So, lately every time I go out or see people, I'm told "wow! You look great!" And my first reaction internally is to want to argue. I'm polite and thankful, so I just thank them, but inside I think at best that's just what you say to a new mom, but more likely they are just plain lying, because, yuck! I look terrible! Don't I?
I won't step on the scale. Not because I'm scared so much as because it's never been an accurate measure of where I am. Today I did something that felt both desperate and brave. I tried on the pants I wore before I started wearing maternity clothes. I know what my perspective has been-that I'm gross, and the extra 15lbs or so that I've left from my pregnancy is making me look just massive. I needed to temper that with reality. Reality is this: I can button, zip, and with the right top, conceivably wear the jeans I wore last thanksgiving-when I was about 6 weeks pregnant with Lexi. I'm not able to do that with the pants I wore a month later on Christmas, because I actually lost 8 lbs during that month, but that's ok. I have a little muffin top and a pooch of fat below my navel, and that's ok too. My arms are not the "guns" they were a year ago, but they will be, and sooner than even I think. The truth is that every ounce and every extra inch will be a pleasure to work off because of the reason I gained it. I've gotten my food back on track, I've started doing Yoga again, and I'll be ramping up a bit each week until I'm back at the level I was back in January of this year when I started staying home. I've gotten a reality check, and it's time to enjoy this journey, get disciplined, and not beat myself into a depression.
You do look great you crazy woman :) You haven't posted too many pictures of yourself lately, just Lexi, for obvious reasons I thought (she's your main focus right now) but I hope it's not because you feel gross. You posted on recently and all I could think was, Wow, Mae looks great. Possibly even better than before you were pregnant, maybe it's the glow of being happy in motherhood, or that Lexi was in the picture so you weren't thinking about how you looked, but it looked awesome.
ReplyDeleteI know a lot of women who had a hard time reconciling their bodies after having children. I can't speak from experience but the plain fact is your body is different. My Sister in law, and my sister both have issues about their stomachs, no matter how fit they get, how small they get they feel like they are gross because their stomach is wrinkly and muffin toped. They don't have a choice though, they both got C Sections, they will never have muscle where it was, they have scar tissue and it will never be the same. Yet they beat themselves up over it.
Other women I know think of themselves as failures because they don't match what they were before the baby, when it comes down to it our bodies change, permanently, you can never compare to pre pregnancy. Did you know that many women have incremental vision changes after pregnancy? My mother's wisdom teeth only dropped a little when she was pregnant, a little wich each child. Allergies that you never had can develop, not to mention things having to do with iron, blood pressure, and blood sugar.
it's a new body, get used to it, and love it, because I bet Lexi does.
Wow! Thanks Re! It's definitely a new body, and while I'm working on getting it fitter, I've definitely also-see lexi's birth story on here-learned it's far stronger than I knew!
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