Archive for January, 2012

I know “the right amount” – whatever that means – of stress is supposed to be good for you. It lights a fire under you, driving you to deliver excellence at a warp-speed pace.

And I’m totally down with excellence. I just have an issue with the warp-speed pace bit.

Which means that when I come home to Momover Central after a long day in Gotham, I am wired like a nuclear power plant. And because I have a relatively short window between when I walk through that door and when I have to hit the hay, winding down is, shall we say, challenging.

And newsflash: Wine doesn’t work. I explained the reason why in my book, even though it pained me to do so, because so many stressed-out new mommies like to hit the bottle after they (finally, finally, please God finally) put their Diapered Darlings down for the night.

So here’s a recap of the wine-doesn’t-work scenario: Yes, it relaxes you. And even helps you fall asleep. (Although pass-out is actually more like it.) But then, a few hours in, the effects wear off and your body starts to go into a mini-withdrawal. And that mini-withdrawal makes you wake up.

Personally, when I wake up in the middle of the night, that’s it bro. I’m up. I’ve had just enough sleep so that my brain can start working again, and it does. So much so that I stumble out of bed, find a notepad and pen, and start scribbling in the dark. My To Do list, points for stories I’m writing, ideas for blog posts like this epic masterpiece, etc., etc.

Although I use a lot of those 2 a.m. scribblings, I’d rather just stay asleep.

So on Sunday evening, after yet another “workend” – grrr times a million – I nabbed a bottle of Dream Water from my neighborhood drugstore. And that night I downed it, along with a double dose of the Brain Calm nutritional supplements I’ve been taking for years.

I slept great – straight through the night. And I woke up without the gross, druggy grogginess I always feel after taking a Tylenol PM or those Midnite pills I blogged about a while back.

Of course the double dose of Brain Calm could be the reason I snoozed so soundly. So maybe it really isn’t the Dream Water. Or maybe it’s the whole ball of wax – the Dream Water and the Brain Calm. In scanning the labels, I see that my little Momover Lady Sleep Special is providing me with a whopping dose of GABA and inositol, along with melatonin and 5-HTP.

So just now, because I’m getting totally paranoid that I’m gonna OD on all these pharmacy relaxants, I referred back to my Mama Guru chat with integrative doc Jeffrey Morrison, which is on exactly this very topic. In that Q&A, we cover GABA, inositol, Brain Calm and even Dream Water. Doc Morrison’s take? They’re safe, but if you’re breastfeeding be sure to check with your own physician first before using them.

Alrighty, I feel better about my new post-work, pre-bed drinkie / druggy ritual. Especially since I know I won’t need it in a month or so, when I wrap the project I’m working on and kick it with a festive trip to Fla. (Yay! The Grand Floridian!)

But right now, I gotta jet. And go in search of excellence at a warp-speed pace.

Yesterday, at the Wee Lass’s sixth-birthday bash at the bowling alley at Chelsea Piers (complete mayhem; the longest two hours of my life), one of the other moms told me I was looking slim and trim. “Have you lost weight?” she asked. “Or maybe it’s those jeans?”

“I have no idea,” I replied, “except I can assure you I’m not working any kind of Spanx scenario. I’m not down with shapewear at all.”

Because I’m a big ol’ drama queen, I mock-shivered to emphasize how insanely uncomfy I find all that Spandex-y, circulation-obliterating stuff to be. Yes, I know shapewear has changed a lot of women’s lives, but I’d personally rather run a 10k or starve myself for a week rather than sausage myself into the modern-day equivalent of a full-body girdle just to look hot at some schmancy soirée.

Still, it may behoove me to at lease know where I stand, pound-wise. Keeping your weight low – and stable – is wildly important in the fight against a number of diseases, including heart ailments, Type 2 diabetes and certain cancers.

And then there’s the vanity aspect, bien sur.

I recently read this super fun interview with Tom Ford in which he said he weighs himself literally every day of his life. Of course he does; he’s an international sex symbol beloved by people of all stripes and sexes the world over. But Ford’s point was really more about the youthifying effects of staying slim as one moves inexorably further into middle age.

(I’m occasionally – but not everyday or anything – proud to say I’m a “49-er” just like Ford, Demi Moore and Tom Cruise. We’ll all have benchmark birthdays in 2012, and according to a chit-chat with new mom (!) Kelly Preston in this week’s People, “50 is the new 30!” Hurrah! I think I believe her! I’m trying to!)

The thing is, I’ve completely bought into that old Catherine Deneuve saw about “after a certain age, a woman has to choose between her fanny or her face.” Translation: We’re already losing volume in our mugs; the last thing we want to do is exacerbate that by being emaciated.

Anyway, I’ve decided to take the plunge and weigh myself for the first time in months. Back in a sec…

Alrighty, drumroll please: 106.5

Plugging that number – and my miniscule height – into this handy BMI calculator, I see that I’m at the low-ish end of “normal,” which ranges from 18.5 to 24.9.

I’d like to think that Tom Ford would be super psyched for me. Catherine Deneuve, maybe not so much. Whatevs, can’t please everyone. And healthy is all that really matters, anyway. So know your numbers, mamas!

TGIF, my lovelies.

For those of you who live in NYC – and have a little lady with long locks underfoot – you might want to carve out some time on Sunday afternoon to learn how to create this adorable heart-shaped braid, courtesy of Cozy’s Cuts for Kids.

But fret not, all ye who reside elsewhere: A little closer to Valentine’s Day, I’ll be back with a chit-chat with Cozy herself – and step-by-step directions for this crazy-cute hairstyle.

Trust me, no one needs a lesson – or Cozy’s great kid’s detangling and styling tips – more than French braid-challenged Momover Lady. Bon weekend.

Yesterday was the Wee Lass’s birthday (bonne anniversaire ma petite cherie! je t’aime times a trillion!), and as he was suiting up for work, tie in hand, Hubby turned to me with a devilish grin.

“Aaaah, just think,” he said, smirking, “six years ago, there we were at NYU, you with your trusty doula at your side…”

Grrr.

The upfront disclaimer: This blog post is steeped in bitterness. If you want to stay in your happy place – and I would totally support you in that choice – stop reading immediately.

If you’ve read my book, or even spent a good chunk of time here on Momover.net, you can easily glean a few key facts about me: One, I had a baby quite late in life (early 40s). And two, the labor, delivery and subsequent recovery hit me like a tsunami. I’ve blogged a few times about my postpartum blood transfusion. And basically the entire Project Momover was devised to help me – and, later, you – get back to fighting form.

Here’s what I think might have helped with all that: Having the doula I hired to coach me through labor (to the tune of $1500, if memory serves) actually show up at the hospital at Hour One rather than Hour Eighteen, minutes before my ob-gyn issued the decree that it was time to stop praying for a vaginal delivery and motor on down to the operating room for a C-section.

I want to be clear that I’m convinced I just got unlucky. I know there are many amazing doulas out there, and in the appendix of my book, I include all contact info for DONA International.

But unfortunately, I inadvertently hired a slacker. Actually, inadvertently isn’t the right word. Stupidly is more apt. Although Hubby and I spent a fair amount of time interviewing potential doulas – three in total – I didn’t bother to check references for the one we settled on. I can’t say for sure that I even asked for references.

So that’s the big helpful “takeaway” from this post: If you’re preggo and considering hiring a doula to help you through labor and | or postpartum, ask for client references and actually check them.

Oops, just looked at the time. Gotta wrap this up because I’m heading to a “hair spa” today to research a story I’m writing. But first I have to finish over-sharing this labor & delivery war story, because it illustrates my cluelessness and why I especially suffered when my doula pulled a no-show.

The Wee Lass was due on 1/17. When that date came and went, my ob-gyn warned me he would soon be summoning me to the hospital for induction. I asked for a weekend reprieve, and proceeded to do everything I could to jump-start labor, including instructing my prenatal massage therapist to “hit all those spots you’ve been avoiding for the last three months” – the areas of the body that can accidentally stimulate the uterus.

On Monday, the doc told me to get my big fat fanny to NYU by 8 pm the following evening. I called the doula and she blithely told me that “nothing much would be happening” in the first few hours after my arrival, and that she would see me the following morning.

Well alrighty now.

Long story short: Clueless optimistic moi was hoping to avoid the epidural, which my crunchy labor-prep teacher (yes, I took a labor-prep class in addition to hiring a doula and a baby nurse – I like to staff-up) had positioned as the Devil’s spawn. And for a long time during labor, I toughed it out, even though – duh – the pain was getting worse and worse.

After about Hour Ten, I insisted – demanded – that Hubby leave the hospital to go home to our pad and feed Thunder and Lightning, our meow-meows. That’s how insane I was, a complete crazy person. Of course, almost the second he left to do that, I hit a wall on the pain and wanted that epidural in the worst, worst way. And as luck would have it, the night-shift was switching over to the day-shift, and there was no one to administer any drugs. So I had to wait. Wait and writhe in pain.

When I eventually got the epidural, I was all alone when they inserted that giant needle in my back. Hubby – at my idiotic insistence, of course – was off feeding the cats. And my doula had yet to make her grand entrance. (That wouldn’t happen for a few more hours.)

I got through it. Blech. And in my postpartum follow-up home visit from the doula – I didn’t even want her there, but it was part of our “contract” so she came anyway – she proceeded to tell me that rather than use diapers, I should learn to “read the facial signs” that the Wee Lass was about to pee or poop and chase her around with a pail. Evidently, that’s what she was doing with her own daughter.

Okaaaaay. The baby nurse and I just looked at her like she was on crack, and sent her on her merry way, check in hand.

Three months later, when I got back to Cookie from maternity leave, I kept pitching a story with the catchy title “Doulas Are Bullshit.” Thankfully my editors didn’t go for that. Because doulas aren’t bullshit. Mine was, but I’m guessing 99 percent of them are incredible.

Okay, off to the hair spa. Thank you for letting me vent. I feel better now.

Despite the fact that I managed to nip out for a little ice-skating on Sunday, I just slogged through a workend. Which means I didn’t get to rest and chillax one iota.

To add insult to injury, we canceled the Saturday nanny because of the snow, which resulted in waaaaay too much quality time with the Wee Lass.

I love her and all, but sheesh – enough is enough.

My point: it’s only Tuesday, but it totally already feels like Friday. This afternoon, circa 5-ish, I said to myself: “Momover Lady, WTH is wrong with you? Why are you so gosh-darn tired?”

And then I remembered my sinister workend, and it was all I could do not to crawl under my desk and pass out.

The funny (okay, it’s not even remotely funny – strike that) thing about 21st century wellness journalists is that we spend oodles of hours writing about stress – on ever more rigorous deadlines. Because there is so much news about stress being hurled at us on a daily basis, the pressure is on to convey it to the masses. Who really need that info, of course, because they’re totally stressed-out.

I know all the smart lifestyle-y things to do to alleviate this modern-day curse. And they are, in rough approximation of importance:

1. Sleep

2.  Exercise (hard enough to break a sweat; none of this reading the Wall Street Journal while barely moving your legs on a recumbent bicycle hooey)

3. Meditation or some other form of relaxation technique, like deep-breathing

4. Eating well – especially keeping a lid on sugar and starchy carbs, which rev up the stress machine, but I’m too brain-dead right now to even begin to explain it

And then there’s other miscellaneous bric-a-brac, like partaking in a hobby (knitting! knitting I completely love you!), or chit-chatting with a great friend who makes you LYAO.

Newsflash: Right now, I’m not gonna do any of that good stuff.

I just flossed the Wee Lass’s teeth (I do that every night for her, because I am Super Mommy), and I am now heading downstairs with a glass of red wine. In mere seconds, I will click on Sunday night’s episode of Downton Abbey. And I will not stress in the slightest about the fact that we’re already three episodes into this season and I’ve only recapped the first one.

I’m behind in a lot of stuff right now, and guess what? Everything will be just fine.

I used to call Charla Krupp my doppelgänger; we’re both teensy-weensy, with big eyes, big smiles and (chemically assisted) long blonde hair.

“Please,” she’d shoot back whenever she’d hear me say that. “I wish I looked like you.”

Although Charla may have longed for the date on my birth certificate – we were born were a decade apart – on numerous occasions I wished I were her lock, stock and barrel. Hilarious and chock-full of chutzpah, she was a force of nature – a woman who grabbed life by the unmentionables and bent it totally to her will.

Years after I got to know her through our mutual bestie, Charla segued from covering the entertainment business to beauty. And briefly, we toiled together at Glamour. She was the Big Chief, and I was the Indian, and when we weren’t flipping out about getting our beauty pages to the printer on time, we laughed our little (chemically assisted) blonde heads off.

And frankly, I never saw such a hard worker in my life. Sure, she may have flitted around all day going to breakfast, lunch and tea with various VIPs in the cosmetics industry, but then she’d come back to the office and work until midnight, easy. On Fridays. Who does that?

Later, after a few career plot twists, Charla really hit her professional stride. Her first book, How Not to Look Old, is a classic that every woman on this planet should have in her bookcase. From pretty much the second that hit the shelves, her life changed forever. Millions of women wanted to hear Charla’s hyper-researched, brutally honest advice about beauty and fashion, and she spent the last few years of her life zipping from public speaking engagement to book signing to television appearance.

She was everywhere, and she was over the moon about it.

When I signed my own book deal, Charla took me to lunch to try to pump some sense into my feeble head. If Momover was going to have a snowball’s chance in hell of being successful, she told me, I’d have to fight tooth and nail for it, and really put myself out there. You know, the way she did.

I chuckled, because I knew that that would never happen, never in a million years. Because I’m not Charla, as much as I might have wished I were.

After a courageous battle against breast cancer, lovely and steely Charla passed away last night. I will miss my tiny, brave doppelgänger – as will the rest of the world. Xoxo times a billion.

I’ve blogged before about “Elephant Plaza” in front of our condo complex – a lovely hangout area with water-spouting bronzey-brassy pachyderms that get swapped-out for an ice-skating rink every winter. All through the shivery months (Momover Lady kinda really hates the shivery months), whenever I zip by all those peeps skating their little hearts out, I invariably mutter to myself:

“I wonder if we’ll one day regret the fact that we never use this rink. This one, right here, in front of our frost-bitten noses.”

So this weekend, in an effort to stave off the ice-skating rink regret that may (or may not) be headed my way in the future, when we move to the New England equivalent of Barbie’s Dream House, I decided to just do it, all Nike-likey.

I got the Wee Lass psyched for it early in the week, and this morning, right after I got back from a birthday prezzie run to Target (she’s getting a Kindle Fire and yet another Lalaloopsy), she and I bundled up and headed downstairs.

Hubby begged off the adventure, but was still semi-lurking nearby, pretending to be shopping at the supermarket right behind the rink.

So how’d it go? Eh – at least as far as the Wee Lass is concerned. She gripped the sides the entire time, fell a lot, and didn’t even make it all the way around twice before throwing in the towel the second she spotted Dad hiding behind a potted plant.

She’s only gone one other time, so I wasn’t especially thrilled that she’d already decided she’s “over” it. Several of her friends are out there all the time, careening around the ice like mini Michelle Kwans.

Still, I didn’t want to push too hard. Maybe it’s just not her thing. She’s a great little swimmer and totally loves her Wednesday afternoon hip-hop class, so it’s not like she gives up on everything too early.

After they left, I did several more laps, carefully avoiding the crazy kids with the helmets falling on their tiny tushes all around me. I wasn’t going very fast, but I could definitely feel it in my thighs, which was awesome.

As a teenager growing up in Newport, ice skating at the rink at this prep school was pretty much socially mandatory, even for us stoners who attended the neighboring public high school. So of course I went all the time, and even, if memory serves, got semi-decent at it.

Of course that was eons ago. Now it’s all about the Wee Lass, and Hubby, and making sure we don’t have any regrets about not using the ice-skating rink that lives, for a few months a year, literally in our front yard.

But personally, I’m more into the tennis courts on top of our building. That’s really my thing, baby. Hubby’s too. Thwack.

Many, many years ago, I was assigned a story for W about an upcoming Chanel perfume commercial, which was being directed by the legendary French artist Jean-Paul Goude. The very young and impossibly gorgeous Vanessa Paradis was starring in the spot, and I was to visit the Union Square set, absorb the vibe, chat up the ultra-charming Goude, and hightail it back to the office.

I arrive, and Paradis is literally swinging in a massive, human-scale bird-cage. (Here’s a rickety old YouTube link to the commercial, it’s pretty major.) Though she’s up in the air, I can see from a distance how ravishing she is, and exactly why Chanel cast her as the “face” of its Coco scent.

Later, on a break from filming, I talk with her a bit. And I am seized by a level of jealousy I have not felt before this encounter, nor since. I’d been around so many of the glamazons of the day – Cindy Crawford, Christy Turlington, etc – but none of them pierced my self-confidence bubble quite the way Paradis did.

Thus it was hardly a surprise to me when I read that Johnny Depp fell in love with Paradis the second he laid eyes on her. They had two kids and lived a semi-secluded, deeply glam life – homes in France and LA, their own private cluster of islands – mostly away from prying eyes.

So much for the away from prying eyes bit; this week’s People informs us that the gorge couple is now leading “‘sad’ separate lives.’”

It’s not a happy tale, as you can imagine. And while I certainly wish Paradis well, I couldn’t help but feel that little jealousy-pang boomerang right back when I cracked open my issue of the mag.

Her entire upper body – arms, shoulders, chest – looks like it’s carved from a block of Carrara marble. I had no idea she was in such great shape. I want to know her workout secrets, and I can’t find them anywhere.

Project!

Grrr…stayed up late watching on-demand episodes of my precious Downton Abbey and Homeland. And after the latter – OMG times a million, Claire Danes’s Carrie character has a complete psychotic break – I had a bit of trouble drifting off.

Shocker. Not.

Scary, disturbing television shows viewed after a long, stressful day at work = trouble drifting off.

Anyway, the entire time I was watching poor Claire bouncing off the walls because of her bipolar disease, I was warily munching the kale chips pictured above. I say “warily” because I kept inadvertently chomping into stems along the way. And it’s only now, as I sleepily type this blog post, that I spy the “How To Eat Kale Chips” directions on the bottom of the package.

And I quote: “New York Naturals kale chips are made with the whole kale leaf. Sometimes stems on the bigger leaves are hard to chew. Most people prefer to eat just the leaf part and discard the stems.”

Now you tell me!

Although this brand of chips comes in a few different flavors, I wanted to try this particular one because it’s heavily sprinkled with nutritional yeast. As someone who greatly – and I mean greatly – admires vegans for their commitment to animal kindness, I’ve read a lot about the wonders of nutritional yeast.

And just last week, I saw “nutritionist to the stars” Keri Glassman touting it as a “superfood” on Kathie Lee and Hoda.

So what the hell is it, you ask? In a nutshell (but it’s not derived from nuts), nutritional yeast is fake grated cheese. For a bit more info (and a video that I didn’t watch, just being honest here…), here’s a little link.

Oh, and if you want recipes featuring this brash cheese imposter, nab a copy of the Skinny Bitch In the Kitch cookbook.

Okay, gotta get motoring on another busy day. Watch out for stems, mamas!

I’m from Tulsa, so I can ask it like this: Did any of y’all happen to catch Paula Deen on Doctor Oz a while back? The episode in which she revealed her deepest, darkest health secret, which was that she smokes like an effing chimney?

Not that she had diabetes, which she’s known about for three freaking years – and easily could have shared with the good doctor, and by extension, us. Nope, that little bombshell she saved for now, when the holidays are behind us and many mamas, myself included, are grappling with the remnants of all that pumpkin pie and fruit cake welded to our asses.

Anyway, back to that Doctor Oz ep. I’ve never really watched Paula Deen’s own show, so for me, this was my first real television encounter with her. And I have to admit I was a little charmed. (I’m not now, which we’ll get to in a minute.) She was working the Fun Southern Granny schtick to the max, and when she finally quasi-copped to the ciggy thing, she said, basically, “I really only hold ‘em Doctor Oz.”

“Well, how many do you ‘hold’ every day?” he asked.

“Oh, about 20,” she shot back, to guffaws from the audience, and much fluttering of her inch-long falsies.

I think it was 20 – but I wouldn’t testify to that in a court of law. I’m up early because I have a ton of “real” work to do, and I don’t have time to go and fact-check meticulously. This is more of a soap-boxy, riffy ranty blog post; if you’re demanding top-notch journalism right this second, please look elsewhere.

Anyway, the net-net of the Oz ep was that Deen wanted to stop smoking – her hubby had already done so – and Doctor O promised to help with that. Both of my three-pack-a-day parents died really early – and I struggle with not smoking myself, which I’ve blogged about - so I wish her luck with that. It’s insanely hard to stop smoking, some experts believe it’s even tougher than kicking heroin. Grrr…

Cut to yesterday, and I’m rushing around like a madwoman trying to get the Wee Lass ready for school, and myself ready for work in the Big Apple. Flicking on The Today Show, I see a teaser for Deen and her big sit-down with Al Roker about her recently-revealed diabetes. “Oooh, Momover Lady sooo wants to see that,” I said to myself, stripping for the shower, clicker in hand.

And I did see it, just enough to make me want to vomit up my flaxseed organic oatmeal.

If you guys didn’t see the segment, and would like to, here’s a link to it.

So here’s what put such a massive bee in my bonnet: Deen refuses to admit that her crazy-ass high-fat, high-cal cooking is the key, key, key reason she now has full-blown Type 2 diabetes. She essentially tried to pin it to genetics and age, and said she’s always practiced “moderation.” Bull–t, babe. Consider me no longer charmed by your Fun Southern Granny, Mile-Long Falsies routine.

Huge, huge props to Al, who basically called her on every last bit of her bull—t, including the fact that she’s now being heavily compensated by a diabetes-drug manufacturer. It was in his lovely Al way, but he was tough nonetheless.

Fun, gratuitous factoid about Al and Momover Lady: Back in the day, we both used to work out at the same private gym, and he was such a sweetheart, huffing and puffing away on that elliptical, and greeting everyone with a hearty howdy. Al knows the value of exercising and eating well. He’s had to learn it firsthand.

And also, huge props to Today Show contributor Dr. Roshini Raj, who also did her bit to burst Deen’s “moderation” bubble. Dr. Raj point-blank said that being overweight is “the most defined risk factor” for Type 2 diabetes.

So there you go, Paula Deen. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.