My triumphant post partum plan to return to running. Spoiler alert -I'm not

When I was first pregnant, it kind of felt like I would be pregnant forever. Obviously I knew it meant a baby was coming, but nine months is just such a long time. I never thought it was before, but when your baby is the size of a poppy seed and you just want to fast forward and meet him or her immediately, you suddenly realize it is LONG. Thinking about the future meant like... the third trimester.

Now, the end is actually in sight. I can conceive of a time in the near future where I won't be pregnant. Of course, this means I'm also pretty close to the process involved in getting to that point, but we'll ignore that as best we can (you probably are better equipped than I am). That means I'm starting to think about another popular blog topic: my post partum body/recovery/fitness.

I'm not going to lie, if there was some magic pill I could take that would allow me to come home from the hospital in my pre-pregnancy jeans, looking great, I would take it in a heartbeat.  I don't want to hang on to my baby belly once the baby is out any more than anyone else. I don't own a single pair of maternity pants (only shorts/dresses) so if I can't fit into my regular pants by Christmas, I guess I'm screwed. I feel this is a pretty strong possibility, so, my coworkers can look forward to seeing me wearing tights all winter.

A common blog theme is the "omg I totally don't care about losing the baby weight! But here is a detailed list of my weights and progress pictures from every week post partum and you can friend me on my fitness pal where I dutifully log every one of the 900 calories I eat daily while breastfeeding." I really, really hope I can fight the sleep deprivation enough to create a post to mock these posts. I actually have a trick up my sleeve that gives me an advantage over these obsessive bloggers though: a job. Something to think about other than exercise and counting calories! Imagine that!

I have two post partum goals - care for my baby, and do my job. That's it. I'll reevaluate in June when the school year ends. I'm not planning any races. Racing isn't going anywhere, and I have no desire to push myself to the brink just so I can say "I did such and such race at only x weeks postpartum!". In fact, I have no interest in doing any fitness event at a time when I'm still measuring the post partum period in weeks.

It's all relative, and there are tons of careers that are WAY more demanding than mine. I seriously hate teacher martyrs that whine and post articles on social media about working 15 hours a day and grading papers from dawn till dusk every weekend. No. If that's your life, you are doing teaching wrong, and no one is impressed. (I will continue to complain about my lack of bathroom breaks.)

However, it's also not like when I worked at Starbucks, for example, and you punch in and punch out at assigned times and when you punch out, you're done for the day. You do generally have to devote some evening and weekend time. Personally, I find teaching to be a huge emotional investment. I feel like it's draining to do my best normally, and I'm fairly concerned about balancing that with being a mom.

Obviously, caring for the baby and work are non-negotiable. I just can't see adding anything else on top of that in the early stages. Plenty of women are able to balance infants and challenging jobs and train for races, so it's clearly do-able. But that would require a ton of dedication, and something would have to be sacrificed (I'm guessing it's sleep). I'm certainly not saying it's impossible, in fact, I think it's really impressive. I'm saying it sounds too hard for me and I don't want to do it.

Here's my post partum "plan" 6 weeks before my due date.

1. Sadly, it doesn't go without saying in the blog world, so I'll say it: I won't be doing any exercise before I'm cleared by my doctor. Hopefully we will take some walks, since a huge advantage of a fall baby is supposedly nice weather. That's it though.

I can say that much definitively, and the rest of this post is just my naïve musings from this side of the delivery room. Maybe I'll follow it, maybe I'll laugh at myself.

2. I won't be making a paper chain like the kind kids make to count down for Christmas to count down to when I can run/exercise again after delivery. I'll start when I feel ready. That might not be until 2015. Right now, I just feel like my 12 week maternity leave is going to fly by, and soon I'll be handing my baby over to someone else to spend the majority of his day with. I just want to enjoy the time I do have with him. Of course, that's super easy to say now when I'm living in an idealized mother/baby dream world and not actually sleep deprived and caring for a crying infant. Maybe I will be chomping at the bit to get outside for a run, in which case, I'll go for one. But I'm not putting some arbitrary date on it, aside from waiting till it's medically safe.

3. Once I return to work, I'm hoping to do some type of workout 5 days a week, because health/fitting in to pants/etc.  We have Jillian Michaels 30 Day Shred and Insanity T25, which are both 25 minute exercise DVDs. They pretty much make you feel like you are about to die for 25 minutes, so I'm thinking they might be the way to get the best bang for my buck with limited time. I don't relish the idea of waking up several times a night to nurse, then getting up at 4am to do an 8 mile run before getting myself and a baby ready for the day and being at work by 7:30 or 8.  Maybe this kid is going to be a phenomenal sleeper right off the bat and I can easily train for a marathon this spring, but I can barely even type that without laughing.

4. Eating. I actually have no plan here except that I definitely plan to continue doing it. I've only made two freezer meals so far. I should probably make more. They are both dairy free though, just in case. If I'm still really fat and it's getting towards summer, I'll probably try to limit desserts or use My Fitness Pal or do something. You'll know if this is the case because I'll only post pictures of the baby or myself from the neck up.

I apologize in advance to anyone who was hoping the nonstop baby talk was coming to an end and I would return to blogging about running soon. Not likely. But, my running buddies and I do have very, very tentative plans of meeting to do the St. Louis marathon (one of them moved there recently) in October 2015, so there is that.

Tl:dr version: duh I want to get re-skinny after baby, but I only have room in my brain to obsess over so much, and being a good mother and teacher at the same time has prime real estate.

If there's one thing I value, it's strangers opinions on the internet, so let's all weigh in. You don't have to be a runner, mother, or #motherrunner. Anyone who has a keyboard can participate!