The story of a mom who works & runs

Some history:
Two years ago I was a woman who loved her job and loved to run marathons.  I worked as many hours a week as was possible and loved it.  A gin & tonic or a glass of Cabernet were a daily joy.  I was about to live one of my biggest dreams by running the Boston Marathon.  Today, I'm a new mom to a happy 9 week old baby girl.  My life has turned a bit on its head.  I've spent the last few weeks immersed in the hardest and most joyful time of my life.  My body is not my own.  I smell of spit-up, baby lotion and sometimes poop.  My days are at the same time extraordinarily long and amazingly fast moving.  They say nobody can prepare you for this and that could not be more true.

This is a baby that we worked hard to conceive.  We struggled with fertility and a miscarriage.  One year ago, I was recovering from our first miscarriage and was not sure if we'd ever have a baby in our life.  I was struggling with the control that nature does not afford, even to a control freak.  I'd worked hard for many years to not conceive and never considered that one day it might be so hard to do so.

After a second round of IUI, on Valentine's Day 2010, we received the exciting news: we were pregnant again.  I lived the next 9 months with almost constant fear and worry.  Carrying a pregnancy post-miscarriage is terrifying.  The doctors tell you not to worry.  It isn't good for the baby and it won't help anyway.  This is extremely logical and simultaneously impossible.  Every bite I ate, every step I took, every small pain I felt all filled me with terror.  I didn't touch caffeine.  I avoided the many cheeses that I loved for fear of listeria. I trimmed my daily workout that was once at least 40 minutes of running to 30 minutes on the low impact elliptical machine.  I worried about where my seat belt crossed my lap.  Amazingly, we made it through and today, as I type, my sweet baby girl sits next to me showing off her new "social smiles."

This blog will be my story.  I've tried to start this each day since we arrived home from the hospital.  I haven't made the time until today.  The truth is, I was so unprepared for this journey.  For as much as I wanted it and researched it, I had no idea what I was coming:  all the joys & all the challenges.