When you’re pregnant there comes a point where you worry you’ll stay that big forever. It’s around the time you start wearing flip-flops because you can’t reach your feet and your husband’s gone to work without putting your socks on for you. You wonder if eating your own body-weight in Haribo was such a good idea, and you resign yourself to wearing maternity clothes to your son’s graduation.
Whenever the subject of weight comes up amongst friends, everyone goes to great lengths to reassure you that “the weight will positively fall off once you’ve got a baby to run around after!” I hate to point this out, especially if you’ve been relying on this tactic to get rid of your muffin top, but babies can’t move. So who exactly are you going to be chasing? I seem to recall the vast majority of my maternity leave was spent sitting on a sofa eating Jamaican Ginger cake to fill the time between meals. There was very little running involved. Except to the corner shop when I’d run out of cake.
There will always be the ones who just snap back into shape of course. There’s at least one in every post-natal group and annoyingly they’re not even the ones turning down the biscuits. Short of slipping molten lard in their herbal tea to add a few inches to their waistline there’s not a lot you can do about this injustice. They were just born lucky.
You could take up an exercise class if you’re really hell bent on finding your belly button again – nowadays there are all sorts of celebrity DVDs and routines to do at home. These are thoughtfully designed for you to do while baby is sleeping. My baby would only ever stay asleep if he was cradled across my left arm. It made for pretty good ballast when I did sit-ups, but he objected to the star jumps so we had to knock that one on the head.
At the end of the day your partner thinks you’re amazing for creating an actual real person, and genuinely doesn’t give two hoots that your stomach has turned into play-doh. When you have baby number two you’ll just get fat again anyway, so why waste time dieting now? Have another slice of cake – it’ll make you feel better.