Everyone and I mean EVERYONE is obsessed with a woman's body. We pick on salads so we don't get nasty looks when we prance around in bikinis. We get chastised for wearing form-fitting clothing when pregnant because heaven forbid we flaunt our well-earned baby weight. We are told breastfeeding in public is obscene because even just a hint of our breast is apparently terrifying to some and makes their eyeballs burn. And the clock starts ticking soon after we give birth with people wondering when we are going to lose the baby weight and fit into our pre-baby clothes. Because motherhood, in itself, isn't stressful enough already.
Writer Kate Spencer's blog on how there is so much more to motherhood than your post-baby bod spoke to me. And by speak to me, I mean I was nodding my head yes the whole time and said about 14 hallelujahs throughout. Spencer is adding so much more to this ever-important dialogue.
She was fed up by the barrage of media nonsense wondering when Kim Kardashian was going to show the world her post-baby body. Spencer tweeted: "Post-baby bod is a four letter word."
I'm nodding in solidarity with Spencer again.
The tabloids, the media, anyone with a warped sense of what's important in life, people who worry way too much about just how much weight has Kate Middleton gained, those caught up in the superficial ... all of these types make having a baby all about how to QUICKLYerase the fact that you just had a baby the minute after you had a baby. Is she skinny again? Is she? Is she? Let's make it all about some warped view of what is a more pleasing aesthetic. Because sadly a well-rounded belly isn't considered beautiful when it should be viewed as the beautiful womb that it is. Our scars should be eradicated and never spoken of again. It's all so ridiculous and not focused on what's important. We shouldn't care if we still haven't dropped every last one of the lbs.
Spencer (thank you!) contributes beautifully to this very important discussion in her post:
There is an important conversation to have about motherhood that we're not having on a larger level. I know this because I talk to moms all the time. None of us are talking about maxi dresses or nursery colors or how we worked out for 90 minutes a day with our trainers while wearing a corset. We're talking about how our maternity leaves don't feel long enough. How often there's nowhere to pump at work so we do it in our cars. How frustrating it is to be making too much milk/too little milk. How some days we can't stand our partners, and on other days they totally save us.
This is not to say health, exercise and weight loss aren't important parts of the conversation. But that's just it -- they should be one small part of it, not the WHOLE THING.
She is spot-on. Simply put, we have so much more important things to worry about.
No one talks about a man's post-baby body or post-anything body. No one wonders when a man is going to lose his post-partying beer weight. No one questions when dad is going to shed those pounds he gained while helping his baby mama eat those 300 extra calories a day during pregnancy.
We need to celebrate motherhood. This includes the weight gain because this is what helped nourish our babies, our post-baby bodies don't need to bounce back and be the exact same because we will never be the same again -- our lives have changed forever. And that's a beautiful thing.
Does it frustrate you when the media and others put too much pressure on moms to get back to their pre-baby weight?
Image via Drew and Merissa/Flickr