I Lost My Baby Weight In 3 Weeks But I’m Still Not Comfortable In My Post-Baby Body

There is nothing left of my pre-baby body. In clothes, everything superficially looks the same. This mistakenly prompts people to remark “you look fantastic!” or “I can’t believe you’ve had two kids!” It’s always nice to receive a compliment but this one feels more like a jab. The truth? I am so uncomfortable with this new body.    Other mothers tell me how lucky I am to look the way I do.  What they see on the outside doesn’t match what I feel on the inside.  They assume I am confident, that I don’t struggle somehow — because I’ve dropped the baby weight?  The truth is I am confident about very little since becoming a mother.

My pre-baby self was carefree and bold.  I took risks, threw caution to the wind and turned all my regrets into valuable lessons.  My post-baby self is full of self-doubt.  Am I raising a good child?  Am I doing the best I can for them?  Even the superficial, “is this appropriate for a mother to wear/do/say?”  Not wanting to make a single mistake for them, I second guess myself and compensate by researching every issue ad nauseam.  I try to believe the fact that I care so much makes me a good mother, but I don’t have the confidence that other mothers assign to me because of my waist size.  I’ve been a little overweight.  It’s far easier to lose a few pounds than to be deathly insecure about the responsibility of molding other human beings.

The elusive “pre-baby” status doesn’t just have to do with weight, yet that’s all I ever hear people talking about. “I want to lose the baby weight,” or “these extra 10 pounds are from my children.” At most I will hear the occasional, “my feet went up a shoe size” or “I miss going out to restaurants,” as if those two insider secrets encapsulate the many changes that come with motherhood.  I think if more mothers talked about the real changes in their bodies or the many emotional adjustments, we wouldn’t always be looking for our dress size as the tell-tale sign that we are the woman we were before having children. Maybe we’d ask celebrity moms real questions about how they are coping with the transitions and changes, rather than just getting tips from their trainers about ab work-outs.

The fact of the matter is my pre-baby self doesn’t exist in any way, shape or form — no matter how much use I get out of my old jeans.

(photo: SAJE/ Shutterstock)

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