I Am Not Beyonce. Unless it’s French for, ‘bouncy.’
One of the most fascinating things about pregnancy is how far your skin can stretch over the course of a year. You may not realize it, but it stretches so far that I’d be willing to bet you could reupholster an entire loveseat with it. Fortunately your skin does go back. Eventually. It might take a decade and until then you are left with stomach flaps that will need to be tucked into the waistband of your jeans.
We moms put a tremendous amount of pressure on ourselves to lose our pregnancy weight faster than we can deliver our babies, which isn’t really fair since no one stepped in between our fourth cannoli and a hot fudge sundae chaser. Unless you wanted to experience a punch in the throat followed by an emotional roller coaster of tears and guilt trips, it’s probably best you didn’t intervene.
A lot of women have an expectation of dropping 20-40 pounds four or five months after giving birth which is pretty unrealistic since it took a year to get here; pregnancy is actually ten months, not nine, and Ben and Jerry are the only folks who really understand. To lose that much weight that fast you would need an entire eight-hour day devoted just to exercising for that to be possible; or a lot of duct tape. Aside from celebrities, who has an entire eight-hour day to devote just to exercising? Or duct taping? I get about one uninterrupted hour in my day to do everything I want to do. Exercise is always on the list but other things surface like not exercising and a new episode of “Cake Boss: The Next Great Baker” because really? Who doesn’t love cake?
Getting back into any kind of exercise routine after you have a baby is a grueling task. It’s impossible at first and unlikely to happen until seven or eight months have passed and your baby has a routine Even the most challenging baby eventually waves the white cloth diaper and surrenders into some kind of schedule submission; regardless of how erratic and inconvenient this ‘schedule’ might be, a schedule is a schedule and if you’re lucky you’ll get a full three hours of fabulous sleep.
When the idea of doing anything, including blinking, doesn’t exhaust you anymore, then you’re ready to engage in heart-exploding cardio. So, you start exercising after months of not and when your heart actually explodes a hot fudge sundae with a cannoli chaser is the only thing that makes it possible for your lungs to regain function.
Just remember Beyonce had a personal trainer and a dietician helping her shed her baby pounds. Maybe Ben and Jerry is all the rest of us have but someday when belly flapping becomes an official Olympic sport we can be proud to know that we were the sole inspiration for their next ice cream: Cannoli and a Hot Fudge Sundae Chaser.
Christina is a stay-at-home mom who lives near Denver with her husband, two daughters and a cat who’ll never forgive her for having children. You can find her lurking around at: www.christinaincolorado.com
LOL– and amen.
For the record, my in-laws are genetically tall and slender (something I hope my kids inherit vs. my family’s short, stout gene pool). My mother-in-law told me she left the hospital after giving birth to my husband in her pre-pregnancy jeans. If I didn’t love her, I wouldn’t like her very much.
I totally relate to this! I gained enormous amounts of weight with both my pregnancies. During the first one I ate like a truck driver, under the assumption that the weight would just fall off. Not so much! We women need to support each other on this and tell the truth! The only way I lost all the extra weight was going on a nationally known diet that my friends called the “crack/water” diet because you had to drink lots of water and take “caffeine” pills. Just the worst!!!
I was so frustrated with losing weight from my first pregnancy that I just decided to have a second baby and forget it was an issue for another eight months. I remember being excited at four months when I was able to mask the junk food belly with a baby belly.