Exercise is for some, others go under the knife, and others just accept their new shape.
A friend of mine's mother is encouraging her to have children while she's still "young". Not because she might have more energy dealing with the terrible twos, totalitarian threes and frightening fours of her future.
Not because women's fertility plummets by half when we reach age 35. No, this friend's mother wants her to have children as soon as possible for a more crucial reason: so she can get her figure back. Urban myth says if a woman reproduces early it's more likely she will bounce back into shape. Whereas for the rest of us over-30s, the only thing likely to bounce is sagging breasts and mummy tummies.
With hot summer days here now, you'll find me and my son at the local outdoor pool, with every other mother and child within the neighbouring vicinity. While wading in the baby pool, I look across to the other side of the swimming centre. There, women with glistening bodies that have obviously spent a lot of time in the gym flutter about in the water, stride around as though on a catwalk, or expose their little derrieres to the sun. And almost all of them wear the ubiquitous bikini, like a badge of youth or brazenness. But for us on the other side, among the squealing toddlers and breastfeeding babies guzzling milk, there is another costume altogether. Almost unanimously, we don the one piece or T-shirt and bathers/wrap ensemble. There are two types of women at every pool. The bikini wearers and the one-piecers. Mothers, by and large, make up the latter.
Women are rarely prepared for the shape of motherhood. UK doctor Lorraine Ishak, of Transform Cosmetic Surgery Clinics, believes that only one in 10 women can expect to revert to their pre-pregnancy shape and size. "Recovery," in her opinion, isn't so much about age - although loss of skin elasticity is part of the ageing process - but rather about genetics and body shape. Regardless of diet and exercise, Ishak says weight gain, slackening breasts, loose stomach skin and stretch marks are some of the inescapable factors of motherhood. But she would say that, wouldn't she?
I wonder how women in France treat this issue, or in Brazil, for that matter? Surely the public presentation of self as "maiden versus mother" is culturally varied. In the west African country of Mauritania, for example, extra weight is traditionally considered sexy, with stretch marks the piece de resistance.
On a US forum about post-baby body image, one mum wrote: "I'm beyond caring any more. Yeah, I could lose 20 pounds [nine kilograms], but it's too much work to worry about it!" Another mum commented, "Childbirth turned me into a marsupial. I could smuggle contraband with my extra pouch."
Mummy-tummy anxiety is big business. Some mums luck out and regain their figure, some accept what they have, some work out, while others turn to surgery. Myself? For now, I'm going to stick to my side of the pool, and just concentrate on playing pass-the-ball with my baby son.
Dr Bella Ellwood-Clayton is a sex and relationships commentator who is writing a book on female sexuality.
Source: The Sun-Herald
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