Nancy O'Dell on Ashby's Guardian Angel
 Richie Buxo/Splash News Online |
When her mom Betty Humphries was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) in November 2007, Nancy O’Dell‘s thoughts turned immediately to her then 5-month-old daughter Ashby Grace, now 23-months. “I just kept telling her that I needed her and that Ashby needed her,” Nancy recalls in a new interview with WebMD magazine. “I told her she had to fight with everything she had.” While Betty eventually lost her battle, Nancy considers it “a huge blessing” that she got to meet her new granddaughter. “I know that Ashby now has an angel looking out for her,” Nancy says. Her mom’s presence is still missed, of course, but Nancy says she hopes to replicate their “extremely close” relationship as much as possible with Ashby.
“I wish I could call her up and tell her that Ashby is doing this or doing that. I could talk to my mom about anything. I never felt like I had to sneak out and I never wanted to participate in anything dangerous because I didn’t want to disappoint my parents…This is the type of relationship I hope to build with my daughter.”
The love she feels for Ashby is something Nancy, 43, admits caught her off-guard. “This is a love like you have never experienced before,” she notes. “I can’t possibly explain how much I love this person.”
“With the love, comes a lot of worry. My mom was a big worrier. She always said ‘I hope you are not a worrier like me,’ but I am.”
Click below to read about Nancy’s biggest postpartum surprise.
In her new book Full of Life — dedicated to Betty and Ashby — Nancy offers tips for dealing with some of the more “ugly” aspects of pregnancy, like constipation. “There is a recipe for my mom’s spice cake,” Nancy says. “I didn’t want to take any medications during pregnancy and I hate the taste of prunes, but this cake is full of prunes and it tastes delicious.” Weight gain was also an issue for Nancy during her first trimester. “My doctor said, ‘I don’t want you to diet, but you are beyond where you should be and we don’t want you to gain too much,’” she recalls. ” At the end, I leveled off and gained between 30 and 35 lbs.” What was left over, however, came as a surprise!
“What you don’t realize is that you still look pregnant after you deliver. Everyone tells you that you will have a little belly, but you look like you are still five or six months pregnant for a while.”
Shedding the baby weight was a gradual process. Nancy employed running with weight training to get back to within three pounds of her pre-pregnancy weight by three months postpartum, but the stress of caring for Betty during her illness led her to put weight back on. Finding time to exercise was also, at times, difficult. “I would literally go for runs in the driveway between feedings during my maternity leave to get back in shape,” she reveals.
There are also the demands of working motherhood to contend with. “It’s tough,” Nancy notes. “When I was interviewing first lady Michelle Obama, she said it was one big guilt trip.”
“If I am at work, I feel guilty that I am not with my family and when I am with my family, I feel guilty about work. My family is my first priority. The bottom line is that there is more guilt associated with putting work before family.”
As for whether or not she has plans to add to her brood with Keith Zubchevich — already dad to sons Tyler, 13, and Carson, 9, Nancy says,
“We are going to let it be. If it happens, it happens.”
Source: WebMD
– Missy
