When I was pregnant, I honestly didn’t give too much thought about my body after the girls. One baby was one thing, but two? I gave up on the notion that I might ever have my "body" back after the girls were born.
about 1.5 weeks before the girls were born!
After the girls were born, I was pretty deliberate in not sharing too much about my post partum journey as far as my body went. Why, you ask? Because I didn’t really find it that important. I had grown two healthy, beautiful baby girls - and let’s be honest, I didn’t have enough time between pumping, feeding, and rocking sweet little babies to be thinking about what I looked like afterwards.
Don’t get me wrong - I LOVE reading about people’s postpartum journeys, and I could binge read body after baby posts all the live long day. I think it is so interesting how each person’s experience is different. But, it just wasn’t for me.
My mentality was always - "it took my body nine months to change, and I need to give it time to get back to (my new) normal". That’s not to say, however, that I didn’t have times of desperation to fit back into my old clothes or be able to wear my bikinis again. I vividly remember a night when the girls were about 4 months old when I went to Kohl’s to go pants shopping. Worst. Idea. Ever. After buying two pairs of leggings, and then reverting back to my maternity pants, I declared that I would never go pants shopping again. (note: I have gone pants shopping since, and it hasn’t been too bad. 😉 However, I do still rock one pair of maternity pants… that’s really bad, isn’t it??)
Truthfully, my body held onto a little bit of extra padding until I was done nursing. I was never one that nursing seemed to help me drop that "last ten pounds", so I didn’t push it. Once I had made the decision to stop exclusively pumping when the girls were about 9 months old, the rest came off pretty easily.
So, did I spend a whole lot of extra time trying to lose the extra weight? Not at all.
Does my body look like it did pre-babies? Not at all.
My hips might be a little wider, my abs are separated a little bit, I have a little "mommy tummy", I have some loose "twin skin" (it’s a thing - my stomach could only be stretched so far!), and I have some stretch marks around my belly button and on my hips. In other words – this girl will never wear a bikini again.
But you know what?
I still don’t care.
It’s funny how your perspective changes once you’ve become a mother. All of those above "imperfections" are what helped me become the woman my girls call mama, and I am grateful for the journey that I have been on to get here. With that being said, would my perspective be a little different if I hadn’t gotten back to my "relatively normal" self after the girls were born? It’s hard to say since I’m not in that position, but I don’t think it would be.
One thing I want to make sure I instill in my girls is that their self worth has nothing to do with the way they look or the size pants they wear. My focus has always been to be happy and healthy – and everything else falls into place. I have made it a priority to take life as it goes, to make fit in fitness when I can, and to not stress over eating cookies (or in my case, m&m’s).
{ 49 comments… read them below or add one }
{ 1 trackback }