The MamasteFit Podcast Episode 134 – From Marathons to Motherhood: Gina’s Postpartum Update

Gina: Welcome to the MamasteFit Podcast. In this episode, I’m going to be sharing an update at being one year postpartum-ish. I guess I’m technically 14 months postpartum, and so I just want to share how my fitness journey is going, how I am feeling, just as a person- ’cause I’m not, I’m more than just an athlete! There’s more to me than just how well I can work out. But I want to share all my updates from this past year.

I am 14 months postpartum, I think. Maybe 15 months, I don’t know? I keep saying random, different months. But I am over… I am over a year postpartum, now.

Roxanne: Almost 14.

Gina: Almost.

Roxanne: You’ll be 14 on the 23rd.

Gina: I will be. So I’m really close to that. Zoe, amazing in every way, except her ability to sleep.

Roxanne: And she now likes me too, so.

Gina: She does tolerate Roxanne now.

Roxanne: She did hate me for a while, so that dropped her down a couple.

Gina: Yeah.

Roxanne: But now she lets me hold her.

Gina: Now. She realizes how amazing Roxanne is.

Roxanne: Yeah.

Gina: And she is all about her “emo,” which is “aunt” in Korean.

Roxanne: Well sisters… Your mom’s sister.

Gina: Your mom’s sister’s “aunt” because.

Roxanne: Or your mom’s sister.

Gina: The Korean language differentiates based on how you’re related to the person.

Roxanne: Yeah.

Gina: Which is helpful to understand.

Roxanne: Which will be confusing, ’cause our brother just had a baby and we are “gomo” to her.

Gina: Oh, that’s confusing.

Roxanne: Yeah. ’cause she’s our… our brother… we are her dad’s sisters.

Gina: We are “gomos.” Okay. That’s good to know. We, our mom is the Korean one, so we have not used the father family member names.

Roxanne: Yeah.

Gina: Because all of our dad’s family members are white Americans.

Roxanne: Yeah.

Gina: Standard.

Roxanne: It’s just aunt and uncle.

Gina: Yeah. Or aunt.

Roxanne: Aunt.

Gina: Depending on whatever, which one we’re referring to.

Roxanne: Whichever flows. Or auntie.

Gina: Yeah. Anyways, so we are over a year postpartum. Zoe is not sleeping through the night. I don’t know where I got the impression that by a year, they sleep through the night.

Roxanne: My kids don’t, my 4-year-old still wakes up in the middle of the night.

Gina: Even though I have four kids, you would have thought that I would have remembered. I think I block it out each time. I’m like, for sure. Or I’m just…

Roxanne: Do your other kids sleep through the night?

Gina: They do now, yeah.

Roxanne: Okay. So three.

Gina: They do now. I feel like Sophie was sleeping through the night at some point in the past two years. I don’t know, maybe it was when she was closer to two. So with Zoe not sleeping through the night, it means I am also a little sleepy, very often. And my husband has also been away a lot for work the past like few months, which means that I don’t gett get to sleep in, which is usually how I recover. So I am like super tired all the time.

So my workouts lately, even though I’m a year postpartum, have been on the minimal side because I am exhausted. But, I’m able to do a few pull-ups, which I was excited by.

That’s still elite.

Gina: I have a 10 mile race in three days that I have not been training for. I trained really hard for that marathon and then…

Roxanne: Tapered off.

Gina: And I did the marathon and I was like, “I’m going to take a week off ’cause that was a lot.” Because I did not think that I could show up and run a marathon without dying. I saw this one thing was like…

Roxanne: But you could totally heart a 10 miler.

Gina: I think I, yeah, I think I could show up and not die for a 10 mile race.

Roxanne: I’ve done it for a half marathon. You could do it.

Gina: I think it’ll be fine. I’m like, “I could do 10 miles. It’s fine.” So I haven’t been super motivated. The marathon, I was like, “Oh, my goal is four hours, but if I don’t train, my time is going to be 1998 to 2005.” Because I would’ve died. But for a 10 mile race…

Roxanne: You do have a marathon though, coming up.

Gina: I do. But a 10 mile race, I was like, I can heart that. So I have not been training. I also thought it was going to get canceled, so then I didn’t run, and that was not canceled. So I will be “le tired” on Sunday, running my 10 miles. But I do, yes, I do have the Disney Marathon in January that I do need to actually train for. ’cause I cannot just heart a marathon.

Roxanne: I, I did it. I did heart a marathon.

Gina: Maybe I can, then.

Roxanne: I did.

Gina: So I don’t need to train, is what you’re telling me.

Roxanne: I did one like, way pre-kids. I don’t recommend it.

Gina: Oh, you were like in your twenties.

Roxanne: I would not recommend it.

Gina: You were not in your late thirties, hearting a marathon.

Roxanne: I would not in, in my late thirties. No. I was in my twenties and I did the Disney marathon, the same one Gina’s doing. I ran five miles, total, to prepare for it.

Gina: Oh, I thought you meant during the race. I was like that’s not the full marathon.

Roxanne: I ran five miles to prepare for it. And I did not break four hours or whatever the, whatever you need to.

Gina: So I have hearted…

Roxanne: I walked, I did walk/run the last six miles, but I ran 20.

Gina: That’s pretty good. I did heart an ultra marathon.

Roxanne: Yeah.

Gina: A 40 mile race. After five miles, longest run.

Roxanne: But I don’t recommend it.

Gina: But I was also in my twenties.

Roxanne: Yeah.

Gina: No kids.

Roxanne: I could not walk for a week. I think I fucked up my hip flexor as well from doing that.

Gina: So, do not recommend.

Roxanne: So, do not recommend doing it. But you could if you really needed to.

Gina: The 10 mile race this Sunday is going to be my long run in preparation to start training for the marathon again.

Also, our mom has been out of town for the past six weeks, so I have no childcare. And our dad has been completely occupied with Roxanne’s children because she was working 80 hour weeks. So now the focus is back on Gina.

Roxanne: He was so excited for me to be done ’cause he also did not enjoy…

Gina: I am the priority child again.

Roxanne: He did not enjoy waking up at 2:00 AM.

Gina: I just have to focus on my fitness journey ’cause I can get a little bit more sleep. But yeah, Zoe is not sleeping. I am exhausted and you know what I’m not going to do, wake up at 5:00 AM to work out, ’cause guess who’s going to wake up at 5:10? Zoe.

Roxanne: Zoe. Because you’re laying directly next to her.

Gina: She wakes up when I move, yeah. And so even the option of waking up before my kids do to try to get a workout, it’s never an option for me. It’s just not going to work because they also wake up.

Roxanne: They know.

Gina: They sense it.

Roxanne: When you wake up, they sense it.

Gina: So maybe in a few years that option will be available to me again. Like right now with Sophie, I can get up and go work out and I would’ve also had a full night of sleep.

Roxanne: Had you not bed shared, you potentially would have been able to.

Gina: But it’s so nice snuggling with them.

Roxanne: I know it is.

Gina: It’s so nice snuggling with them. And I think with the last baby I’m more… or, a younger child, knowing that you have older kids, you know how fast it goes. And so there’s a little bit more anxiety for me of I really need to savor all of this because this is my last time during it, last planned time during it. I feel like I need to preempt that, just based on you! My last planned time having a baby, and I know how quick it goes. Like my oldest is eight and a half now, or, she’s over eight now. My son is five. Sophie’s three. It goes so quick, and so I’m like, I want to savor all of this because I don’t want to rush them out just so I can get more sleep so I can work out. Like, hopefully I got decades to go that I can work out. Give me like another year and it’ll be much more consistent.

Even during the day, sometimes I can still get like a full workout in, even with Zoe, where she’s like, “Yes. I’m all in it.” But if she was awake all night, she’s also a little cranky- I don’t know why, if you would just sleep, you would not be cranky! And usually those days, the workouts are also just a little bit more rough for both of us.

But in general, I am feeling pretty strong. When I am able to run, I do feel good while I’m running. I don’t really feel like I have any pelvic floor issues. My knee pain is not there. I feel good in my body when I am able to get my workouts in. I feel like I’ve been getting stronger over the past, like few months. I’m excited to start really pushing my weights and seeing like how heavy can I get with them? Like I have some goal weights in mind of, “I would like to eventually work up to that,” but I’ve never been able to in the past like eight years, ’cause by the time I reached this point, I was like considering another pregnancy. And so this will be the first time where I hit this point and I’m like, “I feel really good and strong. Now I’m going to start to really push it, and I can actually do that,” which will be really exciting. Especially once I start getting more consistent sleep. And I would say that’s probably like my biggest deterrent right now is I’m a little sleepy.

Roxanne: And you only eat girl dinners.

Gina: I do. I have not been taking care of myself ’cause I’m exhausted. There was a few nights where my kids were like, “We didn’t eat dinner,” and I was like, “Oh. Let’s have rice and some seaweed and ramen.”

Roxanne: I know. My husband cooks.

Gina: It’s really, I’m like, I am…

Roxanne: Our husbands are really the motivators for us to eat food.

Gina: I am just like incapable of caring for us all, because I’m also so tired! The past like two months have been definitely really hard with our mom being away, you finishing up clinicals, my husband being away, Zoe not sleeping, my dog died. It was just a little, it’s been a, it’s been a lot. It’s been a lot. So Gina has not been taking care of herself, but my labs looked great.

Roxanne: That’s good.

Gina: My thyroid, functioning optimally.

Roxanne: It’s probably like “I’m the only thing that’s optimally functioning!”

Gina: It’s the only thing that’s working right now.

So when I do get workouts, I do feel good. When I do get to run, I do feel good while I’m running. We’ll see how I feel on Sunday. It’ll be fine.

Roxanne: It’ll be fine.

Gina: It’ll be fine. It’ll be… I will be here on Monday. I will be alive on Monday, after that 10 mile race.

Roxanne: Just maybe not walking.

Gina: Yeah. so I would say like fitness-wise, my biggest, like, issue right now is I am tired. I’m a little tired.

Roxanne: And you’re also homeschooling.

Gina: I’m homeschooling. Now that the school year started, we have, I have more like time commitments throughout the day. Now that you’re done with school, our father can now assist me with pickup and stuff ’cause he was a little busy with your kids.

Roxanne: Granted he could have watched them in the mornings when they were in school.

Gina: But then he’s watching your kids all afternoon and he’s an old man. Really old!

Roxanne: So old. 60.

Gina: I know my son, last night, asked me when he grows up, will I be old? And I was like, excuse me. I was like, I’ll be older when you grow up. And he’s like, “I hope not. I hope that you’re just a grown up, too.” And I think he’s starting to really consider his mortality and all of our mortalities, especially after our dog just died. And so he’s kind of like, “Well, if you get old, then you die and I would like you to not do that. And I was like, sobbing. I don’t want to be old. I want to be your age with you.

Roxanne: But then it’s also but like you don’t want to, you don’t want them to not have a life without you because then that means that they die before you.

Gina: Roxanne.

Roxanne: You want them to live a long life, potentially a life that you’re not going to be a part of the entire time, because then that means, that’s means that they live a long life.

Gina: That’s true. That’s true.

Roxanne: But also, I want to be there for all if it!

Gina: Can we all just live forever?

Roxanne: Yeah! No, I don’t want to live forever.

Gina: Yeah. he thought that we would just respawn. And I was like, we do not respond.

Roxanne: Minecraft.

Gina: In Minecraft you do, but not in real life.

Roxanne: Yeah.

Gina: That’s something that we’ve been dealing with now as well. And Zoe’s getting older and there’s, we’re just all considering how we die one day, which is super depressing.

But let’s get back to a more positive topic!

Roxanne: Yeah.

Gina: Overall feeling great in my body. I feel like my pelvic floor is doing really great. I’ve been adjusting some of my workouts a little bit to help support my pelvic floor whenever I am feeling a little bit more symptomatic.

For me, the right front portion of my pelvic floor is a little bit more overactive, which was the trend during pregnancy as well, and maybe the left posterior portion, but maybe not as much. I really think that my right half is just like firing constantly. So I was having a little bit of like hip impingement sensations on the right side, especially when I was finding more internal rotation, or when I’m doing like my squats. And so movements that I was incorporating to really help with that is more like adductor releases and groin releases on the right side. My hip shifts towards the left. Something that I’ve been doing with my actual workouts to help support my pelvic floor, just like generally, is when I’m doing my single leg movements, I’ll hold the weight just in my right hand, the holds for both sides. And when I hold it in my right hand and I do my left leg, this helps me to find more of a closed hip position and more internal rotation so it targets more of the posterior half of my pelvic floor, helps strengthen the inner thigh more, maybe a little bit more hamstring more, just from offloading or offsetting where I’m holding the weight. And then on the right side, I still hold the weight in the right hand, and this forces me into more of a neutral or even more of an open hip position, which targets more of like that front half of the pelvic floor to release it, because I’m strengthening my glute more, strengthening my quad more, so my pelvic floor doesn’t have to work as hard. So just offsetting how I’m holding the weight adjusts the way that my hips are shifting, which is helping to support my pelvic floor. So I’m not having pelvic floor symptoms or issues, but I still incorporate stuff knowing that this is an underlying tendency of mine to help keep me feeling good as I’m lifting heavier, as I’m running, as I am doing more physical activity during my day- knowing that I’m also fatigued and I’m probably undereating at this point, but my blood work looks great, so I’m fine. I’m fine.

Roxanne: That’s all that matters, is your blood work. Right?

Gina: Yeah. And so I get a lot of compliments of, “Oh my God, you do so much. You’re so amazing.” And I’m like, “Thanks. But I’m also like exhausted.”

Roxanne: I know.

Gina: And I don’t recommend. I don’t recommend doing all of this without any support. And so this past month has, or six weeks, have definitely been a good reminder for me that while it may appear that I’m doing a lot, which I am, I can only do that sustainably because I have a lot of support. It’s not something that I can do solo by any means at all.

Roxanne: It makes you very thankful for the childcare options that we have available with our parents, and that they are available to help us. ‘Cause I would not have been able to finish school without my parents.

Gina: Because I’m too busy to help you.

Roxanne: Yeah. Gina can’t.

Gina: We’re both drowning.

Roxanne: Gina can’t help me. I think like now that I’m done with school, I have been able to help Gina with her childcare, especially ’cause my kids are in school during the daytime when I would do my schoolwork, and now I’m like, “Oh!”

Gina: You got all this free time.

Roxanne: I have all this free time.

Gina: You got all this free time.

Roxanne: But not really, ’cause I just fill it with other things. But that has, it’s… I had the, I had this epiphany when we were in California and I was by myself for two years, of how amazing our childcare is, and Gina has not always had these experiences. She just knows them from other people being like, “Yeah, that… yeah.”

Gina: No, I knew!

Roxanne: But my mom goes away for a week, and she’s like, “Yeah, I know…”

Gina: I knew it sucked.

Roxanne: “…I don’t want that.” Now, Gina has experienced it.

Gina: I was aware that it…

Roxanne: Slightly!

Gina: …was not great. I already appreciated it! ‘Cause our mom would always be like, “You don’t even know!” I’m like, “No, I know! I am aware!”

Roxanne: She was aware. She was aware that it wasn’t what she wanted to experience. But now she knows.

Gina: Now I know. I see! I don’t like this.

Roxanne: That’s my favorite part of the K-Pop Demons.

Gina: So I think my words of encouragement for somebody that is at a year postpartum, and I feel like the year mark is when we all feel like we’re supposed to be, “bounced back,” and, “good to go,” and, “everything’s normal again.” You may even feel like even prior to this, like everything should be fine. From how I felt from like early postpartum, to three months, was like a big jump for me. I felt okay, I’m finally not bleeding. I don’t feel like everything’s falling out anymore. I feel like a little bit more stable. But then from three months to six months was like another big jump of healing, where I was like, okay, I’m feeling a little bit more capable. I feel like I can start running and pushing things a little bit more. And then from six months to 12 months, I felt was another big jump where I was feeling even more capable within my body. But with that first 12 months, I had a lot of support. We also have a gym here at MamasteFit that lets us work out with our kids, which makes that really easy. And so when I come to coach, I’m also going to work out. I’m already here, might as well. I also have a home gym at home, and then our mom was also coming over and watching the kids so that I can work out.

Roxanne: Even if we told her not to, she would still come over. We’re like, “You have the morning off. We don’t need you to do childcare.” She would still come over.

Gina: Yeah. ‘Cause she’s like, “What else am I going to do?” Also our, my mom’s aunt, or our mom’s aunt has been living with her, and she does not want her to living there anymore.

Roxanne: She needs space!

Gina: So she’s running away from her. I hope she doesn’t listen to this podcast.

Roxanne: Maybe we should’t put that in the podcast.

Gina: Mom already told her, “Get outta my house.”

Roxanne: She did.

Gina: I think it’s common knowledge.

Roxanne: It’s been like, seven months.

Gina: It’s been a long time.

Roxanne: It’s been long time.

Gina: So she’s been coming over to get away from her too, which I’m like, “Oh, no!”

Roxanne: I’ve been clueless to this because I’ve been so busy with my whole life that I have not been aware of this stress.

Gina: Of the family drama that we’ve been having.

So the first year, I think a lot of us feel like we’re supposed to be, “good.” My baby’s supposed to be sleeping. You can stop breastfeeding, you can stop. Like, you’re back to you. And I don’t think that’s the case. Like I look at my 1-year-old and she still looks like a baby.

Roxanne: She is one, but yeah.

Gina: She looks like a baby to me.

Roxanne: She does. She doesn’t have as much hair as your other babies, I feel like, too, which makes her like look like a baby for longer.

Gina: She’s still so tiny, and she still looks like a baby. Like this is not a toddler, this is my baby. And then she’s not sleeping through the night, and she’s still nursing a ton, so I’m like, “Okay, like she’s still a baby. Like it’s okay if I’m not a hundred percent. I don’t feel like I’m like totally bounced back, or whatever, because she’s still a baby!” She’s so tiny and small, and adorable, perfect in every way, but her ability to sleep.

Roxanne: But I think it’s like also true that it’s a spectrum of like when people start to feel like themselves fully in their body after having a baby. Some people feel like that at nine months and, like, kudos to them because not obviously everybody feels that way at nine months. But like knowing that people do feel that way earlier and that’s okay and completely still normal.

Gina: I feel like it’s like a wave where ebbs and flows even for me. Like some, months I felt totally capable, like when I was training for the marathon from 7 to 9, 10 months postpartum. I felt really good in my body. Like I had some aches and pains that I was working through with PT.

Roxanne: “I felt really good. Buuuut, I also had pains…”

Gina: “I felt good, minus the major injuries.” No, I wasn’t injured! It was just like my running volume increased a lot and I is a little bit more achy from that. But I still felt really good. I had tons of support then. My husband wasn’t gone.

Roxanne: You were eating and you were sleeping.

Gina: I was eating really good. I was sleeping. Like my mom, our mom was there- I always say, “my mom,”- our mom was there to help.

Roxanne: She’s ours.

Gina: She was there to help support us. And so like I was able to…

Roxanne: It does seem like she’s just Gina’s mom though.

Gina: I’m the favorite. Just kidding. My kids always ask me, “Am I your favorite child?” And I’m like, “You’re my favorite son,” “you’re my favorite eldest daughter.” “You’re my favorite middle daughter.” “You’re my favorite youngest daughter.” But I apparently say it to my son a lot, “You’re my favorite son,” and so Sophie now…

Roxanne: I can’t say that anymore.

Gina: …says, “I love you, Mommy. You’re my favorite son.”

Roxanne: You’re, but you could take it as like you are the sun of her life.

Gina: That’s what his Korean name means. His Korean name means the sun in the sky.

Roxanne: No, but like Sophie saying it to you like you are her sun.

Gina: Yeah, she still says, “I want you to hold you. Oh, hold you.”

Roxanne: That’s so cute.

Gina: “Hold you, Mommy.” And now it’s, “You’re my favorite son.”

Roxanne: Aww.

Gina: Which I like.

Roxanne: She’s so sweet.

Gina: Because I, for the girls, I normally just say, “You’re my favorite Sophie,” “You’re my favorite Adeline,” “You’re my favorite, You.”

Roxanne: You can’t have favorites.

Gina: But I can’t say, “You’re my favorite daughter.”

Roxanne: Because you have two others.

Gina: Because I have three daughters. And so for, but Eoghan is my only son, so you’re my favorite son. And so Sophie’s like, “You’re my favorite son.” It’s very cute.

Roxanne: I can’t say it to Colin anymore.

Gina: But for me, like that timeframe, I felt really good in my body and I felt like I could do a ton of my training and prepare for that marathon, because I had so much support and availability of places to work out. I can work out here, I can work out at home. I had a treadmill. I have safe places to run. I had a running stroller. And so the accessibility to workouts was really available to me. But most importantly, the support. Where I can sleep. Somebody was helping to feed me, ’cause I’m apparently incapable of taking care of this.

Roxanne: You are a toddler.

Gina: I’m a toddler. But now, the past like two months, even though I am over a year postpartum, I don’t have the same support right now, ’cause my husband’s, like, he’s deployed. Our mom has been busy with our brother helping him with his new baby, who’s adorable.

Roxanne: Who is… if we did have to choose, that is her favorite.

Gina: Yeah. That’s what we choose her favorite. She’s like, “Thank you for letting me go,” and I’m like, “He’s lucky.”

Roxanne: No, but if she had to choose a child, that’s probably her favorite child.

Gina: I know.

Roxanne: The sons. The dang…

Gina: He’s her favorite son.

Roxanne: Dang boys. In the Korean culture.

Gina: Favorite son.

Roxanne: Favorite child, the son.

Gina: But I haven’t had the same support. And so even though I’m over a year postpartum, I can’t approach my workouts with the same intensity ’cause I am fatigued. There’s a lot of demands on me. And so it’s like we have the same 24 hours, but the demands within my 24 hours is really different than it was when I was nine months postpartum than when I was 10 months post.

Roxanne: Or when you were 21 years old.

Gina: When I was 21 years old.

Roxanne: And man, I did not take advantage of all those 24 hours.

Gina: I napped a ton when I was like in college. I took all of the advantage.

Roxanne: Maybe I was, we were filling up our sleep banks, man.

Gina: Yeah. I took full advantage of my nap times.

Roxanne: I was always sleeping.

Gina: I loved it!

Roxanne: I was always asleep.

Gina: I was like… man, all that free time that I had.

Roxanne: Today was my one day to sleep in this week. Gina took it from me.

Gina: You still slept in, Roxanne. You were late. You were late to this.

Roxanne: I did. I did.

Gina: You were late coming.

Roxanne: I slept in, till 8:30.

Gina: But I think what I want to really communicate is if you are at a year postpartum, you are not just magically good to go and ready to go. Like we have people that are like two years postpartum that come and work with us ’cause they still feel a little off, or a little disconnected, or not quite there yet. And it’s okay that it takes time.

Roxanne: Yeah!

Gina: Because our demands change. Like, the new school year started for us, there’s a lot more kind of moving pieces with my day, which adds more demand to my day. It takes up more time, like I don’t have as much time to dedicate towards other things in my life. And so I think it’s pretty normal for there to be this kind of ebb and flowing with how we feel. And then maybe when I’m like two years postpartum, or three years postpartum, I’ll really be…

Roxanne: Yeah, lemme know what it’s like.

Gina: Feeling like I’m in a groove ’cause my kids are sleeping through the night, I can focus a little bit more on myself ’cause they’re independent and growing up and going to college.

Roxanne: And basically abandoning you.

Gina: They’re basically adults, and abandoning me.

Roxanne: Yeah. Yeah.

Roxanne: I think it’s also true where, so it is prioritization. Prioritization, that’s a hard word, of like when you are deciding what you’re going to do in your day. And a lot of people will be like, “Oh, you’re just not prioritizing your fitness level. You’re not prioritizing your health.” And I don’t know if it’s necessarily like, it’s fitness and health… yes, it is a priority that you have to fit into your days, but yes, I think that it’s also okay to prioritize, like spending time with your children and sleeping and eating.

Gina: Sleeping.

Roxanne: I think it’s okay to prioritize…

Gina: Sleeping is also helpful.

Roxanne: …those three things over getting a three hour workout in- which like, I don’t even want to work out for three hours ever. But, I think it’s okay to prioritize other things and I feel like some people make it like seem, “Oh, you’re just like, you’re not working out right now ’cause you’re not prioritizing well,” I’m like, no, you can prioritize your life, and yes, fitness may fall to the side for a little while, while you have other priorities that are more important. And eventually you can fit it back in when it’s, when you have more time in the day, and that’s okay.

Gina: Yeah. Something else that I have found to be really helpful is to reframe what I define as fitness or as a workout too. Because, some days I can get in the

hour long workout, I can work out for 90 minutes and my kids are like angels, and perfect. And they’re like, “Yes, we would support to you.”

Roxanne: Because they’re always angels and perfect.

Gina: “We would love to support you in all your goals.” And some days, we are not getting in a super long workout, and so I have to reframe what it means to get in a good workout. Where, okay, maybe it’s just a 20 minute workout today, or maybe it’s we’re just going to go for a walk today altogether.

Roxanne: Yes.

Gina: And so reframing what I define as a good workout has been really helpful for me this past year. Not even just past like few months, but like just in general this postpartum. I think my pregnancy with Zoe and then this postpartum, I’ve given myself a lot of permission to do less and to be okay with that is still productive. That I don’t need to do a super long workout and that it’s still worth doing something, even if it’s not the full, full workout that I was planning. And so I’ve done a lot of that this past year postpartum, is to do these kind of like bite-sized workouts so that I’m still like moving through our programming, but in a way that just feels more manageable to me. And so I’ve done a lot of 15, 20 minute workouts.

Roxanne: Yeah. Like the mini workouts.

Gina: Which has really helped me mentally to still move. ‘Cause when I don’t exercise, my body hurts. Like my shoulders hurt, and my neck hurts, and my back hurts. And so for me it’s still important to prioritize getting some intentional movement in, but I need to reframe what that means.

Roxanne: Yeah.

Gina: It’s not always going to be an hour long workout. It’s not going to be 45 minute runs. It’s going to be, “Okay. We’re going to go for a walk altogether, just to move our bodies. And then I’m going to do 15 minutes of something because I’m really tired today. But I feel like I still need to move my body.”

Roxanne: Yeah. And I think that’s a really hard reframe for a lot of people, especially when they were really active prior to kids is like reframing, oh, I don’t, I would do 90 minute yogas, 90 minute hot yoga, and I would leave that class completely soaked, like to include my hair that looked like I showered,

just in sweat. And I was like, “That was a good workout.” I’m not going to go do a 90 minute yoga. Who has.. I don’t…

Gina: That’s a lot of time.

Roxanne: I can’t do 90 minutes of yoga. Also, I probably don’t even have enough fluid in my body ’cause I’m just chronically dehydrated.

Gina: I know.

Roxanne: To be able to sweat that much anymore.

Gina: I’m like, do I have a headache because I have a brain tumor or ’cause I am chronically dehydrated?

Roxanne: Or, yeah, I was like, “Oh my gosh. I feel like maybe I’m contracting a lot at 27 weeks.” No, Roxanne, you have had three sips of water. Rose, I’m so sorry if you’re listening to this.

Gina: I know. I’m just like chugging coffee.

Roxanne: Because, yeah, like, life. But like I go through this with prenatal visits of people, I’m like, “So are you doing any sort of movement?” because I don’t even say exercise anymore because people, when they think about exercise, they’re thinking, they think go to the gym and do something at the gym. And I’m like, what do you do for movement throughout the day? And 9 times outta 10, they’re like, “I don’t do anything,” and I was like, “Do you go for walks?” and they’re like, “Yeah, I go for 5 or 10 minute walks in the park,” and I’m like, “That’s movement. That’s great.”

Gina: That’s something.

Roxanne: That’s great. That’s doing something. If you want to add in longer walks, or multiple walks in a day, that’s great. That is good movement. And a walk, I feel like sometimes gets diminished in its like benefits, but like going for a short walk increases your heart rate and that is exercise. Even if I’m calling it movement in my prenatal office, like it’s still exercise and that’s still very beneficial for us in the long term. But when people think of workouts, they think of their like pre-pregnancy workouts if they were very athletic, and it’s not going to look like that, like one.

Gina: Even if they weren’t athletic, we probably still think of it like that, or they weren’t like exercising a lot, which is what, which makes me feel really intimidating and inaccessible. I don’t have time to do that, like to dedicate. And so doing the bite-sized workouts has been really helpful for me this past year.

Roxanne: And you can do that very easily, with not a ton of, you don’t need a full home gym to do that, like just some kettlebells and some weights, if anything.

Gina: It’s a big reason why we broke up our postpartum fitness program, and even the prenatal fitness program is broken up to where every workout has three sections to it, to make it much easier for someone to do, “Okay, I’m just going to come in and do part A today, and then tomorrow I’m going to do part B, and then the next I’m going to do part C.” And that makes it like 10 to 15 minutes long each, which is something that I did a lot this past year. And even now with our Beyond Postpartum programming, some days I’ll just do part A. And that’s what I got today. And sometimes after I do part A, like Zoe’s feeling, she’s feeling it. She’s like, “Yeah, let’s do this Let’s crush it,” and I’m feeling it, and we’ll just do part B. And then I’m like, “How we feeling?” and she’s like, “I feel great!” and I’m like, “Cool.” But she says it just like that, “I’m doing great.”

Roxanne: Because she is so advanced.

Gina: She is very advanced.

Roxanne: An advanced baby.

Gina: She’s actually my first baby whose first word was, “Mama.”

Roxanne: Rude.

Gina: it’s amazing.

Roxanne: To the other kids.

Gina: But she wakes up in the middle….

Roxanne: Wasn’t Sophie’s first word, “Duchess?”

Gina: It was her, yeah, our dad’s dog’s name is Duchess and that was Sophie’s first word.

Roxanne: Which is such a hard word, I feel like, Duchess.

Gina: Because apparently our dad yells it a lot.

Roxanne: She was learning, she was being like trained.

Gina: Which was funny. Yeah, all my kids, none of their first words were mama, except for Zoe.

Roxanne: What was Adeline’s?

Gina: I’m not sure. I think it was, “Daddy” or, but yeah, Sophie’s first word was Duchess.

Roxanne: Dada is just harder than Mama. I mean, Dada is easier than Mama.

Gina: Zoe, so even though she wakes up constantly, she wakes up and she goes, “Mama, Mama,” And I’m like, “Oh, come here baby.”

Roxanne: You forgive her, instantly.

Gina: Come, Baby.

Roxanne: That’s probably why she, that’s, her first words.

Gina: Go to sleep. Please, sleep. There’ll be some nights where I negotiate with her. I’m like, “Please just go to sleep.”

Roxanne: Yeah.

Gina: But it is really sweet to wake up next to her. And then she wakes up and she’s like super happy and looking at me and she’s like, “It was so fun hanging out with you last night!” And I’m like…

Roxanne: You just gotta buy that book for her, that literally is, “Go the Fuck to Sleep.”

Gina: Go the fuck to sleep.

Roxanne: I just feel like if I was like, if I was a baby, like even like right now, if someone would just rock me to sleep, I would just…. Give me permission to sleep? Okay. I would just go down.

Gina: Because we’re all chronically exhausted.

Roxanne: Like I would gladly take that. I can do nothing for three, three hours?

Gina: She also, she doesn’t nap unless middle someone’s like holding her.

Roxanne: Yes.

Gina: Which is probably my own doing, ’cause I have contact napped her, her entire life. And so if I try to sneak away, like within 10 minutes, she’s like, “Hey, where’d you go? Where’d you go?!”

Roxanne: I don’t know, like Joan and Lily both did, they would contact nap, fine, but I was able to transfer them to a bed very easily.

Gina: Eoghan, I can literally throw onto the bed and he’ll keep sleeping.

Roxanne: Yeah. Even to this day, like he sleeps so soundly.

Gina: Like he’s a deep sleeper.

Roxanne: But Colin, who is a deep sleeper now, he still wakes up in the middle of the night, but. He like, if I like one inch started to move, I’m like, oh God, I’m so sorry. I will stay lay next to you.

Gina: Adeline was definitely really a snuggle sleeper. Eoghan, you could throw onto the bed. Sophie and Zoe, like sometimes I can leave them, but usually Zoe will wake up after a little bit and be like… I’m not going to get an hour of her napping. If I get up in the morning, she wakes up. She’s like, “Where you going? What we doing?”

Roxanne: In the morning, they do, they, Lily and Joan, would wake up if I left. But for naps, like they would actually nap alone.

Gina: Yeah. So one year or 14 months postpartum, it ebbs and flows. I have weeks where I am like crushing it in the gym, weeks where I am not crushing it

in the gym, but I’m still moving, moderately. Or whatever’s less than moderately, occasionally, because for me…

Roxanne: Mild, moderate, medium?

Gina: Mildly… Anyways. Like what’s those, what’s the spice scale?

Roxanne: It’s like mild, moderate, high.

Gina: Intense. Intensity.

Roxanne: Severe. So like you’re like in the mid mild.

Gina: Yeah, I’m the low end of that, the low end of that.

Roxanne: Mildly moderate.

Gina: Where I have to reframe what workouts mean to me. So sometimes it’s shorter workouts, sometimes it’s something different than what I was planning. I’m not pulling that barbell out, we’re just going to do some body weight stuff and call it a day. But movement for me, helps me feel better in my body, which is important, especially when I am solo parenting with no childcare. Our mom is coming back though. Sorry Brother, you are out of luck. Your turn is over. If you want her all the time, you have to move near us. So she’s coming back and the next month my husband will be back, and so I’ll have a lot more support. And I’m sure over the winter my workouts will increase.

Roxanne: Gina’s just spiraling that everyone’s abandoned her.

Gina: I know. I do have..

Roxanne: She’s all alone.

Gina: So I also have my period back now. Which did take a long time, not surprisingly, ’cause I was working out a lot and not eating enough, and it’s not shocking that it took a little bit of time for my period to come back. But I have some pretty intense PMS where I’m a moody bitch for a few days. My children give me a lot of grace, and my son was like, “Why are you so aggressive right now?” And I was like, “You know what? That’s fair.” Or he’ll be like, “Mommy, you should calm down. You’re still my favorite mommy, and you’re the best mommy in the world, but, you should calm down.” And I’m like. “Touche. I

should. You’re my favorite son.” So they’re really good at reminding me to calm the fuck down when I’m just being…

Roxanne: But only her children can point that out to her.

Gina: Yeah. Just my children, my sweet, amazing, perfect children.

Roxanne: If her sister points it out, I am the worst.

Gina: You are.

So that’s what a year postpartum looks like for me. I’m still very sleepy. I feel good in my body- I know I’ve repeated that several times throughout the episode. I feel capable within my body, but the demands of my day have really adjusted significantly from day to day, especially now that the school year has started and my support has been minimal. But now it’s coming back, so it’ll be good.

But know that your journey is not going to be this linear journey either. It’s not going to be, I gave birth and then it’s just like a smooth ride, as you just feel better and better, and lift heavier and heavier. It’s going to ebb and flow, and I think it’s going to continue to ebb and flow for me for at least the next year postpartum. Which I sometimes I think it’d feel discouraging to be like, oh my God, two years before you can really get in the groove of things? And then it’ll probably just keep ebbing and flowing, until I die. I don’t know.

Roxanne: God! Way to end the podcast, Gina.

And then we all die.

Gina: And then we all just die.

But I hope that you are feeling good on your pregnancy and your postpartum journey. And if you would like more support during, in your pregnancy and in your postpartum, fitness-wise…

Roxanne: Or beyond!

Gina: Or beyond, we do have programs to help support you. ’cause if there’s one thing that does help make workouts more accessible to me, when I’m very tired, is to just know that I can open up my app and there’s just a workout there

for me to do, and I don’t have to think about what to do. And so that’s one less thing for you to do. And we do break up our workouts into three or four segments so that you can just take a piece of it and then just know that’s intentional movement for the day, and that’s great. And then if you feel good after that, you can do the second part, third and fourth part, but you can easily break it up, based on how we design our programming, because we know that we all have a lot of demands during our day, and some days we can do it all, and some days we just, we’re just not going to. And it’s still important to have that movement to help support our health, to support our function during motherhood and during pregnancy, and we want to make our programs accessible for you. So one less thing to think about ’cause you just follow the program, and you can break it up as needed because we design it for you to be able to do that pretty easily so that we can still move intentionally in motherhood to feel good, but still support our journey mentally. Nothing is more defeating than having a workout that you can’t even finish. So just know that you don’t have to finish it, we’re giving you that permission to do so.

If you want more support, check out our online pre and postnatal fitness programs. They both come with lifetime access, so you can use it for this pregnancy and future ones, and then same with the postpartum, you can use it for now and for future postpartums as well, or just repeat it multiple times, which we have folks that do that for sure. And you can check them all out on our website at MamasteFit.com/fitness-programs, or just go to MamasteFit.com and click on fitness programs, in the header right up there, and use code STORY10 to get 10% off any of our online offerings because we want to ensure that our programs are accessible to all.

So yeah, thanks for joining us.

Roxanne: This podcast is sponsored by Needed. Needed is a nutrition company focused on the perinatal timeframe that we have both utilized in our pregnancies, postpartums and beyond. And if you want to check them out ahead to thisisneeded.com and use Code MAMASTEPOD to get 20% off your first order.