Tag Archives: Exercise

Spring Sprang Sprung

Posted on April 6, 2013 | 4 comments

From you have I been absent in the spring
When proud-pied April, dress’d in all his trim,
Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing,
That heavy Saturn laugh’d and leap’d with him. ~William Shakespeare

Can you feel it now that spring has come?
And it’s time to live in the scattered sun.
Waiting for the Sun, Waiting for the Sun… ~The Doors

Pick your poison. Shakespeare. The Doors. Donna Summer. The Beatles. Elvis Presley. Springtime. It will make you run outside and sing and dance and fall in love. And if you have school-aged kids it might make you pack up some stuff and hit the road.

We didn’t go over the river. And we didn’t go through the woods. But the gals and I headed off to grandmother’s house. Ordinarily heading home to my mom and step-dad’s house in the Spring looks like this:

Opening Day at the Nats’ Game

And sometimes it looks like this:

Or like this:

And this:

We eat. And watch baseball. And drink wine. And eat some more. And take naps. I did all of those things.

Spring Break with the little ones is not so debaucherous. There is very little in the way of oil wrestling. The wet t-shirt contests have only one competitor, me, and only when Lucy Goose is having so much fun she skips a meal. But I ate cheesecake. And I drank a little wine. And I ate a bag of cookies. Spring Break was good to me. Add in a bonus Willie Roberston (of Duck Dynasty fame) sighting and Spring Break was a smashing success.

And all of that doesn’t even count Easter Egg hunts and this morning’s ColorMania 5K.

Yep. I ran every day but one while I was at my mom’s. I ran this morning and I am planning a trip to the pool to crush a 3000 yard swim this afternoon before dinner. My “Spring Break Vacation” was actually a good reason to hike up to my mom’s house to borrow her bicycle for tri-training. And now I am attempting to hand off a post filled with pictures and sonnets and song lyrics after having been quiet for a week. Forgive me? I warned you.

I hope you have had a colorful week.

4 Comments

Posted in Exercise, Family, Nonsense, Parenting

Tagged 5K, Color Run, ColorMania, Duck Dynasty, Exercise, healthy-living, outdoors, Spring, Spring Break, triathlon, vacation, Washington Nationals

It’s not a Dirty Secret.

Posted on March 29, 2013 | 10 comments

It was an innocent question. “Do you post about it?”

“Eh, not really. I can’t become one of those facebooking stay at home moms that posts about the gym constantly.”

He went on to explain that he thinks it is motivating to people to see people taking care of themselves. He’s right. Intellectually, I know that he is right. And he knows where of he speaks. My friend Tony lost a gazillion pounds in the last few years going to Yoga. He looks just like the handsome devil he was at 20. He is so damn inspiring he was on Good Morning, America. The guy knows what inspiring looks like.

“I agree. I just think that my stay at home mom-ness makes some people have the “Of course she works out – what else is she doing?” reaction, yanno?”

It was the first time I had admitted that there is a certain level of shame that goes along with striving to be fit when I don’t have a “real job.” Somehow making time for myself when I worked 50+ hours a week was more admirable to me.

I let this all roll around in my head for a few days. And then I decided, fuck it. I work about 22 hours a day. That is 154 hours a week. And I find the time. Six days a week I say to someone, even if it just Lucy “Nope, I can’t do that. I am going to the gym.” And I go. Sometimes the only thing that drags me there is the knowledge that I can take a shower. Sometimes I go so that I can get out of my own head for a few minutes. Sometimes I go because I am so damn close to the Wedding Weight (the number on the scale when we got married, at the peak of the Wedding Diet. It shouldn’t matter. I know this. But man, alive, it feels good. My body doesn’t resemble the Wedding Day body. My boobs are still cartoonishly large due to nursing. My stomach is still weirdly stretchy. But the scale, the dreaded scale, is resembling a me that said “Hot damn, take my picture all day and make me your wife!”)

But more often than not I go because I am obsessed. Not with being fit in a general sense. Or dieting. Or zipping up my skinny jeans. Or how I will look in a bathing suit this summer. But because I have a new hobby.

Sprint Triathlons. On April 28th I will be one week shy of 37-years-old and I will be competing in my very first sprint triathlon. Swim 250 yards. Bike ten miles. Run two miles. And I can not wait. I am over the moon excited. I lie in bed and I wonder if I can get my socks on faster if I roll them up kinda like a donut. I go back and forth between putting on a baseball hat under my bike helmet or not. As absurd as the tri-suit bathing suits are they must have a purpose and I scour the Internet for one that is universally flattering and only marginally overpriced.

I am coming out of hiding! I am proudly telling you and the whole damn world that I am “one of those women.” I am one of those women that is showing her kids that it is important to take time to care for yourself. It is important to work for things that you believe in. It is okay to take pride in feeling strong. And it is even okay to be one of those women that hangs around in the lobby drinking a cup of coffee after Spin class like “she doesn’t have anything better to do.” Because my bathrooms will get cleaned. My groceries will get purchased. My laundry will get put away and some more board books will be read. And I just might do it all with a smile on my face because I had a ten minute conversation with an adult that was not about poop or Hello Kitty.

Ladies at the gym in your fancy workout clothes – I am sorry my 26 year old self sneered at you. I did not undertand why you had on a matchy matchy gym ensemble instead of a decade old fraternity t-shirt. I didn’t understand that gym clothes might be the only “getting dressed” you did all day and that it was important to feel put together. I am sorry that I thought it was lame that you were not in any kind of hurry to leave the gym. I am sorry that I thought taking your time meant you didn’t have anything “better to do.” I don’t really have an excuse. I was still lighting a cigarette as soon as I pulled out of the gym parking lot. Can we just agree that there were a lot of things I did not have figured out and forgive me?

So, now that I spilled the beans you can expect to hear more. Because when I get in to something I get really in to it. I’ll be racing for a cause, Best for Babes. You can expect to hear a lot more about that. No more time to gab. I have a hot date with a treadmill.

10 Comments

Posted in Exercise, Family, Nonsense

Tagged best for babes, confession, Exercise, health, healthy-living, SAHM, skinny jeans, stay at home mom, stay at home moms, triathlon, work

Toe Socks, that’s what’s up.

Posted on February 9, 2013 | 13 comments

I am a complex gal. I am a problem solver. I am a compulsive oversharer. And I might be a genius.

I told you that I sweat, right? And I admitted that I love Zumba. Have I told you that I have a creaky mess of a body? Zumba has presented a problem. My poor knees are not down with the twisting and grooving required by my newly discovered total lack of skills in the latin dance arena. Clever girl that I am, I have determined that my Vibram Five Fingers fix this problem. My incessant wearing of this wildly flattering footwear has left me with almost zero tread. The smooth surface lets me twist my hips like only this dance challenged totally sober Saturday morning girl can.

Last Saturday I wore my Vibrams to Zumba only to discover that my feet sweat an outrageous amount while I am there. Slipping and sliding in my Vibrams left my feet hurting. Knees were better, feet were killing me. Socks, folks. I can’t stand them. But I will wear them when I get my sweat on. Off I went in search of athletic toe socks. Sexy, just you wait.

I stopped in two different running stores locally with no luck. By then my sidekicks were out of patience. Not to be discouraged, I kept thinking on this situation.

Did you know that my foot, not including my toes is exactly the same size as Emily’s? You see where this is going, right? I am a genius, guys.

This is what it looks like when you cut five tiny holes in a dirty pair of your kid’s socks.

Not too dissimilar to that cotton wrist condom they put on your arm before you get a cast, no? It’s such a hot look I am considering wearing them all of the time. With flip flops they would be especially smashing.

I told my feet they did not have to hide in the shadows. But they are shy. Some part of me has to be. My ass was practically begging for me to include a picture last week. Sheesh.

In an effort to stop this trend of “what’s grosser than gross” that seems to be developing I think I will be returning to This Book Will Change Your Life this coming week. Hold on to your hats, folks. Maybe this book will change your life, too.

13 Comments

Posted in Nonsense

Tagged Exercise, Humor, Life, nonsense, sweat, vibrams, zumba

Sweat & Smoke

Posted on January 30, 2013 | 34 comments

“Have you been swimming?”
It’s an innocent enough question. In defense of the woman that asked me, I was standing in front of the locker room, the locker room that connects to the pool at the gym.

“Umm. No. I just sweat like a beast.”

I am really good at making casual conversations come to an awkward finish. I tried to rescue the conversation, I did. To be honest, my sweating isn’t something that even embarrasses me. I will never be accused of just posturing at the gym. I look like I have been working out and working out hard just a few minutes after I step on to a treadmill. Sadly, the same holds true when I step out of an air-conditioned car bound for an outdoor wedding in August.

I know I left you hanging this weekend. Did I go to Zumba? Did I “join the party?” Am I still there?

I went. I sweat. I will go back. I actually snorted and laughed loud enough to attract the attention of a friend the first time there was any shaking of the ta-tas. I cannot see a woman shake her shoulders and not hear Penny from Dirty Dancing shouting “God wouldn’t have given you maracas if He didn’t want you to shake ’em!”

I didn’t love it enough to turn my back on running and the dreaded elliptical machine. I have finally admitted to myself that I can not run every day of the week. If I do not take a break I hurt myself. I just do. I was not built to be a runner. I am… top heavy. I am not light on my feet. I read Born to Run. I watch Danny Dreyer’s Chi Running videos, I visualize. And I run, every other day. In between I do whatever I can to keep the mojo and keep moving because one day off becomes three becomes a week becomes a month. So, I will run. And on my off days perhaps I will Zumba. I laughed. And I sweat.

I sweat. Because it feels good. Because it clears my head.

Because it makes me feel like I am taking time for me and that I am important. I feel healthy. I make better choices, choices about what I eat, what I do.

But not all of those choices are easy.

There is a man at the gym. He is an older fella, in his grey sneakers and his dress pants. He wears a plaid shirt and he keeps it neatly tucked in. He walks on a treadmill and he gabs with everyone. He is friendly but if you point at your earbuds and smile he doesn’t chat you up anymore. He is pleasant. But that is not my favorite thing about him.

He reeks. And not because he sweats. He reeks of cigarettes. Reeks. I pass him on the stairs sometimes and I wonder if I smell like smoke when I walk past someone later. It doesn’t just hang on him, it follows him like Pigpen’s swirl of dust and dirt.

And I love it. I love the smell of smoke.

Not all of the time. When I am with my kids at a park and I smell smoke I whip my head around and give the stink-eye to the teenagers that are sitting on a picnic table. When I am in line at the grocery store and I can smell the checker, they have just come back from a smoke break, I don’t breathe deeply. It doesn’t smell good. It is out of place.

But at the gym, during my hour, the hour that Kelly is just Kelly not Mom, I’ll be damned if that cigarette does not smell delicious. Running alongside him today at the gym I got to giggling. Ludacris was singing in my ear “I wanna, li-li-li-lick you from your head to your toes” and I imagined myself letting those words escape my mouth.

I am not a Smoker. Not anymore. But I am not a Non-Smoker, either. I prefer to think of myself as a non-practicing Smoker.

I would spend some more time trying to reconcile this, my desire to be healthy and fit combined with my love of the smell of a Marlboro, but it isn’t new. Ten years ago I celebrated my 26th birthday with friends. We were talking about our newfound love of Les Mills’ Body Pump. I had a beer in one hand and a smoke in the other.

DSCN2311

These days I don’t have a cigarette in my hand. And I still love the gym. Some things change and some things stay the same.

I still wear overalls more often than I should. But I don’t perm my hair anymore. I am going to put fitness, quitting smoking and not perming my hair in the “Good Things I Need to Keep Doing” column. Sniffing old dudes that reek of smoke at the gym – I am putting that in the “Quite Possibly Creepy But It Won’t Kill Me” column. Feel free to debate me on this.

34 Comments

Posted in Exercise, Parenting

Tagged Exercise, habits, Humor, Life, running, smoker, smoking

Hey you guys!!!

Posted on January 26, 2013 | 32 comments

It’s not my best look. I call it “just rolled out of bed not even wearing my cute glasses wearing my favorite sweater and only two sips in to a cup of coffee” chic.

I just wanted to sit down this morning and say Hey you guys! Yesterday afternoon yours truly was Freshly Pressed and with that comes scads (gobs? hordes? what shall I call you?) of new readers that deserve a little shout out.

It didn’t seem right to get all fancied up and try and be something I am not and dazzle you. So. Here I am. This is where I usually am. In my chair with the kiddo on the boob. This morning is cold so I am enjoying one of the four (four!) cowl neck scarves I have recently crocheted. Yeah. I am a woman that crochets, guys. I don’t know how it happened. Sometime this winter when I realized I had watched everything on my DVR and every single series on Hulu I decided I needed to find something else to do while Lucy slept in my lap. So, yeah, I crochet. And I am impatient. Cowl neck scarf – the four hour project – we are pals. Stick around and maybe I will send you one if your neck looks particularly cold.

I wish I had more time this morning but I am trying to get out the door.

You know when you do something that you kind of think is awesome but you aren’t sure if it is totally absurd. You’re not embarrassed exactly, but you’re not sure if people that know you would think “Oh, that is strange. You don’t really do that, do you?” When I was fourteen I bought a hot pink swing dress and purple polka-dotted tights to wear to my boyfriend’s graduation. (It was 1991, it was a hot look.) Previously I had been seen in my overalls. Pretty much every day. I thought the dress was cute. I thought it was kind of adorably Molly Ringwald-ish, actually. But I wondered if it was “me.”

I don’t work hard to stay in my “me” box. But I think we all have a type. Not long ago I was horrified when I realized I had Mom-hair but I owned it. In fact, I declared myself to be the Samue L. Jackson of Motherhood and decided that in spite of my hair I was a bad motherfucker.

So, I am yammering on because I am not sure I can admit this. I like to work out. It keeps me from being totally mental. I run. I actually love p90x. I am not afraid of the weight room and I don’t really wear “cute outfits” to the gym. I like to get sweaty. But this morning I am going to do something I have been talking about doing forever. And I might get hysterical and get kicked out but I am going for it. I am going to Zumba, guys. Zumba bills itself as a sexy Jazzercise. Take a minute to chew on that. Sexy. Jazzercise. I hope they serve margaritas. I am going to need one. Or four.

So, a big fat “hello” and “happy to meet you” and “what took you so long let’s be best friends!” to the new readers. I gotta jet. Get my sweat on. Oh, and shake my moneymaker. Because apparently when I am not busy being a bad motherfucker or crocheting I go to Zumba. Sigh. The latter half of my third decade is going to be weird. I can feel it.

32 Comments

Posted in Exercise, Nonsense, Parenting, Pregnancy

Tagged Breastfeeding, Exercise, freshly pressed, healthy-living, mental-health, motherhood, Parenting, SAHM, stay at home mom, style, wordpress, zumba

GTFO, Sad!

Posted on December 6, 2012 | 27 comments

Sometimes I feel inside out. Like the parts that are supposed to be on the inside are on the outside. When I was 18 I got the cartilage in my ear pierced and it didn’t hurt when the needle went through. It didn’t hurt when he put the earring in. But when I went outside it stung. Maybe it was the chill in the Boston air. But the way I explained it to myself is that a little bit of my insides were exposed to the air. And it stung.

I live with my insides on the outside. Lucy called me Mama this week and I wept. Emily realized that I want every single extra minute she will give me and I held her hand tight and tried not to cry. The littlest moments make my heart sing. These moments don’t have to wind their way down deep in to my heart and soul to touch me because my heart and soul is right underneath my skin. Sometimes it is even on the outside of my skin holding itself together with nothing but sheer will.

When there is this much good, this much joy, this much Christmas spirit and this much love in your day to day it is harder to reconcile when the Sad rolls through. Usually I exercise the Sad away. Bicep curls make me feel like a bad bitch. Even if I do those bicep curls in my living room while I watch Rikki Lake and listen to Katy Perry somehow I still walk away feeling strong. Because I made the time. For me. Because I am important.

I have been busy. I have run errands. I have made Christmas ornaments and cooked holiday meals and wrapped gifts. I have not exercised much at all in ten days. And I have cried. Holy shit, I have cried. And I have lied by omission. “How was your day?” he asks me when he gets home from work.

“It was great! I hung the stockings!”

But it was not great. It is hard to throw yourself a Pity Party when you are married to a realist. This morning I gave up the act. I tried to tell him this morning about my bad case of the Sad and without forethought I blurted out “I don’t feel special.” Before I could stop myself I pointed out that he will surely tell me that no one is special and we will all be eaten by the worms some day.

Sometimes when you lean on the people you love they give you what you need. The last time I felt paralyzed with fear MQD gave me just what I needed. He gave me strength. I was trying to mentally wrap my mind around having a baby last January. I was in labor and I was scared. “You’re a bad ass, Kelly. You just can’t be too much of a pussy today to be a bad ass.”

This morning I was wallowing. “But the worms will never have had a meal JUST LIKE YOU,” he said.

He’s right.

Hey, Sad! Yeah, you with the swollen eyes and the runny nose and the bad mood, I’m talking to you, Sad. I have seasonally inappropriate toenails now and I am taking back the reins. You can kiss my ass, Sad, my sweaty ass while I do a million jump squats in my living room and evict you.

Even if it is sixty-some degrees outside it is Christmastime, Sad. I have a sweet, sweet husband and a big girl that makes me laugh. My baby girl has started saying mama and she kisses with tongue. Things around here actually pretty great. You gotta roll out, Sad.

27 Comments

Posted in Bad Mood, Exercise, Family, Nonsense, Parenting

Tagged Bad Mood, Exercise, Sad, therapy

Exercise Your Right!!

Posted on November 6, 2012 | 10 comments

Exercise your right to vote. Please.

I can look back on the last 20 years in a number of different ways. The Clinton years, the Bush years, the Obama years. The college years, the beach years, the Chapel Hill years.

This morning I noticed that the last twenty years of my life can be divided up in to the teeny, tiny bra top years, the wind pant years (coinciding with my Sporty Spice phase) and the more recent running skirt phase.

I won’t keep you. I’ll make it quick. Trashing the ancient teeny tiny running tops, donating the wind pants, keeping the running skirts.

Now go put on your exercise clothes and exercise your right to VOTE!

10 Comments

Posted in Exercise

Tagged Exercise, keep trash donate, vote

Twinkle Toes

Posted on June 20, 2012 | Leave a comment

I thought my new running shorts were giving me a rash. Two red patches on my thighs. I was getting annoyed. I love those shorts. I don’t want to get rid of them….

It is 5:45 in the morning and I am wide awake. Can’t sleep…

Someone else is waking up, too. She rubs her eyes and she smiles sweetly. She rolls over on to her side, facing me and I noticed how long she is getting.

She nuzzles up against me and helps herself to breakfast. She is excelling in the area of time management already, combining her morning stretches and her breakfast. She arches her back and points her toes.

She rolls over again. Stretching completed she gets down to business nursing. Such a big, tall girl. Her feet resting against my thighs as she is nursing.

When Fisher dreams he wiggles his feet back and forth. I don’t know where he is running or what he is chasing, but always in his deep sleep his paws are humming along.

Lucy!!! As she is nursing she is wiggling, wriggling, inch-worming her way around the bed. Her little non-slip grippies on her pajama’d feet slowly digging a hole in the tops of my thighs! It’s Lucy! Not my new running shorts.

And that’s good news. I didn’t want to get rid of them. The new shorts. They make my butt look good. And Lucy? Well, she is the reason my boobs are so big right now so I guess she is staying, too.

But the pajamas? They may have to go. Who needs non-skid feet at less than five months old? C’mon.

Goals

Posted on June 13, 2012 | 13 comments

I’m big on setting goals. Measurable goals. For as much as I pick on MQD and the SCIENCE (imagine I said science with jazz hands and a hint of feigned terror in my voice) I love a good graph.

When I decided I was ready to hop back on the fitness train I returned to Couch to 5K. Couch to 5K is a training program designed to take you from the couch (no way! Me? the couch? I didn’t gain almost sixty pounds with this pregnancy at the gym!) to running a solid thirty minutes without stopping in nine weeks. I have a tendency to overexert myself. A training program is necessary to keep me from deciding to try and run six miles after three leisurely strolls around the block has me thinking I am in tip top shape.

The trouble with the Couch to 5K? It ends. After nine weeks where do I go from there? Without the magical iPhone telling me to Run (which is laughable as my jogging speed has been known to be slower than my walking speed, but whatever!) I am lost.

But something crazy has happened to me. I remember when Em was teeny. She wasn’t big on napping. I decided training for the OBX Marathon was a good idea. The jogging stroller was my idea of a vacation. Every day, no matter what else happened, I had an hour on Bay Drive. If you go to the Outer Banks and you have never driven down Bay Drive and admired the homes and the sunset and the sound side living you are missing out. (Oh, how I miss you, long, deliciously flat Bay Drive…) It is happening again.

I finished the Couch to 5K on June 5th.

And then I did it again, every day for the next FIVE days!! I am keeping it up. I am motivated not only by the health benefits and the uninterrupted Me time, I admit. The number on the scale has me a little freaked out. I haven’t ever said that number out loud here. I showed you my stretchmarks, but that number? It is like pooping in front of someone. I don’t do that.

But I am done hiding. I weighed 226 the day before Lucy was born. I’d hit an all time ten year low of 167 before we got married. I weigh a lot, and I am okay with that. I have size 10.5 feet and D cups, they come with a price.

I avoided the scale immediately after Lucy was born. I know my tendency to get antsy about my weight and I knew I needed to be eating well and frequently in order to establish and maintain a milk supply those crucial first six weeks.

My six week post partum visit greeted me with a 197. What the shit? I’d had a baby six weeks ago!! I was horrified. I hit the ground running, literally.

And then shortly after I hit the ground, I hit the store. I wrote about my new shoes. But I haven’t mentioned my new found love of the running skirt. It makes me feel like a cheerleader. I never was a cheerleader but I imagine this is what it felt like. “Hey you, my ass is almost showing but it is all in the name of sports!! Check me out! But don’t talk shit, I’m an athlete, bitches!” Did I say that out loud? So help me, I am wearing day glow running skirts and I don’t even know who the hell I am anymore.

This morning I downloaded the “Bridge to 10K” app. I need to keep going. I have to keep going. It might take me longer than the six weeks it suggests. But I’ll get there. And if you look at the screenshot on the right, in the top corner, it’s a graph!! A GRAPH! I am as happy as a pig in shit. Or a middle aged, 184 pound mom of two in a hot pink running skirt. And let me tell you from my experience, that is pretty happy.

13 Comments

Posted in Exercise

Tagged Exercise, fitness, jogging, minimalist running shoe, motherhood, postpartum, running, weight loss

Just Do It

Posted on March 15, 2012 | 10 comments

Part of the struggle of motherhood is the lack of control. So much of what I do is reactive not proactive. When you are reactive you are always behind the gun. Never caught up. Time and again realizing you have missed a step, requiring you to double back and repeat a step.

A proactive approach to anything makes me feel like I am on top of things. The trouble with being proactive is that it is hard. But I have recently established that I can do impossibly hard things.

Yesterday I did three proactive things. For me. For my health. Not for my children, although they certainly benefit from my good health. And today, one day later, I am already feeling better than I did yesterday as a result.

I slept. I got up and said goodbye to Em and MQD and back to bed I went. For just a minute, I thought. I’ll snuggle with Lucy, get her back to sleep. Those few minutes became

two hours of blissful sleep. Sleeping harder than I have in months. Recently my lack of sleep has begun to …. show in my attitude. Enough so that when I asked MQD what I can get done for him the other day he said he’d make me a list. That’s it pictured on the left. Message received, dear. And accomplished.

When I woke it was nearly 9:30. Thus began the second impossibly hard thing. I excel at creating exercise plans for myself, I do not always succeed with the follow through, much like many of us. There is almost always a good reason. Lately I have had a nasty cold and the windy and intermittently cold weather was not helping matters. So I decided to take it a little easier than I had planned. But when I looked at my phone and it read 9:30 I knew I had to leave at 9:35 to make the 10:00 exercise class I had planned to attend.

With the extra oomph my nap provided I peeled myself out of bed and jumped in to some exercise duds and was out the door. Lucy had been tanking up at the drive through breakfast bar all morning so she was nice and sleepy. I think we were 45 minutes in to getting our sweat on before she knew what hit her. Second impossibly hard thing, done. I had the good old “never wake a sleeping baby” rule on my side had I decided to stay in the sack with my kiddo. And the list of things to do provided by my husband. And, still, up and out the door I went.

Thing number three is not so fun. At my initial prenatal visit to the midwife I got some less than pleasant news.

More than 50% of sexually active adults in America carry the human papilloma virus (HPV) at some point in their lives. 1 out of 4 women with HPV have one of the strains that can lead to cervical cancer. But now that more and more women are educated and getting an annual pap smear only 1 out of 1000 of those cases will develop in to cervical cancer.

Mid June of last year I had been married for less than two months. I had been pregnant for nearly the same amount of time. I was anxious to have my first prenatal visit, hear a heartbeat, so I could relax. As I have said so many times before I get nervous when everything goes my way, always waiting for the other shoe to drop. And in my 35 years I had never felt so on top of the world, so it would be a long fall from there. The call from the midwive’s office was not a suprise. Something had to give. “Your pap smear came back abnormal, ASCUS. We won’t do anything now, but the positive HPV test means we will want to get a closer look after your pregnancy.”

Somewhere in the back of my mind I thought my appointment yesterday afternoon would be the day that the bottom fell out. (There is an awful joke in there somewhere, I mean if the nine pound plus baby didn’t make the bottom fall out a high powered microscope, a speculum and a light sure wasn’t gonna do it.) I have been dreading this appointment.

Standard procedure following an abnormal pap smear with high risk HPV is a colposcopy. Essentially a doctor takes a good look with a microscope and a light at your cervix and determines whether or not a biopsy is required. Vinegar is applied to the cervix, causing the “color to come out” in any abnormal cervical cells. This amuses me, as vinegar is also used to get brighter Easter eggs. This procedure is subjective to some degree. And this was worrying me. Even after a doctor said “I don’t see anything to worry about” I’d be left wondering, but what did you see? Exactly.

And yesterday afternoon, because UNC is a teaching hospital, I had the pleasure of seeing something most women never do. There, on a television screen so the doctors could discuss what they were seeing was my cervix. “Look, Lucy, does that look familiar, there’s your home, baby girl! Your door in to the world, where you made your big debut!” It was like taking Julie Andrews to the London Hippodrome and saying “This. Here. You first felt the spotlight here, this is where it all began.”

Not everyone gets to bring a pal to a gynecological exam.

Everything both doctors could see, I could see, too. And there was nothing to see, nothing abnormal. I will spare you the description, but it was truly amazing to see how quickly the human body puts itself all back together again. I’d certainly not have guessed my big baby had peeked out that hole only weeks before.

I was nervous. And now I am not. “I don’t think we will need to do a biopsy at all. Seems your pap smear may have just detected an abnormality triggered by your pregnancy. So, make sure you get a pap smear in a year and take care of that baby. You can put your pants on and let yourself out.”

In a different context that last sentence could break a woman’s heart but it was music to my ears.

Three things. Sleep. Exercise. And medical follow up. Just do it. You’ll be glad you did.