alpharaposa | Been a while!

The baby cub is almost four months old! He has been growing like a weed, and is now wearing 9 month sized clothes.

It's hard to keep up with both werecubs during the day. The older cub is capable of entertaining himself, but a lot of that involves making messes or climbing things he shouldn't, so I really can't just "let him go" for long. The baby needs lots of holding and soothing and feeding and such. We're on a good week this week, but that still has bad days when his tummy is bothering him and he can't nap without being held the entire time.

At least the baby is big enough and has good enough head control that we can now use the jogging stroller we have downstairs, at least for walking. (Jogging after 6 months, when the cub will be able to sit well.)

I finally lined up an appointment with my new primary care doc. I'm starting to feel woozy after taking the blood pressure meds. She dropped the dose, and I still feel lousy after taking them. Going to get my BP measured this weekend and probably call the doc if the number is pretty low. I'm hoping to be off all the meds by the time the baby is 6 months.

Part of the "getting to know you" appointment was getting my cholesterol checked. The numbers were high, which did not surprise me. Cholesterol rises in pregnant women, peaking around the time you give birth. After 3 months, they drop, then again after 9 months, but they drop less if you breastfeed. So, I can expect my numbers to be "high" or at least "borderline" for a while. Lots of doctors recommend not even checking until you're done breastfeeding, but not many women breastfeed past 6 months in the US. I expect to go for at least 2 years with the baby, and that's a long time to not even look at the numbers. I'm mentally assigning this a "keeping track" priority rather than panicking. I do plan to start restricting sugar again in my diet, though. Last time I dropped a lot of sugar from my diet, my triglycerides improved a LOT. I'm not back up to where I was, but I'm eating more than I had been before getting pregnant.

For the curious, my method of improving my diet is not to restrict all fats (in fact, I drink whole milk and eat full fat yogurt), but to remove all transfats, as much sugar as I can, and add more veggies. Fats make you feel full. Sugar makes you feel hungry again sooner with the sugar crash. It's not quite low carb, but it's a similar principle. Extra sugar is made into fat in the liver, which increases your triglycerides in the bloodstream.

A lot of "low-fat" foods have extra sugar. Do some label checking sometime. Same calories, less fat. Overall result is not much different from just eating the fat, except your liver works harder and you feel hungry again sooner. Fat also contains fat soluble vitamins, while sugar... doesn't.

I am still being good with salt. Mostly. I'm cheating a bit more, since my blood pressure is improving, but I'm not going whole-hog yet.

Baby's awake. Time to mom again.