Bounce Back Baby Body
Here is a photo of me about three days before I gave birth to my first daughter.
You never know what your body is going to look like on the other side of pregnancy. I remember after I delivered. The nurses told me I needed to try to get up and use the restroom, and I remember looking at myself in the mirror under the fluorescent lighting in the hospital bathroom and being horrified by my body and thinking “Well, this will never be the same again.” I know we should be celebrating our female bodies and the miracle of life that we just pushed out. But how can you not have a little sadness over the death of your tight skin and youthful shape?
But as icky as I looked on my daughter’s birth day, things did get better. Breast feeding burns a ton of calories. You can eat like a horse and the pounds melt away. I think I gained about 25 to 30 pounds with my pregnancy. I left the hospital with ten or fifteen pounds to lose. And less than a month after giving birth, thanks to the breast-feeding, I got down to only needing to lose five or eight pounds.
However, that last little bit took what felt like forever to come off. I feel like with both my pregnancies, it took me two years to get back to where I started. Why did it take me so long to lose those last five to eight pounds? What makes it difficult is that everything has shifted and so you have to stutter. You have to lose a little, gain some muscle, lose a little, and eventually it happens if you stick to your healthy foods plan and exercise. But I do consider myself lucky to have been able to bounce back fairly quickly. Everyone is unique and may have a different post-partum body story.
Recently, on the MJ Morning Show we talked about this woman who bounced back after her child’s birth and posted some photos showing off her fit-new-mama self. Twitter trash-talkers were offended and triggered by this, tweeting that this woman is not reality. Well, that’s her reality. She happens to be one of the lucky ones/hard workers…whatever you want to call it…who does bounce back quickly after pregnancies. Why do people have to hate on others’ accomplishments or things someone else is good at?
What are your thoughts? Should she have kept her pregnancy bounce-back story to herself?