The Evolution of a Pinky Nail

what once was my pride
now gets stuck
up my baby's nose

Anyone seen a butt wandering around here?

Yikes, what happened to my ass!

It’s sagging. I mean, where’s the nice, round, rock hard rear end I got from I rollerblading around the streets of DC ten years ago? (has it been ten years already?)

Is it a fluke? just another side effect of childbirth? or, heaven forbid, is it gravity? After all, I’ll be 40 in about six weeks. Does it all go downhill from here like my bottom has?

Forgive me if I sound melodramatic or trite, but I can’t help it. As I look at myself in the mirror, I’m confronted with the reality of my ageing and changing body. Before this, my body, especially my booty, basically stayed the same. Thanks to genetics I’ve always been thin. Thanks to my own nervous, anxious disposition I’ve always been active, giving my body, most notably my derriere, a toned look.

Fluffy buns? Not anymore. More like squishy dough.

Before I accept the reality of a flat, saggy, forty-year-old, mother-of-two tush, I plan to hit the gym hard and lift every weight I can get my hands – or rather my rump – on.

How I Beat (up) PPD

P- was born eight weeks ago, but the one question that keeps going around my head is "how can such a little thing generate so much laundry?" I seem to spend as much time doing laundry as holding my baby. Along with vacuuming the living room, cleaning the bathrooms, doing dishes, blah, blah, blah. Staying on top of it all is enough to stress anyone out. But, I like a clean house so I was determined to do it all.

Imagine my dismay when my psychiatrist told me to consider putting housekeeping at the bottom of my list of priorities as a way of staving off postpartum depression. After my three-year-old, C-, was born I had a bad case of it, even though I didn’t know it at the time. In retrospect, I now see how my postpartum situation invited the depression in: we’d just been married a few months before, we’d moved a month after the birth, my husband had just taken on the new responsibilities befitting a big, fat promotion, I was determined to finish writing my dissertation while on maternity leave, and I was preparing to teach a new course when I returned to work. Oh yeah, the hormones raging through my body didn’t exactly help.

This time I was determined to do battle with PPD head on and fully armed. My GP and midwives hooked me up with a psychiatrist in the last weeks of my pregnancy with Paige. During our first session she made clear that I actually could influence the onset of depression. What a revelation. I’d always thought that since it ran in my family, I was genetically predisposed to its affects no matter what. Luckily, I was wrong.

In fact, we put together a strategy for keeping depression at bay. The first line of defense was to let the laundry pile up, leave the dishes in the sink for an afternoon, and ask my husband to clean the toilets. She explained that a major factor contributing to PPD was fatigue. Especially in the first six weeks I was to sleep, rest, and or relax whenever the baby slept. If I didn’t manage to do that, I had strict instructions to do something nice for myself: have a cup of coffee, take a walk, listen to my favorite CD, etc.

I decided to take her advice and have found a few minutes a day (well, at least every few days) for myself to just sit on the couch and listen to my heart beat or read a couple of pages from my book or take a slow walk around the block. Like she suggested, I took the baby's crib out of our bedroom and have managed to get a good night's sleep just about every night. I make sure I get out of the house everyday, even if it's just to walk to the store to get groceries for the day. I even managed to go see George Clinton and the P-Funk All Stars this year when they performed at a festival in Holland.

Even though I have no control over my hormones, which are thought to be another principal contributor to PPD, I've found that I do have influence over how I choose to spend my days. I've chosen to spend my time enjoying my baby, my three-year-old, my husband, and myself as a mother the second time around.

I still do my chores on a daily basis, but I limit myself to whatever I can do within 20 during which time I knock myself out making beds, folding laundry, vacuuming, and reorganizing closet space - ok, I've never done that (but I'd sure like to!). When the baby's asleep, I still have time to do the more important things like launch this blog.

And, PPD hasn't dared show its ugly mug around here!