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Monday, November 21, 2011

Multitude Monday - Learning to care for myself

I haven't been taking care of myself lately. I didn't realize this when my legs began to hurt last week. I have this weird achy leg syndrome that I've had since high school and it basically means my legs will occasionally hurt all over, not enough to stop walking, more of just a nagging annoying pain. I forgot that if unattended, leads directly to severe leg cramps that wake me screaming in the night for husband to fix it. Which leads to sore calves for 3-5 days afterwards and this morning hobbling to the bathroom. Which leads me to finally do something about it.

Research indicates lack of electrolytes, potassium, calcium and general lack of activity or overabundance of activity. Mental check list, I've stopped eating/drinking milk, yogurt and bananas - yep that will do it! And spent the weekend carting around 15mo who weighs 26lbs while 5mo pregnant (yes he can walk, he just missed me I guess). Again check. No wonder my calves are screaming in pain.

So I've started doing the following:
* drinking Emergen-C packets of 1,000mg of Vitamin C twice per day
* 30 minute bath twice a day to soak legs
* one smoothie per day with banana, blueberries, flax seed, honey, yogurt and soy milk (soy is only because I need to use up the soy milk MIL bought when she was here)
* Absolutely no heels for remainder of pregnancy (not that I've been wearing lately any but was favoring white wedge 3" sandals a few weeks back - hey don't hate me for still wearing sandals, it's hot down here!)

And that's about all I've had time to fit in. I'm also supposed to do morning stretches, night stretches, drink 6-8 cups of water (doing about half of that) get up every hour to walk and take at least one walk per day at lunch. I'm just not good at prioritizing my own needs. I work at an exasperatingly hectic toy company and every minute spent socializing or personal time is one minute longer in the office at the end of the day because the work has to get done when one is in charge of a department. Regardless, I still left at 6:45 and got home at 7 with only an hour to spend with the kids. Soooooooo, you see my dilemma.

Well at least I'm trying!

Last week my yoga teacher said mothers/wives need to take care of themselves because we are the pillars of our family. Our health, happiness and outlook on life is the foundation of our families happiness because they feed off our maternal energy. Happy mom, happy family. Tired achy mom, grouchy family. I owe it to my family to take care of myself! I really do. So if you see me loitering on Facebook or Twitter just give me a shout out to go drink a smoothie and take a walk.

On with the thankfulness!!!

226 - blueberry smoothies
227 - unexpected grace for a mistake made at work
228 - pantry so full of food that I can make 2 weeks of meal plans and still have food left over!
229 - safety for Sam's return to our home
230 - for weekends with the family where we have no goals, just time spent with our kids.

I hope whoever is reading will have a beautiful week with your family. It's Thanksgiving! My favorite holiday!!

1 comment:

Katrina Ryder said...

I used to get horribly debilitating cramps/ Charlie Horses in my legs at night during pregnancy. I learned somewhere that if you tightly pinch the muscle and skin between the thumb and first finger, the cramp will subside. I don't know why, but it worked for me. It's worth a try.