needed to go to the bathroom, brush my teeth and hair, and shower – or it was never going to happen.
  • I had just enough time to get a couple of house chores done and they were all loud. A noisy call would be hard and rude; and texting would interrupt the workflow too much, so I wouldn’t finish what I needed to get done.
  • I wanted to talk to you but knew I’d break down if I heard your voice.
  • Or you’d ask about my return to work, and I couldn’t bear thinking about it or giving an answer that wasn’t even true just to cut off that line of dialogue.
  • I wanted to see you but knew you’d take one look at me and know I was struggling. I couldn’t handle the pity or an offer to help when I knew you already had a full plate of your own. Plus, other people trying to care for my baby stressed me out more than it helped.
  • I also couldn’t bear breaking down and spilling my struggles because they were things I needed to work out for myself and with my husband; and it felt like a betrayal of my relationship to talk to anyone else about them. The guilt of that was one more thing I could not add to my load.
  • I thought of you, but it was 2 a.m. again and not an appropriate time to call or text.

In the past three months, my life has forever changed. It has been a dream come true, and it has also been one of the most difficult times of my life. I may have been busy navigating my new norm but know I thought of you often. I just wasn’t always able to reach out like I would have before – for a number of reasons, none of which were really about you.

Thank you to those who have given me the grace of space and understanding and to those who have broken through with a message you couldn’t have known was so perfectly timed.

Love Your Body

Posted on by Kaylin Stravalli

Do you remember the “Sunscreen” song by Baz Luhrmann from the 90s? For those of you who do, you’re welcome for that dose of nostalgia. For those who don’t know it, listen at the link below. You’re also welcome.

It starts out like this:

Ladies and gentleman of the class of 97, wear sunscreen. If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience…

And I am reminded, as I have always known, that the same can be said of my blog. However, I continue to hope that you will keep reading, relating, and finding some entertainment in my thoughts and experiences. Besides, I have no more idea what I am doing in life than the next person, but I digress.

I have always liked this song, and its lyrics have stuck with me since I first heard it around age 8. Yet, some lines were brought to my mind more consistently over the years than the rest:

Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth, oh never mind. You will not understand the power and the beauty of your youth until they’ve faded. But trust me, in twenty years you’ll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can’t grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked. You are not as fat as you imagine….

…. Enjoy your body. Use it in every way you can. Don’t be afraid of it or what other people think of it. It’s the greatest instrument you’ll ever own. Dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but in your own living room. Read the directions, even if you don’t follow them. Do not read beauty magazines, they will only make you feel ugly.

In a 7-minute song, Baz Luhrmann spent a significant amount of time on body image. Can you imagine why that is? Perhaps it’s because everyone – and I mean everyone – has something about their body that they either don’t like or are insecure or self-conscious about. Maybe it’s our legs or our arms or our ears or our ankles. Whatever it may be, we all have something, and that something is almost always worse and/or weirder in our minds than it is in reality. But if there’s one thing that can always, always be counted on to make these insecurities rear their ugly heads, it’s wedding and swimsuit season.

In fact, I have seen and experienced both in the past year or so. Obviously summer a.k.a. Reveal-What-You’ve-Been-Hiding-Good-Or-Bad-All-Winter-Long season has just passed us by, and wedding season is in full swing.

I’ve been to at least 5 weddings in the past 12 months and was in two of them. And let me tell you, they were ripe with the “I need to lose this much,” “I want to get fit by this date before the wedding,” “I just want to get this or that a bit more toned” sort of comments. Why, you ask?

PICTURES! We know the way we look on this very special day is going to be immortalized in wedding photos for the rest of time (or at least until our grandkids sort through our belongings and give them the old heave-ho). If we don’t look our best, not only will everyone at the wedding notice, but everyone who looks at those photos over the next 70 years will too.

Oi, that’s a lot of pressure! And I’ve definitely been feeling it lately. One of my best friends is getting married next month, and I could not be more excited. However, as the wedding hit about the T-10 months mark, I became increasingly more anxious about how I looked. I vowed to use that time to get healthier, to get fitter, and to use the wedding as a deadline, a way to hold myself accountable. (Note: I have only kind of, sort of done this. I am acutely aware that it is my own fault that I do not look the best I can or would like.)

Then I met a man – a man I really liked from the start – and that only increased my anxiety about how my body looked. DANG IT! Why did I not look like the bangin’ chick I did a few years ago, when I was working out and eating healthy pretty much every day?

Um…because life gets messy and sometimes you have to take a break and eat some banana pancakes. It was then that I remembered this gem from EAT PRAY LOVE:

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I don’t know that truer words have ever been written or spoken, and thank God for them! The message is clear:

Love your body. It’s yours. Own it. Take care of it. Treat it to some pizza every once in a while without feeling guilty. But never, ever feel ashamed of it.

No amount of dieting, progress pictures, or swapping stories with the women (or the men, for that matter) in your life should make you feel bad about your body or make you feel like you have to change it for any reason other than you want to feel healthier and better in your own skin.

If you want to change something to make yourself feel better, I’m all for it. For what it’s worth, I support you 100%. Just remember, it’s not going to happen overnight. You can’t sit there after 10 push-ups and a set of 25 crunches like this:

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It is hard work to stay active, to stay fit, to stay healthy when you have a job, friends, a significant other, kids, bills, family, etc., etc. But is it as hard as we make it out to be in our minds? You know, when we’re hunting for excuses not to go to the gym or work out or eat something green instead of that [Enter the Edible-Guilty-Pleasure-You-Can’t-Live-Without Here] on a consistent basis? Probably not.

So start small. Eat breakfast. Substitute one meal a day to make it a healthy one. Go for a walk a couple nights a week. Get a workout buddy or text your long-distance friend in another state (or country) who is trying to do the same thing, and keep each other accountable. Whatever works for you. The key is to find what works for you, not your friend’s cousin’s sister/brother-in-law. Make one change, then build on it.

Before you know it, you will be in a routine, living a lifestyle you couldn’t imagine a few months earlier. And you know what? You’re going to feel better. You’re going to have more energy. And most importantly, you’re going to look at your body in the mirror and be proud of how you look, how you feel, and the progress you have made – regardless of what any scale says.

(Side Note: My advice – Don’t own a scale. Or if you have one, throw it away. Evaluate your body and your progress by how you feel and how you see it. You don’t need a number to tell you how good or bad or indifferent you should feel about your body. It doesn’t matter. Let the doctor weigh you at check-ups and measure your progress in numbers then, if you must.)

It’s easy to forget that we all hold a unique beauty within ourselves, especially when we are constantly comparing ourselves to others. Stop it. Compare your body to your body. Be the best version of you, not the best imitation of [Enter Your Dream-Body-Celebrity-Name Here].

Find a way to be happy with yourself no matter what size or shape you are. Love (or at least learn to like and appreciate) your body; and your body will show you some love right back with endorphins and other feel-good hormones, glowing skin, a spring in your step, and a quiet confidence that can’t help but attract good things and people to you.

If you take nothing else from this post, let it be this…

Love your body. It is unique to you. You don’t have to look like Barbie or Ken, your friends, or even your family. You have to look like you. You are beautiful. No matter what you may think, what other people may say, or what society tells us is the new “standard” for beauty. Your opinion is the only one that matters, and you’re the only one who can change it.