Pregnancy, Postpartum, and Keeping it Real

I had a play date with a mom whose son is a few months younger than Carter over the summer.  When I walked into her house one of the first things she said to me was how I looked so good and she just couldn't seem to lose the last of her baby weight.  I was floored.  When I looked at her she looked as thin as ever, like she was already back down to her pre-baby weight.  Her son was born 3 months premature and I had actually found myself wondering if gaining less weight had made it easier for her to get back down to her normal weight because from the looks of her facebook photos she was back there within months of his birth.  She went on to explain that she didn't start exercising again until her son was home from the NICU and she wondered if she just missed the boat by not exercising those months and therefore couldn't lose the weight.

Who knows why some weight melts off right away and some weight sticks around.  Everyone's body is different, everyone's pregnancy is different, everyone's delivery is different, and every experience is different.  I didn't have any answers for her, but I could share my experience.  I could share that I was back down to within 5 pounds of my pre-pregnancy weight within the first month, but then I stalled out.  I didn't lose another pound for months upon months.  I lost hope of ever making it back down to my pre-pregnancy weight and then 4 months postpartum I had lost another pound (you can read about my excitement when I discovered another pound was lost here).  All this stagnant weight loss was occurring while I back to running daily, mind you.  I started going for walks my 2nd day home from the hospital and then run/walking 4 weeks postpartum and built from there.  What I do know is my body must've needed that extra weight.  I must've been carrying it for some reason.  Maybe it was extra fat for breastfeeding or maybe some of that extra weight was in my boobs.  Who knows.  But what I do know is that I'll be prepared this time.  I'll know that no matter how careful I am with eating during pregnancy, no matter how little weight I gain while pregnant, no matter how careful I am with eating postpartum, and no matter how much I exercise postpartum, some of the weight may just stick around for a while.  And I'm okay with that.  I know it will go away eventually just like it did last time.

It was refreshing to talk with someone who had also struggled to lose those last few pounds while frustratingly having to hear other people say how lucky she was that she was able to lose the weight so quickly.  It was eye opening to hear someone saying to me the exact things I was thinking to myself about her.  She wondered how I lost the weight so fast and I was sitting there wondering how she had done it.  If she hadn't started the conversation it never would have happened.  We both would have gone on wondering how the other was able to do it, never knowing that the other one really hadn't.  It made me realize how important communication is even with the tricky stuff.  It's important for us to have a dialogue about these things, to share our experiences, to let others know it's not always easy.  That's why I very strongly believe it is so important to keep it real when discussing pregnancy, child birth, and motherhood.  It's not helpful to someone for me to paint a rosy picture and say, "I loved every minute of being pregnant" because while I do love being pregnant I'm not sure it's possible to love every minute of anything you do, let alone something that lasts for 9 months!  Everything comes with struggles and difficulty.  That's just life.  So while I will tell people I honestly loved being pregnant and thought it was such an amazing experience, I'm always quick to throw in there that I was caught off guard by an unexpected sneeze and peed my pants on multiple occasions.  There was back pain, there were migraines, there was throwing up, but of course none of that compares to the excitement of feeling your baby move inside you for the first time, for the second time, every single time.  I think we owe it to each other as members of the human race to share our experiences, both good and bad when it comes to these common experiences.  It makes everyone feel more normal and there's nothing more refreshing than that!  And that's one of the many reasons why I love Sarah and her blog.  She wrote a post when she was 35 weeks pregnant where she shared a story about peeing herself in public.  All I could think was, been there, sister.  And don't we all need more of that?  More feeling normal and part of a group.  You peed your pants when you were pregnant?  Oh yes, so did I!