I once read that depression can feel like a part of your soul taking a vacation, and it really resonated with me. First, because I do feel quite empty when I’m depressed, like part of my self is gone and I lack the ability to enjoy things and feel hopeful. But also because it’s a comforting story to tell myself. Where is that bit of my soul? Is she having fun by the beach? Going on some glorious hikes? I hope she’s happy, and well-rested when she returns. When I stop being depressed, I wouldn’t say I’m refreshed and ready to take over the world, but compared to being depressed, it’s a very clear shift in everything. Soul vacations work! I hope she comes back soon though, it may not be strictly debilitating, but every single day, every single hour, is hard right now.

Now that I’ve got done sharing that I am not being thoughtful and creative, I’m going to share that the boys and I did something thoughtful and creative for the Jewish holiday of Tu B’Shevat. The holiday celebrates trees, and these days it’s an ecological holiday that’s typically observed by planting trees. We’ve tended to do little tree-related crafts on this holiday, but when Adam saw it on the calendar he became fixated on planting a tree. Unfortunately our small yard can’t really take any more trees and we weren’t able to find a local tree-planting activity that worked with our schedules, but I knew I had to do something. So, as soon as I was done with work for the day, I took the boys to the local hardware store to pick up a large bag of soil. Once we got home, we grabbed a giant pot that we’d originally gotten to grow a baby watermelon, filled it with soil, and then the boys planted several clippings from one of our jade plants (succulent trees! I can’t kill them!). It was a simple and cute activity, and seemed satisfactory to Adam’s desire to plant a tree.

Last week I had the nice surprise of my Aunt Mary being in San Francisco for a work conference. She was incredibly busy, but made time for us the final morning she was in town before her flight. I hadn’t seen her in years so even though only Aaron and I could make it up (MJ and Adam were busy with work and school) it was a real treat to get to see her, and for her to meet little Aaron! I also hope we can either make it to Florida in the coming year, or see her more if work brings here this way again soon, she hasn’t met Adam either, and he just turned five years old.

I’m glad Aaron got to meet more of my family, but I think mostly he enjoyed going on a trip with me to the city on the train. He was disappointed that we couldn’t go on a cable car and didn’t stay in the city for longer because we needed to get back for lunch and nap time, but it was nice to spend a little quality time just the two of us.

Over the weekend we took the boys over to the Oakland Zoo. We’re members and it’s just 15 minutes from home, so it isn’t something we spend a lot of time in planning for, but Adam shared that he wanted to go on some of the rides and the gondola, so we decided to make a day of it.

We started with a kids ride and the zoo train, but it was then getting to be lunch time.

For lunch, we took the gondola up to the California Trail and had lunch at the cafe up there. The zoo itself is located on a big hill, and the California Trail is on the top of that large hill, so you can see the bay, Oakland, San Francisco, multiple bridges. It’s a beautiful spot, and we even managed to snag one of the few tables outside to enjoy that view. It was also the first really beautiful day of the year, with sun and temperatures reaching the low 70s. It did mean that the zoo was rather busy and the lines were long, but it was all quite tolerable. After playing on the playground and enjoying the rest of the California Trail, we went down on the gondola and got to see an elephant and the giraffes before concluding our zoo day by letting the kids go on one final ride.

It’s now February. I spent January observing “dry January” to cut out alcohol for a few weeks. Just like in 2023, it wasn’t a difficult thing for me, but it was a change. I wouldn’t say it was interesting or helpful in any way, but it did reduce the calories I consumed! Speaking of which, back in July I reflected on my diet and weight, and how I had put on 25 pounds and wasn’t happy about it. I identified some changes I thought I should make, but at the end I made clear that I’d prioritize my mental health, and ultimately didn’t commit to making any of the changes I identified. I’d like to try to do that now. Let’s see how I do this time, I’m at 219 pounds now.

At that point I had already exposed everyone, and we were all suddenly stuck at home for two weeks. I decided to go on Paxlovid due to my asthma, but it was still a brutal infection for me this time around, and for over a week I found myself having to take naps every afternoon. The medication caused the dreaded “Paxlovid mouth” for me, which leaves a nasty taste in your mouth that I could only really combat with fruit snacks and sweet candies, not optimal, but it actually made it hard to sleep some nights otherwise. Thankfully, the kids were fine. Aaron never even developed symptoms or a positive test. I joked that since he was born in 2020 he was issued full immunity (pandemic baby!).

Being sick is never fun, but perhaps the most frustrating thing out of it this time was how bored the kids were. Every day it was the list of places they were begging us to take them to, from Target to a train ride to a restaurant. We do get out a lot with them, so the swift reversion to isolation life was hard on them, plus Adam being out of school.

They still played outside and after the first week we went to some unpopulated playgrounds a couple of times. One day we made apple cake!

Another day we did do-it-yourself pizzas, where I enjoyed some turkey pepperoni and the tomato sauce we made over Labor day.

We had a little lamination machine delivered and made some clever bookmarks, along with bunches of other crafts.

And we observed Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, both of which our isolation totally clobbered and made the choice for us of whether we wanted to go out and attend services in-person. Ultimately I think we would have done them remotely anyway due to various factors, but it would have been nice to have the choice. We did decide to switch to virtual services away from our synagogue in San Francisco and instead dialed into the more local congregation. We haven’t joined the more local one yet, but it does seem like that’s the one we’ll ultimately be joining in the not to distant future, so it was nice to start getting familiar with their space and culture, even if it was over video.

By the end of the month most of us were testing negative and I got to enjoy a family-only birthday celebration and then got BBQ from a place down the street for a lovely birthday lunch!

On the first weekend of October we were feeling well enough for an adventure! Boo at the Zoo had begun at Oakland Zoo and we discovered that kids love hay mazes. It was actually a nice mix of something both the boys could have a lot of fun with, which can be tricky given their very different interests and temperaments.

The following weekend we took the train up to San Francisco for some transit adventures. We had sadly missed MUNI Heritage Weekend due to our COVID infection, but I was delighted to learn that the historic Blackpool 228 “boat tram” was out running that weekend for Fleet Week.

We didn’t intend to go up during the height of Fleet Week weekend, it’s just how our schedules landed, but it did mean the city was hopping and it was fun to see a few fighter jets and a massive battleship anchored at a pier. Our route took us up to Union Square, down past Jeffery’s Toys, then down to the Market Street Railway Museum and Ferry Building, and finally to lunch on the Embarcadero at Delancey Street Restaurant.

It was a delightfully transit-full day with rides on BART and MUNI Metro, but we skipped everything but viewing the historic fleet this time around due to how incredibly packed they were. Next time!

Two years ago I wrote a blog post titled 50 pounds. In it I chronicled the path I walked to lose 50 pounds from my high point of 237 pounds just prior to my second pregnancy in 2020. At the time, I acknowledged my belief that the magic bullet was breastfeeding, since that bought me a 500 calorie deficit every day without changing diet or behavior. I was right. If I look at my weight over the past two years, it started climbing up from 187 when I stopped breastfeeding at the end of 2021. For all of 2022 I was hovering around 205, and this year it’s been around 210. They say that most people have a “set point” where your body kind of naturally settles, and for me that seems to be at 210. If I eat decently and do my regular clean-the-house-and-chase-kiddos-around exercise routine I stay around 210. If I eat excessively or make other bad choices about my diet, it goes up. If I make major positive changes to my diet, it goes down.

Still, I don’t like this set point and I’d like to change it. I liked how I looked and felt when I weighed less. As I squeeze into my jeans and frown at how Medium unisex shirts hang on me now, I’m unhappy. It’s also not healthy for me, I am at high risk for Type 2 Diabetes, and that’s nothing to play around with. My A1C levels are OK for now, but that could change if I’m not diligent about my diet and exercise level.

But mental health plays a role here too. I am a stress/comfort eater. I love white rice and sugar. Carbs are my best buds. I still crave soda. I have a better grasp on how these things impact me. White rice? Sends my blood sugar through the roof! And yes, I know how much sugar is in a soda. But in the moment, it doesn’t really seem to help. I really, really want that piece of cake. It does lift my mood slightly, and in those tough moments when I’m really struggling, it’s a shortcut that I have been taking a little too often lately.

Having a look at that blog post, there are a few other things I’ve been leaning a bit too far into.

I started adding in fast food sides again, because french fries and jalapeno poppers are tastey! But honestly they aren’t that good and I should probably switch back to healthier sides, or no sides at all.

Soda. I haven’t gotten to the point of buying it for home, but I’ve come close, and I’ve had it while eating out a few times recently. I just need to put a stop to that. I have my flavored sparkling water and Hop Tea!

I keep eating too much. I need to stop when I’m satisfied, not when the pizza is gone. Do I want that slice of cake? Cool. But I don’t need to finish it if I’m feeling better! And news flash: I can throw it away if it goes bad and I haven’t felt like eating it.

Speaking of cake, there’s been too much dessert. Moderation, lady! Bedtime cookies are not necessary, and easy enough to skip and just go to bed without thinking about them again.

If I do all of the above, I think I can put a stop to my weight continuing to increase. From there, I can tackle the weight loss question again, if I find I need to.

Honestly, what I’m most hoping for is an improvement in my mental health. My life is overloaded with responsibilities right now, and I feel like I’m drowning all the time. Staying disciplined with a diet that doesn’t necessarily help my mood has proven impossible under these circumstances.

It’s also been quite rainy this winter, which is excellent news for our drought-prone state. Unfortunately we got a bit too much all at once, and so our area has been suffering from damaged roadways and bridges, and mudslides. It hasn’t impacted our home directly, aside from noticing the seal on one of our garage doors isn’t working as well as it could, so I’m grateful for that.

Adam and I have also had some time to play in the rain. I got him some rain boots and a sturdy umbrella that’s more resistant to wind than the freebie ones we had been using. I now have no excuse not to take him outside on rainy days! Except that little Aaron does not enjoy wet weather, so there has to be another adult around if I want to go have rain adventures outside with Adam.

Aaron does like getting outside after the rain though, so when MJ was at the doctor with Adam one morning I brought Aaron out to one of his favorite parks… only to find the playground flooded! Still, we did manage to have some fun running around the rest of the park.

The opposite of our wet January, was my dry January. My father was an alcoholic, and while I don’t find my own relationship with alcohol to be particularly troublesome, it did seem like a nice excuse to put a pause on alcohol for a month. In retrospect, it’s kind of funny, because I’ve just come off a pair of 9-month alcohol-free stints when I was pregnant, and then greatly reduced while breastfeeding, so a month is barely worth noting. Still, it’s nice to know that I can just cut it out without much thought, or missing it much, and without external pressure like a baby to grow or feed. Like with pregnancy, it was more the social and outing aspect that I miss when I remove alcohol from my diet, since I don’t drink soda and options for beverages are quite limited in the US. At home it’s easy though, I fell in love with Hoplark hoptea when I was pregnant, and never looked back.

I’ve been bonding with my typewriter a bit lately, which started because one of the kids switched the ribbon from black to red and I had to figure out how to switch it back. Turns out, it’s actually pretty simple, but the wear on the switch made it non-obvious as I was scouring the machine for clues. But getting my hands on the machine made me remember how much I love using it for little things here and there, and that I should make some more typing art with the boys soon. I also got back to reading The Typewriter Revolution: A Typist’s Companion for the 21st Century, which has been in my reading queue since 2021 but I’ve neglected it for a while. In reading it, I learned a bit about tabulators, and my typewriter has a big Tabulator bar on it! So I plan on checking that out soon. The danger of reading this book though is that I am exposing myself to lots of beautiful old typewriters and I now have it stuck in my head that I want to get my hands on a Smith-Corona Skyriter. Help. Keep me away from eBay!

In other vintage tech news, I recently met up with an online friend who I’d planned on meeting a bunch of times, but we both have young children so someone has always been sick, for YEARS. When I noticed a gap in sickness mid-January I quickly reached out for an impromptu lunch together, and it all worked out. With the pandemic I haven’t had many social meetings lately, and it’s so nice to sit down and connect with other techy, like-minded folks in person. Plus, he brought me a geeky gift! A copy of Assembler language programming: The IBM system/360. The s/360 is the first in the line of mainframes I work on today, so it’s been a real joy sifting through the pages, seeing notes in the margins, and I even found an orange punch card inside from a programmer of yore. Plus, it inspired me to start using punch cards as bookmarks.

In new tech news, I replaced my primary phone in January. It wasn’t really planned, but there were lots of deals floating around for the Pixel 7 and we finally pounced on one through our carrier. I had extreme reservations about this phone, in particular the lack of a headphone jack. My friends will tease me about this, and my husband certainly did, but I use cheap Sony earbuds ALL THE TIME. I lose them or they break and just buy another pair, I don’t need to worry about having to charge them, or pairing being finicky that day. I just pop them in and go. A lot of this convenience goes away when you’re restricted to just the single USB-C port for everything. I had hoped I’d adapt to this, but the truth is I haven’t. I don’t regret the purchase, it is a very nice phone, but it has already been irritating more than once. I’m sure the first time I lose my moderately priced Bluetooth headphones I’m going to be particularly annoyed. Alas, this is the direction that all the latest high-end phones are going, and I had to get here at some point. It also means I’ve invested in a whole pile of USB-C to AUX adapters.

I’m continuing to struggle with time. I’ve written at length about how I struggle to balance my life now that I have young kids who I now spend so much of my time with. It feels like something in our house is always broken, and it probably goes without saying that something always needs to be cleaned. Every night I struggle with ask myself, do I go to bed early so I’m well-rested? Or do I stay up late to clutch to some down time to help my mental health? I keep coming back to moderation being the key, and that some nights I’ll get more sleep and some nights I’ll get to learn about my typewriter tabulator, or write in my blog (hello!). It’s still hard though, especially when the pendulum shifts too far in one direction, or I get unlucky and the night I decided to stay up late is also the night one of the kids has a rough night and I barely get any sleep. All things considered, I keep bringing myself back to how grateful I am to have a healthy, loving family and beautiful place to live. I may not be playing video games or hunkering down on programming hobby projects much anymore, but I have a lot to be thankful for.

Admittedly, this has characterized most of 2022, since Adam started going to preschool. We had a nice little break of a month and a half during summer break, but then we got COVID. Once we recovered, Adam came down with a cold with fever at the end of July after going back to school, which I swiftly caught. On August 7th I lost my ability to smell and taste, and it took a full 10 days for it to start returning. After a couple weeks my low-grade fever passed and I was well enough to go to a wedding! I even went into the office for a day! But then my symptoms crashed back in. Antibiotics didn’t help. Prescription cough medicine didn’t touch the cough. I’m grateful that a chest x-ray didn’t show anything concerning, but it didn’t help get me answers. On Friday I did a virtual visit with a walk-in clinic and got a pair of inhalers to use twice a day, and a cough medicine that’s actually helping.

The doctor I saw on Friday doesn’t believe the proximity to a COVID infection is a coincidence. In spite of my bout with COVID seeming somewhat mild at the time, he said it’s likely that it weakened my already asthmatic lungs. Since I’m predisposed to lingering coughs, it came as no surprise that I’ve gotten so sick from “just a cold” while others in my house recovered quickly. Fortunately, he also believes that I should recover from my weakened lung state within six months or so. The failure of my senses of smell and taste to fully returned seems to also be in line with longer-term impact post-COVID, since I’ve now had several people tell me that theirs has come and gone a few times since their infection. In the meantime, the hope is that the inhalers will patch me up enough so that I can finally feel better.

Aside from the misery that is having COVID and then being hit with a month-long cold, it’s also a frustrating situation to be in life-wise. Every evening I’m tired and feeling extra sick, and do the bare minimum to keep the house going and our cat taken care of, and then I go to bed. No time for hobbies, very little time for reading or TV, and no time for the million things that I’d like to do around the house. When little Aaron outgrew his 18-24M clothes this month, it was a multi-week process to get the 2T clothes rotated in (dig clothes out of storage, wash them, pull out the 18-24M from the dresser, wait for laundry to spit out the remaining 18-24M clothes, pack them up, pack them away. Oh! Socks! Go through those too.). And suddenly both boys needed shoes. It’s made for a much more chaotic home experience than I’d like, and extra tasks like routinely sweeping through closets and cabinets to reorganize aren’t even being attempted right now.

I’ve also felt bad about how the kids are experiencing this summer. It was bad enough that our COVID precautions preclude us from much socialization and indoor activities, but while sick we’ve even had to curb many of the outdoor ones. I simply haven’t had the energy to take the boys out a lot, or do a lot of things with them. Even our weekend routine of outdoor dining has been disrupted, since we obviously don’t want to go out while sick. This past weekend I rallied the energy to do a few things, but I am also concerned I assuaged my guilt at the expense of my health, and I probably should have been resting more.

I’m feeling well enough to write this on a Tuesday evening instead of going straight to bed, so maybe things are improving, or maybe it’s just that new cough medicine.

As it turned out, our infections appear to have been relatively mild and swept through quickly, with only some lingering fatigue. Our au pair was probably the sickest with traditional COVID symptoms. MJ had his fatigue and headache symptoms the longest. I got away with just five days of headache, fatigue, and sore neck, but it was enough to knock me out of all but a couple hours of work per day that week. Adam and Aaron didn’t seem to get sick at all, in spite of us all being in the house together sharing germs. It’s unclear if they were just asymptomatic, or if their single dose of vaccine two weeks prior protected them from infection entirely. In the end, it probably doesn’t matter. With negative COVID tests from adults, when the time came to clear Adam to go back to preschool we finally tested them and they were negative.

I’m grateful the boys didn’t end up sick, but that fortune also meant we had a one year old and a three year old bouncing off the walls while their trio of caretakers were sick, and we couldn’t go to parks or playgrounds to burn off energy. They watched more TV than normal when we were the most sick, and I rallied my energy to bring them out to the backyard to play a couple times. But we also couldn’t do our typical weekend outings for two weeks in a row, which I know was incredibly disappointing to them.

As for the adults, I think to some extent we’ve grown accustomed to hermit life. We still go out to pick up food and get groceries, but the added level of stay-at-home that full quarantine required was not a real hardship. The most difficult part was figuring out what services to use for grocery and take-out deliveries, and coordinating with restaurants we’re friendly with to let us pay with a credit card over the phone and pop it in the trunk of the car. As far as difficulty level goes, even while navigating a headache the process of selecting groceries while resting on the couch barely ranks.

Our eating habits did change some. We made a big dent in the food that had been collecting in our freezer by having a half dozen meals cooked at home, which is unusual for us. We prepared tacos, sausages, ravioli, and bao buns, and finally finished the brisket and turkey leftovers we had in the freezer. It was nice to know that we can get away with eating at home if the need arises, and to not have to go out and pick up food all the time. I didn’t enjoy the additional dirty dishes load though, especially with the level of fatigue I was experiencing. The kitchen sink was getting pretty basic triage for several days while the pots and pans piled up.

Taco night!

Why yes, that is leftover turkey from Thanksgiving

We had to delay the second vaccine for the boys by a few weeks so they’re well outside the infection zone, but still landing within the guidelines for vaccine spacing. Thankfully we were cleared quickly enough so that an outpatient procedure I’m having done this week won’t need to be rescheduled. And if there is any long-term impact of this infection on any of us, we don’t know about it yet, and we’re all doing much better now. I’ve been back at work for a full week, and the house is even recovering from the chaotic mess it had descended into.

It still feels a little disappointing to have dodged it for so long, and finally succumb. But with restrictions falling by the wayside, it was probably only a matter of time. We caught it during a major wave here in the bay area, so our basic precautions simply weren’t enough and we got unlucky. Thankfully, the hospitals we sufficiently staffed and available, there are many treatments out there now, and the vaccines that we all got probably prevented us from getting sicker.

Perhaps most importantly, our diligence in not becoming infection vectors ourselves protected everyone around us, and likely saved lives by helping control the spread. With that in mind, I’m still wearing my N95 mask in grocery stores until it seems safe to do otherwise. It’s not much of an inconvenience, and it’s still not worth taking the risk.

I also came down with a sinus infection. I get them pretty much every year, and I should probably bring that up with my doctor at some point too! One thing at a time. Anyway, after about 10 days the infection went away on its own, but it was a very unpleasant 10 days with severe sinus pain and headaches.

Still, I did have lots of fun with the kids in January.

Adam’s third birthday was on January 6th, and I went with Curious George as a theme since he’s really been getting into the shows and books lately. We celebrated by taking him to our favorite park to play and have some chicken tenders and cake. Our favorite local restaurant hooked us up with a party platter of tenders that we could enjoy for the occasion, and it was a really lovely afternoon. Plus, Adam loves the novelty of eating cake outside, so I was happy to oblige on his birthday.

Adam also started preschool at the tail end of January. Our decision to send him, especially as the omicron variant was still trending here, was a difficult one. After nearly two years of caution due to the pandemic, did we really want to open up our household to that risk? When we weighed all of the considerations, we decided to send him. I know kids will likely bounce back from the isolation better than most adults, but we felt that he needed the socialization and support that 2.5 hours of preschool each day could offer him.

Martin Luther King day happened to fall on Tu B’Shevat this year, meaning we had a three day weekend with the boys that we could also use to celebrate trees! Adam and I did some tree art and activities, and then the four of us took a walk to a trail nearby to visit some trees. No tree planting happened, but it was still a nice way to observe the holiday.

In personal project news, I managed to snag a few more SLT cards from a shop online. I haven’t turned the first card into jewelry yet, but I noticed that my options for getting parts were rapidly disappearing, and figured I should take this opportunity to stock up. I also got some “lamps” from the IBM s/360, which will be fun to incorporate somehow. I think I should get a little box to store all of this in though, it’s floating around the house in a cardboard box, which is not optimal and I really don’t want any of this stuff to get damaged.

Now that I’ve finished breastfeeding, we also closed down the little “nest” I had in the corner of our bedroom and moved the big, fluffy chair downstairs into our living room. It now lives in front of the fireplace, which has a TV above it that came with the house. We never used the TV, and kept talking about getting rid of it (we have another TV in the room!) but in the meantime, I decided to connect my Nintendo Switch up to it. I like playing games on the device, but if I am able to cuddle up in my fluffy chair in front of the fire, having a big screen for games is nice.

But if January (and honestly the last quarter of 2021 when I gained back half the weight I had lost) taught me anything, it’s that I need to stop pushing myself so hard. Now is not the right time in my life to be hustling both at work and at home. If I’m going to be putting in the effort at work that I want to for this promotion, that means I need to slow down with my hobbies for a bit and make sure I’m sleeping, exercising, and eating well. When I stop having a baby waking me up at 5:30AM (or earlier) every day and can get more help around the house, I can re-evaluate my situation. But with two kids under four at home and a pandemic outside our doorstep, now is not the time to guilt trip myself about not getting around to making nerdy jewelry, regardless of how much fun it is in the moment. So maybe I’ll play around here and there, but most nights I’m going to try to get to bed as early as possible. Hopefully. This is hard for me.

Still, a friend of mine suggested I order a breast pump (currently available for free to expectant mothers through the ACA) before he was born and suggested a model, so I got one, because hey – free! Imagine my shock when I struggled with nursing and ended up exclusively pumping. I wrote about here when I was at the seven month milestone. My goal was to pump for a year, but due to travel schedules and other things that interrupted my weaning plans, I pumped for nearly 14 months.

With my second child, my plan was similar, but I had more experience this time, so I was able to be more successful at it and start winding down around month 11 (it takes some time to wean).

My experience was definitely a lot different with my second. Since I knew I was planning to EP, I was able to start everything in the hospital while I was recovering, and really set myself up for success by pumping frequently from the beginning. This gave me a much better supply of milk, but I also think that as a second time mother my body kinda knew what to do. This additional supply allowed me to freeze a lot of milk in the first four months and so I was actually able to start weaning just shy of my little one’s first birthday, and still have enough to get him through.

Supply is a huge topic in the realm of breastfeeding. It’s a major source of stress and desperation. I put on about 30 pounds after my first pregnancy because I was incredibly hungry all the time, and I tried to cut back on how much I was eating, I’d have a drop in supply. Turns out, there is an entire mother-driven (yay!) industry around products designed to boost supply. Cookies, brownies, both fresh and packaged, and lots of herbal supplements in various forms. As a skeptic who is a big supporter of the science-driven medical community, I’d never tried herbal supplements that didn’t have studies to back up their effectiveness. This changed while breastfeeding the first time. I didn’t go overboard, but I did order things from a handful of small companies because I really wanted a magic bullet to boost supply. Alas, for me, there was no magic. None of the brownies or herbal fixes did anything for my supply. The answer was always “take in more calories, drink more water, and pump more frequently.”

Since I knew all of this for my second time around, I skipped all the supply-boosting stuff, and actually packaged everything I had left over that wasn’t expired and sent it to another new mother who was struggling (with the giant caveat, “nothing worked for me, but maybe it will for you!”). Thankfully, I wasn’t as hungry this time around, so my weight gain was limited, but around month nine I did have a dip in supply that caused me to start eating more, and ultimately put on 15 pounds. Fortunately I had lost 50 pounds since my highest weight after my first child, so gaining a few back hasn’t been catastrophic, and while I’m not happy about it, I have a plan to lose it again.

Another big difference this time around? Thanks to the pandemic, there has been no travel. I didn’t pump on any airplanes, or my office, or in cars, or in public restrooms. No putting in requests to have a mini-fridge brought to my hotel room, or tedious packaging of milk to ship home every day when I was at a conference. No careful planning of breaks during events so I could pump, or emailing event coordinators ahead of time to make sure there was a place to pump and store my milk. We were pretty much home all the time, and this made things significantly easier in this respect. Still, it’s not easy to be sole source of food for another person, and to give your body to this whole process.

Which brings me to that fact that when a person gets pregnant, they effectively surrender their body to the small embryo growing inside of them. Diet has to change (no alcohol, but also no deli turkey!), and even some self-care regimes have to be adjusted (love long, hot baths? You’ll need to pause them!). In some cases, like with my second pregnancy, you even have the added load of complications that impact your life. I had severe pelvic pain that began in the second trimester, limiting my mobility, and then gestational diabetes, which required a total overhaul of my diet in the last two months of my pregnancy. Even with daytime blood sugar in check, I ultimately had to start injecting myself with insulin during the last month.

When you’re breastfeeding, the journey is even longer. If I want to have a beer (AND I DO!) I have to time it properly. There are still foods that are off-limits, either because they cause a dip in supply (good bye, peppermint!) or have things that can be passed along in the breast milk (though, admittedly, none of us should be eating fish that’s high in mercury). A lot of medication is unsafe while breastfeeding because it can be passed to baby. And even though I exclusively pumped, strapping myself to a machine multiple times a day to extract breast milk is not something that makes me feel like I have much autonomy.

I had about a month between when I stopped breastfeeding my first child, and became pregnant with my second. Which means my body hasn’t really been my own for over three and a half years.

It’s taken a toll.

I mentioned the weight gain in both breastfeeding journeys, and I felt like I was sacrificing my health (weight gain) for the benefit of breastfeeding. Every time I reduced calories to where I want to be, or exercised more, I saw a drop in supply. As I saw that number creeping up on the scale, I kind of just gave in and did what I needed to do to produce the amount of milk we needed. Constantly thinking of pumping schedules, getting out of bed to pump at night or early in the morning, all added to my mental load, especially as we struggled with sleep problems with our second child. Cleaning pump parts all the time and making sure I had other supplies was also always top of mind. It’s a lot.

I’m grateful that I could naturally carry both my children through 37 weeks of pregnancy, and then provide enough breast milk to last until a little past their first birthdays. But breastfeeding is definitely something that causes me to pause as I reflect on this particular component of motherhood. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise: as natural as breastfeeding is, it’s not easy. None of this is. Part of what allowed me to succeed was a fair amount of privilege that allows me to work from home during the pandemic, and the mental health and support to cope with the emotional toll it can take.

Finally concluding pumping this month has been a big deal for me. This won’t be a panacea for everything I’m struggling with, but it does help me get back on my path. I can get my diet back into check, I can see my neurologist about finding a treatment plan for my migraines, and I can even see about antidepressants again if I find that I need them.

Being a parent can be so much fun, and I’m looking forward to being able to fully embrace it all, but with my body being my own again.

A lot changed when I had kids.

My first challenge was breastfeeding my first child. I was hungry all the time. After losing my pregnancy weight pretty quickly, I gained it right back within four months of his birth. I was also exhausted all the time, so exercise beyond short walks with the baby in his stroller were out of the question. I put on even more weight over the year I was breastfeeding him, and there was only two months between stopping breastfeeding and getting pregnant with my second child!

I found myself at 237 pounds at the beginning of my pregnancy, the heaviest I’ve ever been. At my high pregnancy weight in October 2020 was at 246. I wasn’t going to let this get to me though, I was having severe pelvic pain during this second pregnancy, and I figured I’d worry about my weight after I had the baby.

Then I developed gestational diabetes. I’ve written about this a few times, including soon after I was diagnosed. Ultimately I needed to take insulin to control my fasting glucose levels, but I was able to control my daytime levels with a drastic change in my diet, and exercise. For the rest of the pregnancy I adhered to a strict diabetic diet, and under doctor supervision I lost about 10 pounds during my third trimester and gave birth to a healthy baby!

During this time I also watched a couple older family members get diagnosed with pre-diabetes and type 2 diabetes. This was a wake-up call. I suddenly had a family history of Type 2 diabetes, and with my own history of gestational diabetes I was already at high risk of developing it myself. After experiencing the diabetes diet during my pregnancy, along with glucose tracking and insulin injections, I knew it wasn’t a path I wanted to go down.

Upon my return from the hospital I was down to 228, and by April I was down to 187, 50 pounds from my high before I got pregnant!

For my own reference, here’s what I did.

Breastfeeding

This is my magic bullet, and unfortunately the one that’s impossible for most people to replicate, including me in the future. Popular wisdom says breastfeeding burns about 500 calories a day, which means if I lose weight by sticking to a 1200 calorie per day diet, while breastfeeding I can succeed at 1700 calories. I’ve always found 1200 to be impossibly restrictive, so weight loss has always been a miserable process. 1700 is not an easy target either, but it is possible.

My biggest challenge moving forward will be when I stop breastfeeding and lose this 500 calorie deficit bonus!

I did it during my maternity leave

Another troublesome one! Like breastfeeding, we’re not all going to be in a position of not working. I discovered that when I went back to working, this all became tricky again. I’m a stress eater, and I’ve effectively stopped losing weight since going back to work because I stopped trying so hard all the time, and I was happy with my progress.

Food tracking

I hate food tracking. Even the most comprehensive databases don’t have every possible food in them, and I’d get stuck on finding the perfect entry, get frustrated when I had to add something myself, and in general I found it to be stupidly tedious. But during my pregnancy it was necessary. I was working with a nutritionist who would review my food logs and help me with fixes if I was struggling with my levels.

How do I manage it?

1. The big one: Let go of tracking perfection. There’s an eggplant wrap that I love, but the food databases don’t have it and it’s sold by a local shop with no calorie information posted. Based on my knowledge of calories, I picked an eggplant sandwich from the database to log in place of it. It’s close enough. It’s fine.

2. Log as I go. At every meal, I’d log my food right then, so I wouldn’t find I had a backlog and forget. It took discipline, but it became a habit after a while.

After my pregnancy, I didn’t have to log anymore! But I’d actually gotten kind of used to it, and good at it, so I kept going. I didn’t have to review it with a nutritionist anymore, but it turns out that logging my food made me more mindful of what I was eating. I am less likely to have a snack if I have to pause and think about whether I’m really hungry, or just bored, and consider that I won’t meet my weight loss and health goals if I eat when I don’t need to.

All that said, I learned a lot with food tracking and stopped it in April. The key for me was both accountability (which I can do by myself now) and education. There’s one sandwich I’d regularly get that was over 1500 calories! For just one meal! Yikes! I now either avoid eating it entirely, or I cut it in half. And most importantly, I now mark it down as an indulgent meal, not just another lunchtime sandwich.

Becoming aware of sugar

It’s now cliche to blame “carbs” on the obesity epidemic, and even worse to call sugar deadly, but in my case, it was a problem. I unintentionally ate a tremendous amount of sugar and leaned into breads, pastas, and other carb-filled favorites. During the gestational diabetes episode, I was forced to look very closely at my sugar consumption, and it allowed me to discover just how much I was eating. A big realization? Breakfast cereal like Raisin Bran, which I had been eating as a “healthy” breakfast, very much was not, it’s full of sugar! I’ve cleared all breakfast cereal out of my diet now, and my breakfasts tend to be eggs and lean meat (usually turkey bacon), and a single cup of coffee with half and half.

Ditch the fast food sides

I still eat fast food, but I’ve changed up how I do it. I’ll order a single burger or chicken sandwich, no fries, no soda, no milkshake, just the sandwich. It turns out that the sides are just as full of calories as the sandwich or burger, and I’m perfectly satisfied just eating the sandwich. I still get my fast food fix, but I can stay within my calorie budget.

Daily weigh-ins

I got a FitBit scale so I have a fun new gadget! It automatically uploads the data, so I don’t even need to think about it. Weight fluctuates a few pounds every day, so being clued into trends is important. If I notice the graph starting to trend upwards, I take note and refocus to get control over my eating again.

Pushing past thought distortions

Most of us do this weird thing where we “give up on our diet today” if we eat something “bad” or over-do it for one meal. Obviously, calories don’t work like that and they don’t care about how you feel about the day. More calories is more calories, and you can indulge at lunch and then regain control with the next snack or meal. I don’t know why we’re like this, but I had to get over this silly behavior.

Discipline

This is hard, but I had to remember my goal: I want to be healthy for my kids. I can’t do that if I’m eating unhealthy foods. This week I’ll order the salad, but next week maybe I’ll treat myself to that pizza I love, the shop isn’t closing, I can always get it later! I’ve also started adding salads to some meals like pizza so I’m not tempted to eat more pizza than I should. My parents did this growing up, too.

Eat dessert, moderately

Don’t touch my cake! Part of why I struggled with the diabetes diet while I was pregnant was because I really couldn’t have my beloved sugary treats. Life is really hard for me when I can’t enjoy my favorite foods, part of avoiding type 2 is so I can still enjoy things here and there without having to take insulin. So I just need to do it in moderation, and be very specific about what I enjoy. Is that cookie really worth it? It better be a good cookie. And I really don’t need a dessert with lunch, let’s save that for dinner tomorrow. Do I mess this up? Yep. But I also don’t give myself a guilt trip over it, I just do better next time.

The end! Or not?

I’ve been hovering around 185 for the past couple months. At this weight, I can fit into most of my old clothes, I’m back in the jeans size I wore for years, I’m pretty comfortable, and my doctors are happy. I would still like to hit my goal of 175, and getting back to 155 would be lovely, but it’s hard and I’ve had to focus on other things lately, like getting enough sleep while having an infant. However, my hope is that everything I’ve learned, and the habits I’ve changed, will stick. I am perfectly happy to continue maintaining this weight.

You will also notice that exercise is not on this list. For me, exercise is a part of a healthy lifestyle, not a key to weight loss. In fact, when I exercise, I eat more. So I have been exercising more for the general health benefits (mostly walks with the kids, and walk-runs on my own when I can make time), but it’s not part of how I’m losing weight, it’s kind of the opposite!

Ultimately this really is your standard calorie restriction diet. I’m no expert and I don’t expect this to help anyone else, especially since my circumstances are very specific, and my breastfeeding experience differed so much between my first child and second. I’ve mostly written this so I can refer back to it if I need to get back on track again. In case I need a reminder of how important food tracking and daily weigh-ins were. Also, to keep skipping those sodas and french fries.

I’m also glad to have a little time to myself. I had a revelation one morning when I “got enough sleep” but was still tired, that it wasn’t just physical exhaustion that was hard on me. I am an introvert, and being with the kids all day gives me no time to recharge on my own. Now that I’m aware of that, I can be more strategic about rest. In most cases, if I’m up at 6AM and got over 7 hours of sleep overnight, it’s more restful if I get up and spend an hour alone before anyone wakes up, rather than attempting to sleep for another hour. I’m still tired all the time, which is unavoidable until the baby sleeps through the night, but at least I’m understanding myself more so hopefully I can handle it better.

Introducing kiddos to Studio Ghibli while I rested my sprained foot

Sprained foot aside, we did manage to have fun during my time off. The day before I sprained my foot, on May the 4th (be with you, Star Wars Day!), I dressed the kids up as little R2-D2s and we did a 5K walk around town. It was my first 5K with one of the virtual run websites, so I got my first 5K medal and everything! It was fun and I see more virtual 5Ks in our future.

I also received a case of sour beers for another virtual beer fest, but the event feed didn’t quite pan out, and after a series of failed streams they postponed it. Still, while I’m certainly looking forward to the pandemic being over, and technical glitches aside, this virtual stuff does have its benefits. As a new parent, beer fests are tricky to make time for right now, but one from the comfort of my own living room? And 5k I can do wherever and whenever I am able? I can do that!

Beer fridge in the garage, all stocked for the sour fest!

I’m trying to squeeze in some time for hobby projects. It’s so hard, but just like alone time, having a little hobby time is also important to my well-being. I decided to start playing with my SPARC Ultra10, which has been sitting in my home office since we moved in. I was pleasantly surprised to see it boot into Debian Lenny. So it still boots! And the hard drive was still functional! Of course Debian Lenny is ancient and I can’t keep running it, and Debian no longer supports SPARC64, so I’m going to have to install NetBSD on it. The next phase of my project was giving an install an attempt, but my CD-ROM started throwing errors. It’s old, so it’s not surprising. I think my next step will be giving up on the drive and doing a netboot install. Ultimately I’m not sure what I’ll do with the system once it starts running, but I am enjoying playing around, and I haven’t touched NetBSD in years, and never had a lot of experience with it.

In better health news, I got my 2nd COVID-19 vaccination a couple weeks ago, so I’m fully vaccinated! The side-effects this time were similar to last, but the exhaustion hit pretty hard and I ended up taking a three hour nap the next day. My life probably won’t change much though. With two unvaccinated kids at home, it’s not worth the risk to them just so I can do some indoor dining. With mask mandates being lifted state-wide in mid-June, things may actually become more dangerous for them inside public places, so we have to continue doing grocery and meal runs solo.

I also spoke to my boss about continuing the pause on travel. Thankfully, the company hasn’t even fully opened offices yet, let alone lifted all the work travel restrictions, but I wanted to get ahead of it in case I was expected to get back on the road before I believe it’s safe for our family. As the vaccines become available for the little ones and infection rates drop, we’ll continue to do risk analysis to see what we are comfortable with, but it’s good to know that I won’t have pressure on the work side in 2021. It’s also nice that my role has so many facets to it that while dropping the event travel is major, and even with other people start going to events in the fall, I’ll still be busy and effective without it in the short term. I have been doing some virtual events too. I did one for Mom Relaunch last week where I did a quick Linux on Z workshop. Next week I’ll be speaking at a virtual conference, giving a brand new talk on developing for non-x86 architectures. It feels good to be back.