A friend recently asked me how I lost my baby weight. It got me thinking that I should do a blog on it, as maybe someone else was also curious. I don’t want to seem like I have all the answers, I certainly don’t. This is just my story.

Most people assume that the baby weight just falls off me. That isn’t really true though, so I’d like to share how I really lost my baby weight each time, which has been an average of 3 stone per baby. I want to write it down so that I don’t forget what it was really like, and maybe it will help or encourage someone else who’s battling the post baby belly.

When I am pregnant I gain weight really easily. Eating eases my morning sickness and gives me a bit of the energy I lack and I am always really hungry. I do choose healthy foods, but my body just holds onto every calorie I give it. It seems to thank me for the food and then store it on my thighs! I am so glad that we don’t weigh women in this country at their antenatal appointments, as I would find it a monthly humiliation process. I never keep within the boundaries recommended for weight gain, despite eating healthily. By the end of pregnancy I have normally gained about 3 to 3 1/2 stone.

On the day I give birth I lose 10lbs. It is the only depressing part of that wonderful day. Seriously, how can I only lose 10lbs! I then realise that I have 2 and 1/2 stone to go. With each baby that weight has taken longer to come off. With baby one and two it came off by 7 months with almost no effort and I actually ended up losing more than I gained. Then baby three plus was where I discovered that my weight no longer just fell off and I started looking into what was delaying my weight loss and I started to see a correlation between my hormones and weight. It seemed that I could eat exactly what I did with my first two babies but I was getting different results. I was not just older this time, but I also weaned the babies later onto solids and took a more laid back, baby led weaning style approach. I have seen that as long as my babies are on just milk my body will not shed the last stone of weight. This does make sense from the perspective of protecting your baby’s milk supply by having a reserve of fat.

The other challenge with losing the pounds has been age. Once I hit 40 losing weight seemed to get even harder. It took me over a year to shed the weight after having Katie. I don’t know how much of my weight loss is down to my effort and how much would be natural. All I can share is what I did.

For the last 6 years I have largely given up sugar and white carbs. I started this out of a desire to get rid of persistent yeast infections, which plagued me after I had a lot of antibiotics for quinsy. Every time I indulge in these treats I get another yeast attack and so I have learnt that sugar free is the best way for me. I am not super strict about it, but I was stricter once Katie started weaning, to help me to get back into my old clothes and to help completely eradicate the pregnancy exacerbated yeast problem. I don’t ever aim to be super slim, I just want to be the shape I am designed to be when I am eating healthily.

If it is of any interest for to you to know what I actually eat, then here is an average day. I generally have sugar free granola with coconut and homemade natural yoghurt for breakfast, vegetable soup for lunch with a couple of slices of this bread https://www.food.com/recipe/yeast-free-wholemeal-bread-56999. For dinner I eat quinoa instead of pasta or rice and sweet potatoes instead of potatoes. We normally then have protein and veg. I always eat until I’m full, or let’s be realistic, until a little one needs me and I get distracted! Phil and I eat in peace, as a date night, a couple of times a week, and then I always eat more because I am not busy. I also eat a square of 70% dark chocolate each day as a treat and one or two pieces of fruit.

I used to be a real sugar addict and coming off it was hard, but after a few days the cravings went and I now don’t particularly like sweet foods, they just don’t give me that deep sigh of relief that they used to.

My focus is not really on weight but health, which also includes exercise. I did do a Pilates class for several months after Katie to help with my core muscles. Now I just race around trying to keep up with the children, house, garden and animals! I very rarely weigh myself now that I am back to my old size.

Over the years I have learnt to respect my body and feed it what it needs to work best. I also want to work with its rhythms and seasons, fighting it is rather pointless and in my experience leads to disappointment. If the weight won’t go, then maybe it shouldn’t go and so in that season I love my ‘love handles’, knowing they are helping to feed my baby!

I think that for me, getting back into my old clothes is part of keeping my sense of Vicki as a woman, not just a mother. That part of me that still exists as an individual. I LOVE being a mum, but let’s face it, children take everything, your teenagers take your clothes, your little ones eat your food, they all take lots of time and energy, but one thing that’s mine is my body. I want to look after it as it’s the only one I get and it works hard. So I try to put the best fuel in and take care of it, knowing that my body is a gift from God to be cared for and offered in service to him.

Our beautiful Katie Joy turns 2 this week and I wanted to take this opportunity to remember her amazing birth and write it down so I never forget. We often tell the children their birth stories, particularly on their birthdays. It helps us to remember that every birth is a miracle, a gift from God and every child’s arrival has its own unique story.

After nine babies I am very aware that birth is always unpredictable and many births don’t go as planned. Katie’s story certainly didn’t go as we had expected, but it was more beautiful than we could ever have hoped. Our account tells the story of her unintentionally unassisted, relaxed home birth.

I tend to have about a month of pre labour. That means that for a month I look and feel like I could pop at any minute. During this pre labour month I will have contractions in the evenings. After the children are in bed my body relaxes and contractions will often start and can continue for a couple of hours before I go to bed, when they all stop. If I climb the stairs I can keep them going, but really they are just my body’s way of limbering up for the main event.

So after my month of on off contractions I was all ready to give birth. We had planned to try and have another home birth. We have had 7 of our babies at home. Our first and fifth were born safely in hospital and were only born there as a precaution. I had discussed our options with a consultant and our midwife and we had concluded that a home birth would be best for me. We decided this because our eighth baby was born within 30 minutes of contractions starting and therefore we were unlikely to make it to hospital with number nine!

Friday night I started my normal round of contractions, but these ones ramped up and we called out the midwife who found me puffing and panting on the bathroom floor. After hearing my hollering she quickly put together the gas and air and handed me the good stuff. Once the gas arrived my contractions seriously picked up and we were ready for a baby. After emptying one canister of gas my contractions slowed down and then stopped. After 4 hours of painful contractions I was ONE cm dilated and rather embarrassed! Surely after so many babies I would know the difference between false labour and real labour? Unfortunately my body does a good job of tricking me. My midwife kindly said that my body was ready but my baby wasn’t quite there yet. So I reluctantly gave up on giving birth at that point, the midwife went home and I went to sleep.

Saturday, all was quiet. Sunday, all was quiet. I thought that maybe the baby had decided they just didn’t like the idea of birth and had got comfy again.

Sunday evening Phil and I decided to have a date night, knowing that they wouldn’t happen again for a while. He made me a Thai curry and at 9pm I sat on my birthing ball and enjoyed a really relaxing meal. The lights were dimmed, classical music was playing and we were both feeling, how can I say this? Feeling amorous! Those hormones that had been created by the intimate evening were about to become very helpful.

Around 9.40 I popped to the loo and then I had a big contraction at the bottom of the stairs. Phil was meanwhile trying to put ‘Call the Midwife’ on the TV. Elizabeth then came down and complained of a tummy ache, so we quickly packed her off to bed with an emergency sick bowl and some paracetamol. Praise God, all the other children were quiet, which is so unusual in our house before 10 in the evening. By the time Phil came back from attending to Elizabeth I had had another huge contraction, so I asked him to actually call the real midwife instead of watching it! By now it was 9.50. I knelt down by the sofa with my head on Phil’s lap, hoping to slow things down while we waited for the midwife. I should know by now that that was unlikely to work, as I had gone past the point of no return. One more contraction and my waters went. Phil exchanged his lap for a cushion and went round to the end where the action was kicking off. During each of these contractions I had not made any noise, which was very unusual for me. I knew the children would come downstairs if they heard any noise and the older boys room was next door to us downstairs. I focused on just riding the waves, breathing and praying. I was still really relaxed because the evening had been so peaceful and no one was disturbing the flow of my labour. I was doing everything my body instinctively told me to do and without inhibition I was following the path my body was taking me on.

Phil quickly exchanged my wet skirt and leggings for the mats and towels which had been sitting in the lounge, waiting for this moment. With the next contraction the baby started to move down the birth canal and that inner roar (which would normally be shouted out) was used to power our new arrival into the world. Phil all the while was being a great support reminding me I was doing so well. He was the picture of calm and both of us were just focused on our tasks. Phil’s task was to catch and attempt to keep the carpet clean and mine was to push!

Excuse me if I pause during this next contraction to describe something extraordinary that I always feel right around this moment. During this most intense moment of birth I always describe it as a ‘thin place’. ‘Thin places’ is a word often used about places where God has been worshipped for centuries, but my thin place always comes right around the moment of birth. I describe it that way because for a moment it feels like God is right there, a palpable sense of his presence. In my weakest moment I lean on nothing but him and he in turn carries me through every wave. My eyes close and my focus turns to God as through the shedding of blood and water I bring new life into the world.

Birth is the most beautiful picture of God’s redemptive plan for us as sinners. Through his Son’s death, where Christ shed blood and water poured from his side, we receive new life. So too, in birth, do we shed blood and water and experience a glimpse of the pain of surrendering our own lives for another. In that pain though I turn my eyes to God and he replaces the pain with an intense peace and calm. The more I focus on him, the more the world seems to disappear and for a few moments I feel I am almost touching Heaven.

Back to the birth….2 more contractions and at 10pm, our new baby arrived into Phil’s arms. He passed her to me between my legs and we checked to see whether God had blessed us with a boy or a girl. Another daughter lay before us, but she was very floppy and I began to worry and pray. We called 999 as she was hardly breathing. Had I thought about it, I would have worried less if I’d remembered that she was still attached to the cord and therefore getting oxygen through that. The person on the 999 call got us to flick her feet and rub her with a towel and she did take little breaths, but she was still not really responsive and normally my babies have all breathed immediately. I remember wondering for a moment if we would lose her and asking God if he would help her breathe. We continued to rub her though and keep her skin to skin and she gradually started breathing, praise God! The midwife arrived 8 minutes after she was born. She took one look at Katie and by then she was doing better and she took the phone and said, ‘Mum and baby are fine, you don’t need to send anyone here in big clod hoppin’ boots, we’ll be fine!’ After that she got me comfy on the sofa and we got Katie feeding.

Katie Joy’s birth was truly amazing. I believe I had not needed pain relief because a) my body had done most of the labour on the Friday night, b) I was in a state of deep relaxation as the children were quiet and a Phil and I were feeling closer than ever and c) God carried me through every wave. God helped me not to be afraid once during her birth and I’m sure fear causes a lot of birth pain because it makes us tense up. After she was born was quite nerve wracking for a few minutes, but I learnt that sometimes when babies are born so quickly they just need a few minutes to get going. I suppose I really knew this but I normally leave that bit in the midwife’s hands. This time it was down to us to decide if she was ok and so we reached out for a bit of support and we were very grateful to have some encouragement down the end of the phone.

Our lovely midwife stayed with us for a couple of hours and then we were able to go to bed by about midnight. What a date night that was! One we’ll never forget.

The next morning the children trickled down the stairs one by one and met their tiny baby sister. They’d all miraculously slept through the whole birth and were completely amazed that our home now suddenly had a newborn sister in it. They each held her and fell in love with her instantly.

We are so grateful to God that she arrived safely. We called her Katie Joy, which means pure joy. She certainly lives up to her name and continues to bring huge amounts of joy to our home every day.

As home educators, reading has always been top of our priority list. From babyhood all the children have loved flicking through board books, as they grew I would read to them, every evening and often multiple times during the day. I would find that when all was going crazy, a quiet story would change the mood of the house, and give me 5 minutes to sit still 😉.

As they’ve grown, they’ve continued to love reading to themselves. We’ve kept the children interested in reading in a couple of specific ways. One has been acquiring interest based books. For example, Jonathan and Christopher always loved action, adventure and spy books. Thankfully Matthew has followed suit and so we have been able to pass their books onto him. Madeleine loves horses and so we’ve gone through just about every horse book we could get our hands on. Likewise with Elizabeth and gymnastic books. Hannah adores animals and thankfully animal books are easy to find and we already had a lot, so she’s sorted. The younger children are not very fussy and will settle down to listen to whatever I suggest. Another way we have encouraged reading is that we have give the children limited screen time, which I think is more appealing than books for most children. Without screens they reach out for books to occupy their minds.

How did we get so many books without breaking the bank? I am a very keen bargain hunter and during our years in Surrey I went to the Scout and Guide Jumble sale 4 times a year, as well as the huge local annual book fair. I have picked up most of our books for about 30p each. Of course we have bought some new, but we try where possible to get them second hand off the web. We have also inherited a lot of books from friends and family who have passed them on.

Before moving, we used to make full use our local library. We would order them on line and then go down and collect a pile every week. Since we moved and are thus not so near to the library, and then since the lockdowns as well, we have decided to continue to build up our home library.

As well as specific interest books, we have a large number of information books, Christian biographies, Christian fiction, Children’s Bibles and Bible stories and an assortment of other varied reading matter.

My personal favourite books to read aloud have been the ‘Little House Books’, ‘Little Pilgrim’s Progress’, almost any Patricia St John books, ‘Ten Peas in a Pod’ by Arnold Pent and the Little Lights series of Christian biographies.

What do you like to read with your children, or what memories do you have of favourite childhood books?

Do come back here soon, as I will do a post in the next few days about will how we teach our children to read.