Fighting Back to Pre-baby Body

I am not one of those women who looked at my post baby body and thought “My body did something amazing.”

Nope. I looked at my post baby body and wondered what in the ever loving hell happened. Why was my waist gone, where is that curve between by butt and my back, and for the love of all things holy, where did all this back fat come from?! It did something amazing in making twins, but it also paid a price. 

I’ve never been a skinny girl. Instead I have always been the curvy girl who is always one bag of Cheetos away from chubby. In college I crossed over that line straight to fat, and then fought my way back. Post baby I decided to avoid mirrors and let breastfeeding do its thing. Except that it didn’t. 

Thanks for the false hope world. I am one of those women whose body wants to hold onto every damn calorie for the baby (or in my case babies). At least I’ve got Salma Hayek in my corner on that one.

I don't know why I bother to try to take pictures
with toddlers anyway. 

With those hopes dashed around month six, and still kinda fat, I just threw in the towel and decided to wait until I was done breastfeeding. Then it turns out I had to wait another six months for my body to “return to normal.” That’s what the doctor told me. He stopped short of saying “twins fuck you up,” but I could tell that’s where he was going.

Nine months on, nine months off my ass. The girls will be two in March and I’m hoping to be back to pre-pregnancy by then, and if I am it’s because I worked my ass off in the gym in one hour intervals during my lunch hour. And if I’m not I’ll blame it on the hormones that linger from gestating, birthing and breastfeeding babies. Everyone is so damn eager to tell you all about how much birth hurts, but they make that whole “bouncing back” thing sound like a breeze.

I’m apparently one of the ones who needs to claw their way back. Through back fat and blown out ab muscles. Back muscles that just gave up at some point and a metabolism that decided to go on an extended vacation. It was so bad at one point I actually went to the doctor to find out what was wrong with me. The answer: I had babies. (I'm not kidding, this was actually the answer they gave me). 

The good news is you do eventually start to feel like yourself again. Finally some of my old clothes are fitting. The curve in my hips is more of a curve and less of a saddle bag. I’ve also figured out how to better dress like myself in this new size. How to better hide that extra tummy I have, what kind of fabrics are the most flattering and where to buy Spanx in bulk. 

Most importantly though I've realized that while I'm waging a personal battle with my view of myself I shied away from the camera. Suddenly I realized that there are tons of pictures of my girls and none of me and the girls, and that's not fair to them. I want them to look back and see pictures of us all having fun, laughing and making memories because while I will worry about how fat my arm looks in a picture, they'll just smile and see a picture of themselves with their mom.