Although I could be hardly be considered a gym rat, I’ve always tried to stay in decent shape. This was done more for my sanity than for the sake of staying slim or super strong, and I stuck to things I enjoyed. During the first few months of my pregnancy I kept up with my jogging, and switched to mall walking once my knees and the weather made that less than ideal. I even found that getting back in shape after having my daughter wasn’t quite as tough as I anticipated. True, for the first few months I was a bit of a couch potato with an incessantly greedy leech on my boobs, but when she finally settled into a manageable schedule, I found time to return to my workouts. I popped in some DVDs and exercised during her naps or while she played on her activity mat. Watching Mommy jump around and get sweaty seemed to be added entertainment, another addition to the swinging elephants and the random giraffe inexplicably chilling in a rainforest. (Another issue for another day.)

But then she learned how to crawl, then walk, then run, and having her stay happily in one place for a given amount of time was no longer an option. So like most parents, I had to adjust.

It can be difficult for those who are used to dedicating a set time each day to exercise to give that up after having a child. Fortunately, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, which recommends that adults get 150 minutes of moderate exercise per week, has found that ten minute increments can be just as effective, and most parents can agree those ten minutes are slightly easier to find. It generally takes my daughter about fifteen minutes to realize I’m awake in the morning, and most days I can find some other windows to squeeze in some of the following activities:

Jump rope

I loved jumping rope as a kid, and in high school I took advantage of my dad’s weighted jump rope to improve my speed and strength during track season. More recently, I noticed a jump rope at a dollar store, and made an impulse buy. We have one room in my house that has a slightly higher ceiling that allows for a quick jump rope session. Even better, a quick session is all you need, as recent studies have shown that ten minutes of jumping rope yield the same cardiovascular benefits as thirty minutes of jogging. (Although be warned: ten minutes of jumping is not easy!) As further evidence of its benefits, Victoria Secret model Adriana Lima apparently includes jumping rope in her fitness plan, so you know it’s good. I usually alternate between jumps and lifting weights, and my stamina has definitely improved. Plus, my daughter thinks it’s hilarious to watch me, and tries to “jump” on her own.

Brisk walking/jogging

While I found it difficult to take out a jogging stroller, I like to take advantage of my child’s eagerness to run free by chasing after her. Usually this results in little more than a brisk walk, but occasionally she’ll ask me to race or I’ll convince her to chase me so I can get in just a bit of a jog. We both get fresh air, I get some exercise, she exerts some energy and (hopefully) takes a good nap. Everyone wins.  

Kicking around a soccer ball

      Lots of lovely celebrities claim they kept their size zero figures by simply chasing their children. While I doubt the whole truth of that statement, there is something to be said for chasing about energetic toddlers. My daughter loves to kick around a soccer ball, and while she also becomes easily distracted, I take advantage of our time in the yard to practice some old soccer drills, like toe taps. Sometimes I just wind up dribbling the ball around myself while my daughter makes my dog a leaf cake. Again, everyone wins (except my dog.)

Burpees and planks

Burpees are a magical exercise that combine squats and pushups and jumping (magical is the right word, no?) While they can understandable be a bit difficult for some people, they are extremely effective and work a number of muscles in a short amount of times. Planks are the same way (although they require far less impact.) There a number of challenges you can set for yourself, and they’re easy (timewise) workouts to fit in while you’re basically in plank position anyway to play with your child.

Zumba

Although this is a lengthier workout, it’s still one that I’ve found is pretty easy to fit into a toddler-inspired schedule. While Zumba had always looked like fun, my lack of rhythm had kept me from considering attending an actual class. But when my daughter started swaying and hopping along to music, I decided Zumba might be a fun way for me to get my heart rate up while entertaining my child. While she’s definitely more the type to “dance” vigorously for five minutes and then sit and watch while chugging her water, it’s still a (mostly) fun time. Plus, it supposedly improves coordination, so that should be a great benefit when it finally happens.

These are just a few ideas of things that have helped me. Hopefully they can help some other parents eager to feel fit again, or who just want to find ways to match the seemingly endless energy levels of their toddlers!

Like most malls these days, the one nearest me decided that stores were not enough. They started with a carousel, which looked somewhat classy. They added a play area, which mostly served as a holding cell for the children waiting for the carousel (or working off a sugar rush prior to boarding the carousel). Then they added an adorable little train that went in loops around the lower level and almost hit oblivious shoppers despite the constant horn alerting all children within earshot that there was a CHOO-CHOO in the MALL!!!

I had hoped it would only be for Christmas. But I was wrong.

I know the train sounds great in theory. What little kid doesn’t love trains? My daughter especially loves to chase the train as it makes its little loops around, clearing a path for her unsteady toddler sprint. I don’t mind that part too much. Usually we visit the mall as a way to expel some pre-nap energy on rainy days, and the train works well for that.

What I do mind is the inevitable moment that the train stops and my sweet little girl runs up to the door of whatever color car she has set her heart on while the carny-like worker chivalrously opens the door for her and grins at me, as if challenging me to try to be a bitch and keep her from going.

But here’s the thing: I would not be just paying for my daughter to ride. She is still just a tad too young to go by herself (those extra large, wide windows are just beckoning to a young Indiana Jones in training.) So I have to go with her. But unlike the carousel, which does not charge me to hold my child on a horse and fight back waves of nausea while squealing along with my happy tot, the train charges me to fold myself into a miniature car and monitor my happy child.

It’s a pain in the ass. Literally and figuratively.

I’m 5’6 and wildly uncomfortable in there. I’ve seen men and women much taller than I am sitting in train cars with their knees tucked under their chins, grinning through the pain so their child doesn’t recognize the fact that this is indeed borderline torture for them. I’m pretty sure they designed things like this in the middle ages to punish criminals. But at least that was acknowledged as torture. Chances are these people paid just as much as their delighted children to suffer.

It’s not just the mall train, either. Carnival and boardwalk rides seem to find a hidden joy in charging parents just as much as their eager children to suffer in miniature elephants and tiny trucks. I can see their sadistic smiles as limbs are nearly lost in an attempt to squeeze into a car designed for a two year old.

Can we please cut the sh*t already?

We are not riding for our personal amusement. TRUST ME! I have zero interest in moving in slow circles around people who might know and/or judge me. We are riding for the sole purpose of keeping our little ones safe while they have the momentary time of their lives. I have no problem whatsoever paying for my daughter. In fact, part of the problem is sometimes I shell out too much money paying for myself to ride beside her and have to cut her off from future rides. Or clothes. Or food. Or shelter.

I don’t mean to sound cheap. I’m just arguing with the principle here. I would even just be content with paying half price for myself. I just want some kind of justification that the ride experience is not the same for me as it is for someone half my size.

And if someone disagrees, perhaps they would like to spend some more time in that miniature caboose.

I started working in high school because I wanted to make a little extra cash. Since the only places that tend to hire high school students are places like retail stores or restaurants that treat their employees like….well, like dysfunctional high school students, that’s where I got my start. Unfortunately, I got stuck working these jobs far longer than I would have liked. While trying to find a career, and then trying to justify working the many part time jobs and unpaid internships that were necessary to start a career, I worked for a well-known coffee corporation (including a drive-thru store), a clothing store, a recognizably magical store represented by a popular rodent, and a hippie-style establishment.

Maybe it was the unintelligible screaming. Maybe it was the unbelievable physical exhaustion that made sitting down to use the bathroom feel like relaxing in a hot tub. Maybe it was the sight of my bank account. But something about those early weeks of motherhood suddenly brought back numerous repressed memories, and also some valuable lessons I had learned that helped me to survive.

• The customer is always annoyed. Baby is fed and burped, the diaper is changed, has napped within recent memory…and yet he or she is crying. It’s very similar to that customer in the drive thru who insisted you make her triple grande extra foam extra hot latte with half an Equal about three times every afternoon because she could tell when there was not enough foam or three-quarters of an Equal (I wish I could say this customer was an invention of my imagination, but no. She is very real.) But, like said customer, you have to just keep trying, with as much patience and cheer as you can muster, because they sense frustration like a shark sensing blood. And sometimes you run out of patience and have to get someone else to try for a while, or step away and take a few deep breaths, and that’s okay. Eventually, this will pass, and there will be another problem instead.
• The hours are horrible. Retail workers sometimes never see daylight. They might work from 3 am to 5 pm (especially on Black Friday). Being a new parent is the same. Between late night feedings that continue through the day and into the next night, it’s easy to forget what the sun looks like. Or what sleep feels like.
• Everything needs to be washed. That adorable stuffed animal was not born into a glass case and kept there, safe and pristine, until you or someone else decided it belonged in the arms of your child. No. That stuffed animal has been tossed about in a cardboard box, thrown on the floor, slobbered on by an excited toddler who escaped his mother’s gaze for a minute, tucked under a dusty shelf and forgotten until closing, and used to cover an iced tea stain. Like pretty much everything else that is purchased from a store, it really should be washed before it inevitably ends up in your child’s mouth.
• Never force your child to meet Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny. I was never a fan of this anyway, but having worked in a mall, I’m even more reluctant. If my child begs me for the chance to sit on Santa’s lap, then of course I’ll oblige. But I won’t take her against her will. Sure, there’s a chance the man impersonating Santa is a decent, hardworking man just trying to earn a few extra bucks to spoil his kids for the holidays. There’s also a chance he’s a questionable character who was just hitting on a sixteen-year-old girl in the hidden alleys of the mall. If that’s the case, maybe my screaming child just has a good sense of stranger danger. I’m not going to encourage going against it.
• You eat when it’s convenient, not when you’re hungry. It’s normal for retail workers to have either lunch or dinner at around 3 P.M. It depends on the schedule. With a newborn, the same thing kind of happens. Between feeding the baby, changing the baby, changing the baby again, calming the baby, and entertaining the baby, sometimes you don’t get a chance to eat until you’re almost not hungry anymore. And even then eating might involve sitting on an exercise ball with the baby in one hand and food in the other while bouncing up and down to calm her. (True story)
• People like to tell you how to do your job. Even if they have no idea what it’s like to have your job. Even if they have no idea what’s going on in the background. People will tell you your baby is crying because she’s hungry even though she just ate, or that she must be cold when it’s 85 degrees. People will tell you to go look for something in the back room even though there’s nothing in the back room but a mop bucket and what looks like the remains of someone’s lunch. It’s annoying, but best not to dwell on such remarks..
• You will get dirty. I used to come home from work in all kinds of colors. I’ve worn green matcha and hot fudge and just general grossness that I would rather repress. Motherhood is similar. Sometimes there’s not much to do except calmly change the poop-covered baby before changing your poop-covered self, and gag at the memory later. In this case, sleep deprivation comes in handy. When you have to either laugh or cry, try to laugh…and then try to stop before your husband thinks you’ve officially gone insane.
• You can’t have nice things. See above. Unless you want that expensive new dress to be drizzled in bodily fluids, wait until your child is at least a teenager to buy new things. Maybe then you can start dressing like them to make up for lost time (those women who dress like their daughters make sense now).
• Nighttime is for stocking. People seem to think that retail and restaurant workers hang around after close solely for them. (Example: Asking a person mopping the floors at 12:30 a.m., “Are you still open?” because clearly they’re not desperate to go home.) Contrary to popular belief, workers hang around in order to clean and stock in preparation for the next day. The hour or two after bedtime is very much the same. I stock the changing table, wash the play mat and anything else that has been destroyed throughout the day, wash bottles and pacifiers, and do what I can to prepare myself for the next day.
• The paycheck…. After a week or two of suffering in this manner, I used to receive my paychecks and generally feel slightly cheated. Motherhood pays even less…and at the same time, it pays even more. I may not be getting a “wife bonus” worthy of filling my closet with designer clothes anytime soon, but the first time my little girl smiled at me at 4 a.m. after I had to change her soiled onesie…I felt like it was an even trade. ^`

I always assumed that I would try to breastfeed my baby. I wasn’t opposed to formula, but I knew that breastmilk was healthier and cheaper, so I figured I would give it a whirl. Besides, the classes and books and lactation consultants seemed to give me a pretty good idea of what to expect, and added on to the long list of benefits. My child would be smarter, healthier, skinnier, more athletic, prettier, more popular, and more likely to find the cure for cancer than her formula-fed peers. It made me wonder why anyone would choose not to breastfeed.
Then my child arrived, and the reality of being responsible for nourishing this adorable parasite set in. Within a week, I discovered some additional “benefits” of breastfeeding. Always eager to help others, I decided to share these reasons for those preparing to choose this same path:

1) You want to experience another definition of “sore”. I played plenty of sports as a kid and have been a runner since high school, so I was familiar with being sore. You know, the dull ache that can be eased by a nice soak in a hot tub or some relaxing yoga poses. So when the books and classes mentioned sore nipples, I wasn’t afraid.
I didn’t realize they meant a different kind of sore.
In breastfeeding, the word “sore” refers to a sharp, agonizing pain that makes you scream and cry and say words you would never say normally, let alone so close to the innocent ears of your child, as you sit in a chair and feel like the victim of a horror or Tarantino movie and dream fondly of the hours of labor that now seem like a trip to a spa. At one point while nursing during a marathon session of The Tudors, I watched as they put some poor women on the rack, and all I could think was, “I feel you.”

2) You enjoy having your baby ogle you like a creepy old guy in a bar. The transformation is astonishing. One minute my infant would resemble a cherub, sleeping peacefully in her crib, an occasional smile on her lips. Then it would happen. The time would come for the next feeding, and my baby would start to thrash her head around desperately, searching for my boobs.
Then she would hear me. Or see me. And stare right at my chest until I felt uncomfortable and exposed and vulnerable. And I would have to force an awkward smile and have a conversation with someone speaking absolute gibberish as they asked for another drink.

3) You’re curious to see what 3 a.m. looks like sober and under-caffeinated. It’s a strange place. It’s like a preview of the apocalypse. Especially when you listen to the baby books and keep it dark and quiet so that the baby understands the difference between day and night, leaving you with nothing to do but stare at your baby lest your mind begin to dwell on scenes from Paranormal Activity. (Video monitors are not helpful in this case.)

4) While intently studying your angel, you are amused by the weird little turtle face they make when preparing to latch. Okay, this one is actually kind of cute…

5) While further studying your angel, you realize that when they actually latch, they latch on like a piranha and begin to suck as if you’ve starved them for days, rather than possibly half an hour. This one is significantly less cute. Especially when they like to move their heads around as if they’re tearing the flesh off of a fallen gazelle…or the aquatic equivalent of a gazelle, I suppose. And you are that aquatic gazelle.

6) Crying together is a great way to bond. Misery loves company, right? So what better way to help your vulnerable infant adjust to the traumas of life beyond the womb than by joining right in with some tears of your own? Of course, yours are tears of pain and frustration, while the baby’s are tears of…well, you’re not quite sure what, which is part of the reason you’re both crying in a dark room at 3 a.m. But you’re pretty sure/afraid it’s because the baby wants to continue wreaking havoc on your already damaged boobs.

7) You enjoy having conversations about the state of your nipples. I am, in general, a private person. But something about breastfeeding tears down that wall, especially after about two weeks of no sleep. I still feel uncomfortable about it, but find myself not only being asked (by other women, of course) how the breastfeeding is going, but responding somewhat truthfully that I feel like the victim of a medieval torture device. The fact that I’m writing something to be shared publicly is astonishing to my former self who long ago perfected the art of changing from regular bra to sports bra like a goddamn magician.

8) You love not being able to move for an extended period of time. Some people don’t mind being immobile for sixteen or so hours a day (like my husband). On normal days it’s not bad. But sometimes, when you’ve gone through a whole season of a show on Netflix and have taken several Buzzfeed quizzes and are parched but have an empty water bottle, standing starts to sound kind of nice.

9) You enjoy limiting your already limited wardrobe even further. Those few weeks (or months) between delivery and fitting perfectly back into pre-pregnancy clothes are awkward. Your maternity clothes are huge (plus you’re sick of them) but your old clothes either don’t fit or emphasize the new baby body in ways that probably wouldn’t impress any tabloid magazines. So already you’re limited to yoga pants and some baggy T-shirts. But you also have to make sure the baggy T-shirts aren’t white and leave room for easy access. And if you have to go to a place where baggy shirts are not acceptable (like work), you have to make sure your boob is accessible (or you have a bottle) and that any potential leaks are adequately disguised.

10) You enjoy the challenge of seeing how much you can get done in a three, two, or even one hour time frame. During the day my daughter generally eats every two hours exactly. So once she finishes, I know exactly how much time I have left to burp her/ help develop her motor skills/read to her to develop her language skills/ change her/ change her again/change her whole outfit because of a diaper explosion/throw in laundry for her because that was the last clean outfit/ brush my teeth or (possibly) shower or change into clean clothes myself/narrate everything I’m doing to keep her stimulated/ help her calm down to nap once she gets over-stimulated/ find food and water for myself so I can continue feeding her/ attack the pile of dishes or dust on the furniture/ figure out why she’s crying…oh, right, she’s hungry again. Let the cycle begin!