HOLY CRAP

That's how I'm feeling. We still can't quite believe it's true. Even after a 4th pregnancy test which I took this morning and the line was no longer faint, I still haven't digested it. I'm starting to feel the excitement of picking a name, wondering what it he/she will look like, seeing him/her on an ultrasound for the first time, etc etc. On the other hand, I've already started worrying about its health, having amniocentesis again (which I had a REALLY hard time with emotionally with my 2nd) and of course the weight that I will probably gain.

I gained about 45 pounds with my first 2 pregnancies (each!) and I just CANT do that again. I got up to 320 with Matthew and my legs and hips just hated me at the end. Plus, carrying a 35 pound child up the stairs when you're over 300 pounds and pregnant just isn't fun.

Yes, I'm definitely disappointed that my weight loss goals have to be put on hold (temporarily mind you), but I'm also bound and determined that I will gain the least amount of weight I can by eating healthy and exercising. I definitely wont put this child in any danger by trying to lose weight while pregnant, but I'm hoping that by keeping myself in check and not eating for 2 or 3 or 4 as I sometimes did with my first 2 pregnancies; that I can end up not to far from where I am now in 9 months. I've read that a person of my size can safely gain about 15 pounds and have a perfectly healthy pregnancy, so that's what I'm going to aim for. I've also read that if you DO lose weight while pregnant, that the toxins stored in your fat cells can affect the baby, as can ketones in your blood from being in a constant state of low insulin (due to no carbs). I dont want either of these obviously, so the aim is healthy weight GAIN :)

Anyway, undoubtably many of you that read this will now find my posts boring... I mean this is supposed to be a weight loss blog, and although I'm not baby crazy like I was with my first, I doubt I'll have many inspiring weight loss posts......but it's ok - I forgive you all :) Hopefully I'll *see* you again next September when part 2 of my weight loss program starts up.

As a side note, we've been told that it's now quite probable that we will be relocated to Israel for my husband's work..... something I've agreed to commit to for 2 years. ACCKK!! Scary. However one of the good things about the move would be that I'd have my inlaws nearby to help me deal with 3 kids, whereas here I have no help. We're expecting an offer to be made in early Jan, and if it's satisfactory, we'll be moving in April!

Anyway, blah blah blah - hope everyone has a fantastic Xmas!!!

and HOLY CRAP!!!

A little *BUMP* in the road.....

Well.....so I think I'm pregnant.... AAAAHHHHHHH .....and I'm feeling a bit numb... or maybe it's denial?!! My hubby and I have always said we'd like 3 kids, and given the fact that we were told we had less than a 1% chance of even having 1 kid, AND given the fact that we had sex exactly once... on Dec 6th (yes I remember..... it's been a slow month!), this baby would be a friggen miracle. I knew we had sex around the time I was ovulating (when we thought we were infertile, I got REALLY good at tracking my cycle - so much so that I can now FEEL when I ovulate!!), and we didn't use any protection, but I thought at the time, 'there's NO way'. HA!

But I should have gotten my TOM this week, and I've been experiencing a few weird signs, and so yesterday when I was spending too much money at Walmart, I picked up a pack of their generic pregnancy tests and tested this morning. It was a faint line, but it was a line. And so here we are. I'm expecting my husband home from Arizona in about 45 minutes, and I'm going to break the news.... he'll be THRILLED. And I know I WILL be. There's just a few things I have work through before I'm there.

TIMING: We had planned to start *trying* in Feb/March... this was because (selfishly) I REALLY wanted to go to my 20 year high school reunion in Nova Scotia in early August. Well that's not going to happen now - I'll be 8 1/2 months pregnant!

MONEY: This means I won't be working before this baby comes, which means no EI from the government and we'll be living on hubby's income only for a while. It's going to be TIGHT.

MY WEIGHT: My hope was that I would be quite a bit lighter when I got pregnant again. Although I love being pregnant and also love the *I'm supposed to have a big belly* feeling that goes along with it, I still hated being FAT and pregnant... not to mention the stress on my hips and legs - blah

Anyway, these are minor concerns... I know how devastating it can be to NOT be able to conceive and so I feel so blessed that it happened so easily and I'm NOT complaining... I'm really not. I just need to work through some of these mixed emotions.

And I need to test again tomorrow morning... maybe the test I used was broken or something :)

I'll leave you with AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

6th WEIGH-IN RESULT!

Woo hoo for me!! I lost 3.6 pounds this week to put me over 5 pounds loss - finally finally finally! I guess last week WAS a temporary and somewhat artificial gain cause by salt overload at my hubby's Xmas party or something...

Whatever - I'm THRILLED!

I also enjoyed myself immensely at the hotel on my own this weekend. Did a bit of shopping, but mostly just hung out in my jammies and read magazines, watched TV and movies, and made a dent in organizing my life and weight-loss goals for the new year. Dont really believe in new year's resolutions, but I do like the feeling of it being a fresh new year with tons of opportunities for success and achievements.

I'm also proud of myself because I didn't go on a crazy binge while on my own, and believe me I was fantasizing about it last week in a major way - especially on Friday!! Thinking of all the crap I was going to buy and eat in my secret little binge nest. I ended up getting some chinese food, had a SMALL bag of chips, 1 chocolate bar and 2 pieces of licorice. It was quite the treat!!! I'm sure this sounds like a lot to many of you, but for me this was nothing..... me without restraint would have gotten 2 BIG bags of chips.. a BAG of chocolate, a BAG of licorice and probably had MacDonalds on top of the chinese food - all in just 2 days! I actually brought fruit, water and some All Bran bars with me this time, and so at least got in some healthy stuff amongst the crapola :)

Hope everyone has a good week!

Yes yes I'm still here :)

And yes yes I know I didnt post my weight last weekend. *SIGH* I did so well last week - went to my husband's Xmas party on Friday night and ate totally within my points - abstained from the desserts (which included dark, milk and white chocolate fondues - ACK!!), the fatty lamb shanks and the scallops dripping in butter. Last year I ate til I felt ill, but I really did well this year... didn't drink anything but water all night... and a lot of it!!

So when I stepped on my scale before weigh in on Saturday morning and it said I had GAINED 2 pounds overnight, I was just a TAD shocked.. just a TAD (read: TOTALLY). I didn't have a good feeling about my official WW weigh in and it definitely didn't disappoint. *Officially* I gained 2.2 pounds. I THINK that this was water weight because the foods I did eat were pretty savory (ie: SALTY) and the scale was back down on Sunday, so maybe that's it. But it certainly put me in a lovely funk for the following 4 days. So I'd like to acknowledge that I'm cheating (probably only myself, but whatever!) by not showing my gain in my ticker or spreadsheet. I just can't bring myself to do it!

I've been *good* all week (hate using that expression, but it gets my point across) so we'll see what happens this week. I also exercised quite a bit this week, so I'm hoping that will help. Even if it doesn't, it felt darn good to get back on my treadclimber and I'm hoping to make it a regular thing.

As a little payback for him being away for almost the whole month of November, the best husband in the world is giving me a weekend at a hotel for 2 nights this weekend.. we're going to the *Breakfast with Santa* event that his company puts on every year and then he's dropping me off downtown. Can't wait!!!!!

And just cause they're so cute (except for the bruise above Maya's lip!), here are a couple of pics of my babes (and me) at a restaurant last weekend :) I love how my black turtleneck makes me look like I'm just a floating head (with only a slight double chin)... woohoo! almost makes it acceptable :)

An easier way to stalk you big losers!!

I don't know about you, but I go to my favorite bloggers' sites at least once a day to see if they've posted, and I WAS doing that by clicking on their links on MY blog below... this didn't take THAT long to do, but if no one had posted, it got a bit boring (and disappointing!) after a while.

Well. I just have to say, that thanks to Scale Junkie, I am now using the most amazing tool! It's called Google Reader and it acts like an inbox for all the blogs you read - showing you if anyone has posted anything new. All you have to do is *subscribe to* (add) someone's blog, and it will automatically show if they've posted since you last looked. AMAZING!!

I'm sure some (most?) of you are already using this or something similar, but it is a delightful surprise for me... it means I can cut down on the amount of time I spend on here (my husband will thank me!) AND I can actually read MORE blogs (cause I'm a junkie for weight loss inspiration!)... even if I dont link to them from my blog. Ok I guess my husband WON'T be thanking me!

The way it works is that in your inbox you'll see a list of all the blogs you've subscribed to - and they will be bolded if they have a new post. You can link to the person's actual blog just by clicking on their post title - which is what you'll have to do if you want to comment. The only housekeeping thing I had to do was open my inbox and *mark all posts as read* as it had the last 158 posts people had made and I guess assumed I hadn't read them yet.

You can also see who has subscribed to your blog, and its *trends* features shows you how many posts you received, how many you've read, etc etc....

Anyway, if anyone's interested, you can find Google reader here: http://www.google.com/intl/en/googlereader/tour.html - it literally took me 10 minutes to add everyone's blog and then I added a link to it on my blog so I can see in 2 seconds if anyone's posted since I last logged on!

Sorry for the crazy excitement - I just love technology, shortcuts and time savers :)

On a weight loss note, I have my weigh in tomorrow, and once again my scale says I'm down... we'll see what those crazy fluctuating WW scales say tomorrow though! I have my husband's company Xmas party tonight.... and I'm planning not to drink at all or eat too much (hard - because they put on quite the spread).... but I'm fine with this because we have another Xmas party to go to tomorrow night and I plan to indulge then :)

Happy Friday and thank you thank you Scale Junkie!

Update: OK - I think I just figured out how I sometimes get comments immediately after posting a new post! duh :)

A little shopping inspiration

Last night I went out to dinner with a girlfriend of mine....and afterward we strolled along Robson St in Vancouver - a MECCA for clothing stores....everything from the Gap to Mexx, Guess, Tommy Hilfiger, LuluLemon, Zara, Bebe.... you get the idea.... and you might also appreciate that I never go in these stores because I cant wear their clothes... MY mecca consists of Old Navy (can get into an XXL if it's stretchy and can also wear some of their maternity clothes (GOD that's so sad!)), Penningtons, Additionelle, Cotton Ginny Plus and sometimes Walmart (but I hardly ever go there). I never go into other stores - I mean, why would I want to depress myself!?

Anyway, my friend, who is slim size 8-10, wanted to check out some of the sales at these stores and so I tagged along.

Now, I feel uncomfortable even walking into these stores because I feel like everyone's looking at me and wondering why I'm in there, and then I feel funny even looking at the clothes, because hey, who am I kidding?! So in the first couple of stores I didn't even look, I just sorta loitered around the front area pretending to look at things while my friend browsed. And then a funny thing happened.... we spent quite a while in a store called Zara, which I'd never gone into, and she was trying on coats and I started to actually LOOK and feel the clothes, and I started to feel excited! They were so beautiful, so fashionable, so cute, so sexy, nothing like how I would describe my current wardrobe. For my clothes, I'd use descriptors like Functional, Frumpy and Shapeless. Gee how fun and inspiring - no wonder I find it hard to feel good about myself!

Anyway, I actually had fun, but I also found myself thinking 'I would get this, oh and this, ohhhh and THIS'.... in fact I would have bought everything in there. And I couldn't believe that my friend wasn't buying everything - I mean SHE could FIT in all these clothes and she walked out with nothing. I had an overwhelming feeling that I would buy anything and everything I could fit into, and I guess it's because that's how it is right now - when I find something that I actually like, or that looks pretty or that fits well, I'm ecstatic, and I buy it because it's so RARE due to my limited choices.

I was surprised at how inspired I felt when I left... not depressed, but instead excited for the day that I will hopefully be able to shop in these fun *normal* stores and have thousands of beautiful, cute and sexy things to choose from. I won't know what to do with myself!!

I almost consider this a NSV as instead of going into a *I'm NEVER going to be thin enough to shop here* funk like I would in the past, my excitement showed me that I DO believe that I will reach my goals and I will be a fashionista one day :)

Hmmm.................I'd better start saving my pennies now!

5th WEIGH-IN RESULTS

So I stayed the same today..... which, well whatever, but here's why I'm a bit miffed.....

I didn't exercise regularly this past week, but I eating-wise I did awesome... and I refrained from weighing myself ALL week, except for today right before I left for my meeting, and my scale had me DOWN 3.5 pounds!! I was SO excited... it meant I'd be getting my 5 pound star.

Except I didn't. The WW scales, which have til now weighed me in less than my home scale (see rant below), today weighed me in higher. At least 3.5 pounds higher.

I don't get it. They must calibrate those things right? Maybe I need to figure out how to stand on the same one every week or something.

I was so excited to go this morning and then SO disappointed when I left. Anyway, not sure what to do. I know in the grand scheme of things it doesn't really matter..... if I lose weight, then I lose weight - regardless of what any scale says - but I just don't get why the huge discrepancy every week.

BLAH