Essential Baby blogger Amity Dry
I’m slightly ashamed to admit it, but the Kardashians have become a guilty TV pleasure of mine lately. Don’t judge. Although I have to say I was doing a far bit of judging during a recent episode when new mum Kourtney Kardashian showed her obsession with losing her post baby weight. She was preparing for an upcoming magazine cover shoot, where she was posing in a bikini, to show other mums you could ‘still be sexy after having a baby.’ Appreciate that Kourtney, thanks.
So just how was she getting back in shape? What were her secrets, I hear you ask? Well, it was simple really. She was starving herself and spending every waking moment at the gym.
Instead of relaxing at home and enjoying her new baby she was working her tiny little body so hard that she ended up collapsing and needing to be put on a drip. All in the attempt to show that she ‘still had it’ now she was a mum. In one scene she pointed out her stomach (a stomach most of us would kill for at any stage of our lives) and complained that she just wanted to look like she did in her Maxim shoot. A shoot, which her sister kindly pointed out, was before she had a baby and her body had changed, the only sensible moment in the whole show.
In the end Kourtney posed for the shoot and looked incredible in her tiny bikini, not a trace of post pregnancy paunch or sleep deprived panda eyes to be found. And subsequently, mothers all over the bought that magazine and felt just a little bit worse about themselves, for not looking like that. Because they have been spending time with their babies and eating to keep up their milk supply, instead of starving themselves and working out 24 hours a day. Interestingly, when the shoot was over Kourtney herself admitted that she had taken things too far, because she felt so much pressure to look like she did before she had her baby.
The pressure these days to be a ‘yummy mummy’ is everywhere you turn. Magazine articles featuring countless celebrity mums showing off their post-baby bodies and failing to mention the massive effort it took to look like that. Add a little airbrushing to erase the stretchmarks and the transformation is complete. Personally I don’t understand the whole, ‘isn’t my body amazing after having a baby’ thing at all. Isn’t having a baby a big enough achievement without needing to boast about getting back into your bikini immediately?
Co-incidently, I should say I did my own new baby magazine photo shoot a while back (because what mother doesn’t want to show off her kids if given the chance!) However, I was not wearing a bikini, because I will never wear a bikini again. And my solution for my post baby stomach was to hold said baby in front of it whenever possible. Cheap and effective!
The truth is, like most real life mums, I will most likely take months to lose all of my baby weight. Which is what is healthy and recommended. And even when I do lose these final few kilos, there will aspects of my body that will never look exactly the same as they used to. But, shouldn’t we be OK with that? After all, those physical changes reflect the emotional and life changes we undergo when we become a mum. So why do we feel the need to erase every sign of them?
Look, I won’t pretend I don’t want to fit into my pre-pregnancy jeans as soon as possible, because I do. Shopping for summer clothes the other day proved to be far more torturous than the worst night of sleep deprivation, despite my protests that it shouldn’t matter. But whenever I long for those skinny jeans to do up again I will remind myself that this body just created, carried, birthed and continues to feed my precious baby. Which is a hell of a lot more impressive than fitting in to skinny jeans.
Instead of being so quick to hide any traces of our childbearing bodies we should be embracing them, respecting what they are capable of and appreciating the gift they have given us. But as long as society, in particular the media, puts the emphasis on how quickly we can bounce back to ‘our old self’ we will always be missing the point.
Kourtney Kardashian wants to show you can still be sexy when you’re a mum and, of course, she is right. In fact, I feel even sexier now that I’m a mum. But not because my body has bounced back to what it was. Because I am smarter, stronger, more capable, more confident, more loving, more self-aware and less self-absorbed. And I reckon those qualities are sexier than fitting into skinny jeans any day.
Did you feel the pressure to get back into your pre-pregnancy shape? What did you do to lose the weight and how long did it take? And do you feel that society puts too much emphasis on regaining 'our old selves' instead of celebrating the changes our body undergo? Comment on Amity's blog.
