When you get married, let’s be honest, you have no idea what you are getting into. When you are all googly-eyed and in love, floating down that aisle on your father’s arm, watching your groom beam at you, you never think you will one day tearfully (okay, hysterically) say to him in a hospital room after you’ve just birthed him a child:

“I’m just really scared I’m not going to be able to poop.”

And you never dream he will say in return:

“Honey, let’s just get you a suppository.”

Ah, sooo romantic. The stuff dreams are made of, truly.

But that is exactly what happened after I had my second child. With my first, I’d had an emergency C-section, and suffered an awful complication of surgery, called an ileus, which is a paralyzed bowel. Basically, I couldn’t poop or pass gas. I swelled up ’til I looked like I was nine months pregnant again and I was in agonizing pain (and also, I had a giant incision in my gut. So.) The pain was much, much worse than my actual labor pains when I’d been trying to push Joshua out.

So, after I had Sophie, and had another C-section, I was terrified of getting an ileus again. So I tearfully took my husband’s advice, got a suppository from the nurse (what a fun job. Why does anyone want to do that??), pooped, and -voila! - no ileus! Made recovery much, much better.

Fast forward three days. We are at the pediatrician’s with baby Sophie to get results from a blood test to check her bilirubin levels as she was a wee bit jaundiced when we’d left the hospital. Sophie’s doctor is checking her over and asking all the routine newborn questions, when he looks up at me and says:

“And how have the bowel movements been?”

I stuttered a bit. “Um, well…I’ve only had a couple.”

He looked at me quizzically and then - he couldn’t help it - stifled a laugh.

“That’s great,” he said, “but I was asking about the baby.”

(Ohhhhh. RIGHT. Not EVERYONE was obsessed with MY bowel movements. In my post-partum and vicodin-induced haze, I’d forgotten.)

I just started laughing - I laughed, I cried. It hurt my incision to laugh but I couldn’t stop! My husband was laughing too - why? Because my answer made perfect sense to him. He was also still a tad preoccupied with my bowel movements.

Now that’s love, isn’t it?

(I still can’t look the kids’ doctor square in the eye.)

Take a look at this:

More than a year ago, I posted a similar video, and many of you commented about your concern as well.

Now, I’ve joined other bloggers in spreading the word about Dove’s effort to combat the onslaught of negative messages girls face every day.

Real Girls, Real Pressure: A National Report on the State of Self-Esteem, commissioned by the Dove Self-Esteem Fund, reveals that there is a self-esteem crisis in this country that pervades every aspect of a girl’s life including her looks, performance in school and relationships with friends and family members.

– Seven in ten girls believe they are not good enough or do not measure up in some way, including their looks, performance in school and relationships with friends and family members
– 62% of all girls feel insecure or not sure of themselves
– 57% of all girls have a mother who criticizes her own looks
– More than half (57%) of all girls say they don’t always tell their parents certain things about them because they don’t want them to think badly of them
– The top wish among all girls is for their parents to communicate better with them which includes more frequent and more open conversations as well as discussions about what is happening in their own lives.

Dove is making a difference in the lives of girls across the country through their Self-Esteem Fund. Through nation-wide workshops on self-esteem, national advertising campaigns, and downloadable tools on their website, they are giving girls, moms and mentors the tools they need to boost the self-esteem of girls.

When I agreed to join the movement and blog about this issue, Dove’s PR people sent me a book called “Life Doesn’t Begin Five Pounds from Now,” by Jessica Weiner.

Here’s an excerpt from the review in Publisher’s Weekly:
This volume reads like a manual, helping young women to decode what Weiner calls “the Language of Fat.” She writes perceptively about how girls and women bond over expressions of self-loathing for their bodies (”I noticed just how hard it was to stay intimate with my girlfriends if I wasn’t body-loathing beside them”) and argues that the simple words “I feel fat!” mask an internal world of insecurity and pain.

The idea that we speak “a language of fat” really resonated with me. How often do we use expressions like that? I know I do it. A lot.

So, to get back to the title of this post, this is my New Year’s resolution, to stop speaking the language of fat. No good can come from this language, and it has negative impacts on everyone who can hear it.

Especially her.

And I want her to always have the confidence to wear rainbow-colored rain boots.

So that, my friends, is my New Year’s Resolution.

What’s yours?

I made it to CVS twice this week, basically just to make some ECBs. Nothing too exciting, although it was fun as always!

Early in the week, I did this transaction:
Contour meter $14.99
2 Colgate $5.98
Propel $.40 (clearance for some reason - this surprised me!)
Schick Intuition razor $8.99
Total = $30.36
Coupons I used:
CVS $3/$15 (for some reason this only took off $1.50, but i didn’t complain!)
up to $30 off Contour meter (-$14.99)
two $1.50 off Colgate q’s
$2 off Schick Intuition q
Total = $8.87
I paid with 8 ECB and paid, with tax $2.34. I got back 5 ECB for the meter, 4 for the toothpaste, and 5 for the razor, for a total of 14 ECB. Yay!

Then on Thursday, I had to ring in the New Year by getting those January monthly deals!

Two throat cooler pops $9.98
Nasogel $7.99
Clorox toilet wand refills (we needed these! My CVS has been out of them forever.) $3.89
Total = $21.86
Coupons:
CVS $3/$15
BOGO free throat cooler coupon $4.99
$2 off Nasogel coupon
Total = $11.87
I paid with an 8.99 and 3 ECB (adjusted down to 2.88) and paid 49 cents cash and got back 9.98 ECB for the throat cooler pops and 7.99 for the nasogel for a total of 17.97. Woohoo!

That’s all the fun I had this week, hope you all did great! For more CVS-capades, check out CVS Superstars at the Centsible Sawyer.