2019 Resolutions: Oh, Also, I Had Babies.

Hail, Hellspawn.

            So. Two months ago, I had twins. They’re adorable and hilarious and bundles of pure chaos. I’ve never loved anything more than I love them, and I swear I will finish the blog post about their birth that I’ve been writing for a month now. First, however, I’d like to get my Resolutions post out of the way before January slips away entirely.

            2018 was a fascinating blur for me because I spent the majority of it heavily pregnant with twins. Politically, a shit ton of terrifying stuff happened, but one wonderful thing happened: Democrats won the House. I don’t always agree with their party, but at least there will be a check of some sort on this idiotic and terrifying “President” and Republicans, who have done nothing but lovingly kiss his ass no matter what dangerous decisions he makes. Yay, Democrats! Don’t fuck this up!

            But yes, I was mostly focused on carrying two fetuses (feti?.....fetuses) last year, and it actually threw nearly all of my resolutions into disarray, which I was not prepared for. To be perfectly honest, I think I was expecting pregnancy to be something easy for me. My mother’s pregnancies were easy, I’m a surprisingly strong creature for my size, I’m healthy, and I’m young (well, by my OB’s standards.) While I was trying to get pregnant, I had all sorts of plans neatly filed in my Bullet Journal: Prenatal Yoga and swimming itineraries, a blog schedule by trimester, healthy meal lists, ideas for a “babymoon,” and all that jazz. It was clear that I expected an easy, active pregnancy.

            When I look back on those pages, all I can think is, “Oh, my sweet summer child.”

            I was only able to write one blog about my pregnancy as it happened, but rest assured: The second and third trimester were no easier than the first. Carrying twins is no fucking joke. I’m damned lucky I’m strong, healthy, and relatively young, or I don’t know how I would have gotten through it. It was so bad that I felt like a goddamned Olympian while I was recovering from my C-section. Having my torso ripped open was fucking cake compared to carrying 12 lbs of baby (plus placenta, amniotic fluid, etc) in the third trimester.

Massive Dee was massive. This was a month
before they arrived.

            Anyway, sorry to rant. TL/DR: Pregnancy fucked up all my 2018 plans, including my Resolutions. But let’s see how I did anyway.

Last Year’s Resolutions:

1.       Go 99% Vegetarian (and a wee bit vegan.)

I did my best, but once March hit, it was all about survival. During the first trimester I ate what little my stomach tolerated, which was mostly crackers, pickles, cubes of cheese, and hot lemon/ginger water. Oh, and boxed Mac n Cheese, for some reason. That was seriously the majority of my diet for three solid months.

When my second trimester began, my OB instructed me to make every calorie count. During twin pregnancy, you need to eat around 3-400 extra calories per day. I tend to eat quite a bit less than the average 2000 calories a day, so I had to increase that even more, to nearly 800 extra calories a day. That’s…that’s way too much food for me. In order to get the crazy amounts of protein, B12, and iron I needed for my growing hellspawn, I had to make every meal as nutrient-packed as possible. Now, many of my favourite plants—avocado, broccoli, kale—have plenty of protein, but you have to eat a bit more of them to get the same amount as you get in a single serving of certain meats. And with my fairly small appetite, when faced with the prospect of eating 1 family-sized bowl of fresh guacamole a day VS a piece of chicken to get my daily required protein, I had to go with the chicken.

I still did my best to get as much as I could from plant matter, but my diet was closer to 60% vegetarian than 99%. While this resolution was technically a failure, I don’t really see it as one. I did what I needed to to grow healthy offspring. They were born at nearly and just over 6lbs, which is excellent for twin births (had they had a 40-week gestation, they would have been average size for a singleton newborn,) I did a great job. So failure, but win.

2. See a therapist and get a lock on my mental health.

I’m proud to say that I sort of, kind of, succeeded with this. Kind of. Sort of.

So. January of 2018 and this resolution is a top priority because I am not sleeping and having panic attacks multiple times a week. It’s a nightmare. I ended up going to a session with a therapist who dealt me quite the revelation. In college, I was diagnosed with depression with co-morbid GAD. This new therapist noted that my symptoms weren’t actually linked to my thoughts most of the time—they just happened. I’d wake up in the middle of a panic attack that had somehow started in my sleep, for example. Due to this, she deduced that I don’t actually have GAD at all. I have chronic Depression that presents with anxiety.

I know. It sounds like pretty much the exact same thing. But bear with me.

My depression is largely genetic. It’s my brain chemistry, not contingent upon external forces. I’ve known this for years. However, co-morbid conditions occur as a result of the original malady—meaning my depression caused my GAD, or so I thought. If that were the case, then typical non-medical treatments for anxiety, like meditation, systematic relaxation, etc, should have been highly effective for me. Sometimes they worked, but this time around, with my body chemistry in total disarray from my miscarriage, nothing helped. I was panicking constantly. And because my typical coping mechanisms that I had built over the years weren’t working, I felt like a failure. With this new diagnosis*, I know that my anxiety, just like my depression, isn’t always in my control. That sounds scary, but it’s actually a relief, because it means that medication will always help.

In short, in light of this new diagnosis, I got back on Zoloft for the first time in seven years, and, like freaking magic, the panic, fear, and crushing sorrow vanished. And luckily, too, because I don’t know how the hell I would have gotten through pregnancy without being on Zoloft.

Anyway, win! Dee is pretty damned mentally healthy.

*She was a therapist, not a psychiatrist, so it isn’t an actual, official diagnosis, since only psychiatrists can diagnose someone, but that’s a matter of paperwork.

**Special special asterisk here: I am not a psychiatric professional, so please take my assessment of how things work both in my brain and in the world of psychology with heaping grains of salt, and if you know better than I do, let me know so I can improve my knowledge/information!

3. Complete Eden.

Ha!

This is a roadblock I truly didn’t anticipate. I was sure I could at least get another draft of this novel in 2018, especially if I got pregnant because I would have some down time on maternity leave and probably be tired and sitting around a lot. Well, that part was true: I did sit around a lot because I was too exhausted and in pain to move much. But…

Ever heard of Pregnancy Brain? I mean, apart from the wildly exaggerated versions on TV? I’d heard of it, but I’d never thought much about it. I’d thought it was just an increased absent-mindedness.

Well…

Pregnancy Brain is actually a literal loss of gray matter in the brain due to the influx of pregnancy hormones. Not even kidding. You lose brain matter. You. Lose. Brain. Matter. I’m sorry, but that’s more terrifying than any other common pregnancy symptom known to man. And because a twin pregnancy means I had twice the hormones coursing through me, Pregnancy Brain hit fast, and it hit hard. I couldn’t keep my focus to save my fucking life. I forgot what I was talking about mid-sentence. Plans and appointments were completely forgotten. I wrote down appointments in my Bullet Journal to combat this…and forgot to look at my Bullet Journal. Hell, my vocabulary even decreased. I didn’t even feel like myself some days, just some bleary-eyed zombie bumbling numbly through the day, starring blankly at the television without a thought in my freaking head. It was terrifying.

Anyway, there was no way in hell I had the brain power to work on a novel, especially one as challenging for me as Eden is. Anything I wrote with Pregnancy Brain would be worse than garbage, so I didn’t bother.

4. Try Poetry

            I did! I created three or four really shitty poems, and still dabble as the mood strikes me. I’m currently working on an “open letter” type of poem to a relative with conflicting political ideals. I’m an absolutely horrible poet, but I like the workout my brain gets as I struggle with poetry. Words come very easily to me when it comes to prose and blogging. It’s kind of a novelty to have such a hard time with my usual weapon of choice. These poems will never, never, never see the light of day, but I enjoy writing them.

5. More Photography

            Check after November. The babes make excellent subjects. I’d love to bring my camera out more often to capture images other than my offspring, but one step at a time.

6. 1-minute video of choreography/improv a month.

            Yeah, no. Like I said, pregnancy was unexpectedly utterly crippling. I mean, did you SEE my belly?

             Hehehehe, I sounded like Buzz Lightyear....YOU SEE THAT HAT?! I'm MRS. NESBITT!!

             Sorry. They say Pregnancy Brain sticks around in some capacity for up to two years after birth. I'm obviously still afflicted.

7. Start a side hustle.

            Done and done! I opened an Etsy shop, the Nerdy Bee Tea Company, and I absolutely adore it. It’s hard as hell to manage marketing while caring for newborn twins, but man, it is so much fun to be dealing in tea and brainstorming blends. Check it out! I may get behind with NBTC’s Instagram and Facebook pages, but I am always, always prompt with orders.

www.facebook.com/NerdyBeeTea

            My most popular blends are Picard and The Path of the Jedi. Just in case you want to give something new a try…

8. Limit social media and don’t shoot unarmed men.

            Fail on the former, success, for the most part, on the latter!

            Pregnancy Brain killed my artistic practices and Pregnancy Body killed any physical activity I could hope to do, so I was too often left on the couch, watching TV and sitting on my laptop. I hated it. Hated it. But I was constantly on social media for lack of anything else to do. I’m not meant to be idle, so this wreaked havoc on me psychologically, however, I am grateful Facebook exists because I would have gone insane during my endless bouts of insomnia in the third trimester.

            I did, however do my absolute best not to get into empty debates with the intellectually deficient on social media. I did well. There were a few times where I just couldn’t resist jabbing here and there, but I didn’t have any long, drawn-out debates. As a result, social media was a damned sight less stressful for me, so there’s that.

9. Start a family.

            Check. Overachieved. Woot.

Now for this year’s Resolutions. I have to admit, it’s difficult to think of many goals other than surviving new motherhood. It’s true that your life completely changes once you spawn. Priorities and motivations shift drastically.

Dee’s 2019 Resolutions!

1. Happy, Healthy Hellspawn.

My son being fussy with pants on his head.

My daughter smiling about five seconds before she decided
she'd had quite enough of this shoot.

            Basically, my main goal this year is to keep my twins as happy and as healthy as possible.

2. Happy, Healthy Parental Overlords.

            This goal is a little trickier. Not only do I want my twins happy and healthy, but I’d like to do my best to keep myself and Hubby happy and healthy. Sleepless nights, constant fear of not knowing enough, being completely out of our element, and having little time to just be with each other are already taking their toll. I’m determined to keep our spirits up however possible, especially my husband’s. I want to make sure he gets some time to himself, his hobbies, and make sure he keeps in contact with friends. I also want to be mindful of the strain babies can put on relationships and to consciously keep our marriage healthy and strong. It can be easy to slip into bickering and sniping when you’re stressed and sleep-deprived, even for couples like us, who rarely argue.

            As far as health goes…

2. Maintain healthy, largely vegetarian eating habits.

            You’d be surprised how hard it is to cook a meal while being home alone with twins, but I’m determined to do it anyway. The last thing I want is to fall into bad eating habits when I’m now responsible for teaching two humans how to eat healthily.

3. Lose the baby weight/get back into relative shape.

            I weigh somewhere around 10-15lbs more than I usually do, and I don’t like it. I’m not sure how much of it I can lose (I strongly suspect that most of the weight resides in my giant breastfeeding boobs,) but I’d like to get as close to what I weighed pre-pregnancy as possible. More importantly, I want to get as much of my strength back as possible. I spent most of 2018 weak and physically inept. I’m quite finished feeling that way. If I had the spare cash, I’d actually be interested in krav maga or fencing or some other combative activity. Overcompensating for how vulnerable I’ve felt over the past year? Totally. But Mama wants to hit something.

4. Begin writing again.

            I’m not going to specify a novel project because I often drop Eden because it’s so challenging for me. I have a few ideas in my head, including something non-fiction! I just want to get back into a healthy habit of writing, even with twin babes.

5. Dance…in some capacity.

            It’s been years (and years) since I was able to dance with any regularity, and I’ve routinely failed every resolution and dance-related challenge I’ve committed to. I know I prefer a troupe and no troupes exist around here. But I don’t want to lose this part of myself. I need to find some way to dance with some sort of regularity. I’m setting any performance goals aside for this year. I just need to dance, somehow, some way. I may look into getting a Datura subscription and taking a class online whenever I can. I’ll be satisfied with even that for this year. Even if I have to take the most minuscule of baby steps, I want to keep dancing in my life.

6. Keep reading.

            This wasn’t due to any resolution I made, but I ended up doing a 2018 Reading Challenge last year, and man, did it launch me right back into my tendency to read obsessively. According to my Goodreads account, I read 45 books in 2018. The year before, I might, might have read 5-10. I’ve been a bookworm my entire life, but there are periods where it lies dormant, when I get caught up in life and TV and technology more than books. But whenever I return to reading novels, I’m happier. Reading provides and escape that no other medium comes close to for me. Gods know I needed and escape last year, and I’ll need one twice as much (get it? Because twins? I’m hilarious.) this year.

Well, those are it for this year. They’re definitely tamer and less ambitious than resolutions of past years, but I want to be gentle with myself. This is my first year being a mother, and I know I’ve said it a million times, but caring for twin babies is just…it’s a whole other world of insanity. 2019’s resolutions seem to be primarily about keeping pieces of myself—the writer, the dancer, the bookworm—and striving to adapt to my new life in the healthiest way possible. We’ll see how it goes.

Happy New Year, my loves.