Been working on my weight feeling like im not gaining could realy use some support
thank u
(Anonymous)
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My Story (Brittany)
My name is Brittany and I am 7 months postpartum after the vaginal delivery of my first (and likely, only) child, a beautiful baby girl named Freyja. I’m nearly 23 years old and although I’m young, my pregnancy unplanned, I feel that I came into my situation informed and prepared to do what I need to do to have a healthy pregnancy and minimally traumatizing birth and postpartum period. I was active before conceiving, spending at least 45 mins, 3 days a week at the gym. I planned my daily meals with a focus on the amount of calories and types of food my growing baby and I needed (an extra 300 calories a day, give or take) with some wiggle room for the occasional treat. Prior to baby strength training was my game and I won’t lie that I was a bit disheartened with the conventional wisdom that now that I was pregnant that would need to stop. Thankfully my ob-gyn was a fitness fanatic and mother as well, and she informed me that while I would have to be conservative with the weights, I would by no means need to stop. I simply switched from pushing the limits each session to doing a lot of reps with a comfortable to lighter weight. I still squatted, lifted and even benched up until the 9th month of pregnancy. I trained abs vehemently with a special focus on gentle exercises that would not strain them as I had a mild diastasis. The 9th month I cut down to moderate cardio only and found that the typical aches and pains of being pregnant were lessened by this moderate amount of activity, though getting off the couch to do so was a struggle indeed. 4 days before my eventual labour I could feel that it was indeed time to rest. The labour itself (though I have nothing to compare it to) was relatively easy. It was a vaginal delivery, no tearing. I had the fitness and muscle tone I needed to push out my baby in only 45 mins. Kegels were indeed my friend. Past the soreness and muscle trauma of the actual birth and I am completely back to normal in terms of pelvic floor function. I don’t pee when I sneeze or otherwise. I’m now almost 7 months post-partum and I have my body back. It took work, but I’m back to lifting heavy and I feel great and grateful every day that I was surrounded with the right people to help me make this milestone in my life one that hasn’t left me feeling poorly about myself. I’m not being a neglectful mother by taking that 45 mins to work on myself, I’m an example to my daughter that hard work and a healthy lifestyle will pay off every day of your life. When the stress of motherhood mounts it’s a needed release and I truly feel that it makes me a more energetic and attentive parent. My body is my own, it’s the only one I will ever have and as long as I’m able I will treat it kindly.
Special Needs (Susi)
Previous post here.
When I was pregnant with my son, the worst thing that happened was I had an a-hole for a doctor. When I was pregnant with my daughter, it was a totally different experience. Almost from the moment I found out I was pregnant, there were problems.
At our first ultrasound, everything seemed okay, except I was farther along than I thought. We had our next ultrasound at 22 weeks, and we were so excited to find out it was a girl. We chatted happily about her until the end of the ultrasound, when the tech said she wanted to go get a doctor. Immediately our hearts started racing. What was wrong? We were told to wait in the waiting room for the results.
Our midwife called us back to tell us that our baby had echogenic kidneys. It could be a marker for Down Syndrome or many other diseases. We would have to go see a neonatologist.
We saw the neonatologist once a month for the duration of the pregnancy. We had so many ultrasounds—I think we ended up having 9 ultrasounds all in all. The small bonus of getting to see our daughter was offset by the tremendous worry and sadness that she might be seriously ill. Finally, by the seventh month, her kidneys were fine, but at that time she turned and was transverse (sideways) breech. She remained transverse breech for the duration of the pregnancy. She would flip around all the time, but I could always feel her head on one side or the other, never in the bottom where it belonged.
I tried everything I could think of to get her in the right position. I tried moving her with my hands, talking to her, even doing acupuncture, but nothing worked. Reluctantly, my midwife and I agreed that we would schedule a version (where the doctor turns the baby in utero) and a c-section for the same day, and if the version didn’t work, they would do the c-section. I was terrified of the surgery and hated the idea of an unnatural birth. The day came, and the version didn’t work. Well actually, it did work—the baby turned, but she turned right back as soon as the doctor took his hands off. They tried turning her and breaking my water to pull her into the birth canal. It didn’t work—my water wouldn’t break because there wasn’t any pressure on the amniotic sac. It was SO painful. My wonderful midwife gave us one more chance—she said we could try a natural birth with someone holding the baby in position, but she didn’t think it would work and we’d end up having a c-section anyway. We finally agreed that it seemed pointless to prolong it any more and prepped for the surgery.
The surgery itself went well, no problems. My beautiful baby daughter, Grace Elizabeth, was born at 10:30 a.m. She was breathing very loudly, and I asked if she needed oxygen. The nurses agreed that she did and rushed her to the NICU. Although her pulse oxygen level went up within a couple hours, my daughter’s breathing was still very loud, like a honking sound. The doctors examined her every time they saw her, and eventually decided she had tracheomalacia – a malformation of the trachea that she would grow out of.
She continued to grow, but never learned how to roll over on her own, so at her 6-month well baby visit I asked her pediatrician about it. She agreed that there was a delay and referred us to a physical therapist. Gracie learned to roll over quickly after we started PT, then we worked on sitting up, then crawling. She reached all those milestones a little late but still within the realm of normal. Walking was a different story—we are still working on teaching her to walk, and I don’t know if she will ever walk on her own.
There has never been a time when Gracie was healthy. We’ve been through so much with her. We discovered that she doesn’t feel pain in her hands and feet, and feels less pain than normal everywhere else (that’s why she can’t walk—she can’t feel her feet). She got RSV at 8 months and has had several serious respiratory infections since then (she barely survived some of them). She is prone to infection (it’s related to not feeling pain) and got gangrene. She spent a week in the hospital for that – she ended up losing the tip of her right index finger. And, most recently, we just found out that she has a degenerative eye disease that will probably cause her to lose her sight by the time she’s a teenager. After a year of testing, we’re still not sure what the overarching medical condition is (I think it’s an HSAN, possibly type 2 or maybe type 1). Anyone out there on the internet have any ideas?
I started writing this post because I felt really bad about having to have a c-section with her. I wanted to have a natural birth and her birth was as far from natural as possible. I constantly wondered if I had done everything I could to avoid the c-section—should we have tried holding her in the birth canal? Should I have gone to a different person for acupuncture? What if I had done things differently? Over time, though, I grew to believe that she would never have survived a vaginal birth—even if we could have managed to hold her in place to come down the birth canal, I think her trachea would have collapsed from the tracheomalacia. Still, it’s hard to not feel guilty.
We have been through so much with our little angel Grace, but we wouldn’t give her up for anything. She is a light and a love. She is the world’s best snuggler. She is silly, sweet, smart, and sassy. We are not out of the woods with her but we love her so much and will enjoy her as long as we can.
Breastfeeding (Susi)
Number of pregnancies – 2
Number of children – 2
I am a mother. I have two beautiful kids, a 5-year-old boy and a 2 ½ -year-old girl. They are awesome—they make me laugh, cry, smile, get angry, and love more than I’ve ever imagined.
When I was growing up, I always had irregular periods. When I was 29, I went to the OB because I’d had a 2 ½ week period (blech!). She diagnosed me with PCOS at that time and told me it would probably be difficult for me to get pregnant without medication. I didn’t want to take medication, but I had ALWAYS wanted kids, so I left her office dejected and cried for days. My then-boyfriend (now husband) and I stopped using birth control (why bother, you know?) and I got pregnant one cycle later. I went back to that same OB, and it was a terrible experience—she basically told me that I’d probably miscarry, told me what it would feel like, and she didn’t even give me the “congratulations on your baby” gift that was in the room. Again, I left her office crying. I went back two weeks later and her nurse was astounded that I was still pregnant.
I refused to go back to that awful doctor after the third appointment. I found a midwife, who was WONDERFUL. We saw her at every appointment throughout my easy, complication-free pregnancy, and she delivered my baby boy. The only problem with the whole pregnancy was that my son was late, and we ended up having him induced at 41 weeks (it was Christmastime and we were worried he’d be born on the 25th if we didn’t induce). The induction was as non-invasive as possible—he was really ready to go—and I had a natural, drug-free labor. It was beautiful, and so was my gorgeous baby boy.
At first, things went well with feeding my son. He ate really well. But problems started when he was 10 weeks old and I went back to work. He would cry every couple of hours for food all throughout the day and night. I would feed him and feed him, but he just kept crying. Eventually, my husband suggested that we try formula. The night he first had formula was the first night we slept well since he’d been born. I felt terrible! What was wrong with my milk?
It turns out that I wasn’t producing enough milk. In fact, by the time we realized it, he was barely getting any milk at all. I felt so bad—he had been literally starving and I didn’t know it. Everything I’d ever heard or read said that you should breastfeed for at least the first 6 months, and I couldn’t even make it to 3. I was so worried that he’d have allergies, or that he wouldn’t get enough antibodies, or that his general health would decline. I felt so guilty that my body didn’t work right, that I couldn’t feed my own child. After all, women have been feeding their own children for centuries, but I couldn’t make enough milk. It was terrible. As it turns out, my son is fine. He is perfectly healthy. He’s strong, smart, and very sweet and caring. I love him so much.
After I went through all this with my son, I started finding out that other women go through this, too. Not everyone’s body is capable of producing enough milk to feed a baby. It is grossly underreported on pregnancy and baby blogs, and yet so many women go through this. It is terrible—as a mother, you want to do the right thing. You want to give your kid the best nutrition, send him/her to the best schools, etc., but if you can’t for reasons beyond your control, there’s no one soothing you and telling you that you’re still a good mom. YOU ARE STILL A GOOD MOM even if you can’t breastfeed, or if your kid goes to public school, or if you work outside the home. I want to say that again – YOU ARE STILL A GOOD MOM. I like to think I’m a good mom, too.
Trying to Feel Positive (Megan)
Age:24
1 pregnancy, 1 birth
7 weeks postpartum
I am so thankful this site exists . The body shaming and unrealistic expectations put on appearance in our culture needs to end. All the same, I sometimes find it difficult to accept my new body.
All my life I loved my figure. I was thin with a flat stomach and a womanly hourglass shape. I didn’t even have to exercise. I felt sexy.
My husband and I felt all of the usual emotions when we found out I was pregnant; elation, nervousness, excitement, fear. My pregnancy was amazing. No morning sickness and a cute little baby bump. I felt great and I thought I was going to get away without stretch marks. Wrong! At 37 weeks they appeared. First, just a tiny one above my belly button and then one morning I woke up to find myself covered in the little purple bastards. I cried and felt like my body was ruined. I couldn’t have any clothing touching my belly without unbearable itching so the last 2.5 weeks of my pregnancy were pretty uncomfortable.
Our son was born on April 7th, 2013 weighing 7lbs 14oz. I gave birth to him completely drug free and I am so proud of myself. I didn’t tear so I didn’t need stitches and I was up walking around an hour after he was born. I felt completely back to normal by day 3. It was incredible. Our son is the most beautiful, amazing thing I’ve ever seen and I feel fortunate beyond words every time I look at him.
But my body. At first I thought, “Hey this really isn’t that bad” but now, 7 week later I’m starting to get pretty sick of it. The muffin top and the roll of fat that hang over my pants are not something I am used to and I don’t like looking at it. The stretch marks are distressing and my breasts…well I won’t even go into that.
But I grew a HUMAN BEING from nothing inside this body. That is amazing. This body was strong enough to bring a baby into this world with no pain medication and recovered from that trauma beautifully. My body is amazing.
It is perfect just the way it is but I still want to make some improvements. I’m excited to see what changes a few months of exercise will bring. Once again, this website is wonderful. Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to share these vulnerable feelings. Keep up the good work, hot mamas!
Pictures: Pre-pregnancy, 39 weeks, 6 weeks PP, my sweet baby boy
25 Year Old Mother of 3 (Anonymous)
at 20 yrs my first girl, who is turning six in a couple weeks
second daughter is 2 yrs old, she is turning 3 soon.
my third lovely boy is 4 months old now.
~~~simply put 3 babies in 5 yrs~~~
I have become super busy lately, but i wanted to take some time and put myself out there in front of others like me.
My children and taught me so much, literally changed my life for the better.
Being a cancerian, i love family and home. I havent worked in years thanks to my husband. which gives me opportunity to dedicate to them and focus on home and health. Since my first daughter alot of changes have been made: GF, non GMO, Organic, meat every other day, non processed snacks. I have become a home chef :) and very likely will be vegetarian soon. We do not buy any premade sweets, I bake. Lots more fresh foods here lately
.
These changes have made a huge difference, and now to add on to it, I am putting myself through CoDA, and my life is changing.
I know once i find the time to workout with the new baby I will transform as I have with every child.
.
speaking out is new to me, but here goes some pictures i just took
no sucking in, tucking up, pushing out, honest pictures of me standing for the world to see
all my physical body is right there, neither excited nor bummed.
Right now I simply am and that is ok with me
Made Me Even Stronger (Amanda)
Age: 23
Number of pregnancies: 1 pregnancy/birth
Age of child: 18 days
I got pregnant in London during the Olympics last summer. It wasn’t planned, but we were both pretty excited when I came out of the bathroom six weeks later with two positive pregnancy tests.
I was very fortunate to not experience the continual nausea or vomiting throughout my pregnancy that a lot of women experience.
I kept up with my fitness (doubles beach volleyball, Ashtanga yoga, running 5ks, hiking) until I was six months pregnant. I slowed down to gentler yoga and walking, but I was still in good shape. I ate really clean because I knew that every single thing I put into my body would affect my baby, which made me even more disciplined to eat pure, whole foods. I ended up gaining 23-24 pounds by the time I delivered at 41 weeks and 4 days (I’m 5’9″ and weighed 145 lbs pre-pregnancy).
No stretch marks appeared until one month before my due date. I don’t hate them or hate my body because of them, but they’re so friggin’ dark that I wonder if they’ll ever fade.
I gave birth to my beautiful Ember on May 2, 2013 in a birth center in South Florida. I had a short, yet intense five-hour labor at home before driving to the birth center and being told by my midwife that I was fully dilated and ready to push. I couldn’t believe I had gone through all the stages of dilation at home (Ujjayi breathing really helped)! I thought surely as a first-time mom my labor would last at least 12 hours. Upon hearing the great news, I stripped down naked and told the midwife I wanted to push in the bathtub. Fifteen to 20 minutes later, my baby was born. She came out perfect in every way.
I attribute my smooth labor and delivery to staying fit and healthy throughout my pregnancy. I did end up having a second-degree tear on my perineum and I know my vagina will never look the same, but let’s be honest, our babies are worth whatever “damage” happens to our bodies. I lost 20 lbs after giving birth, but I’m not worried about my weight. All of my energy is focused on feeding my baby and fueling my body with enough healthy foods to do so. I know that I will eventually get back into shape once my stitches heal.
I always considered myself a “strong” woman, but now I feel like I’m even stronger. It sounds so cheesy, but I know that if I can push a 7lb 4oz baby out of me without any sort of medical intervention or drugs, I can do anything.
Pictures: At the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, 39 weeks pregnant, just after birthing my daughter, my little Ember, my stretch marks two weeks postpartum.
Proof of My Child (Lil Rosh)
Age: 29
No. of pregnancies:1
Age of child: 6 weeks.
6 weeks ago I gave birth to a beautiful baby girl, my labor was nothing like I expected it to be, it lasted 36 hours after 32 hours with no pain meds i finally gave in and had an epidural but it took 3 attempts with the second attempt puncturing the spinal fluid, the epidural didnt work completely it numbed the contractions but I could still feel my legs and I felt every inch of my baby as she made her way into the world. I thought that when I met the little person that had been growing inside me that I would be overwhelmed with a rush of love…. I wasn’t! The truth is I was just so exhausted all I felt was relief! She was 7lb 11oz and perfectly formed. Before they had finished stitching me up I got a huge headache, the epidural that punctured my spinal fluid had resulted in an epi headache. I had to lie flat in my back until the next day when I was given a blood transfusion into my spine. I felt helpless. It took 3 days and a second blood transfusion to clear the headache, I had also bruised my tail bone, the recovery was extremely slow, I didn’t realize how much giving birth took out of you. But with each day that passed the pain lessened and my love for my daughter deepened. Now 6 weeks later I finally feel more normal and pain free… I’ve lost the 27lb I had gained, with the only proof of my child being the marks on my tummy and the saggy skin they cling too!!
Will this ever get better… Can exercise make my tummy look normal again??
1 Year PP and I Still Disgust Myself (Brittani)
I married my husband on my 18th birthday. A little over a month after our first anniversary, we found out about our oops baby. We had been using condoms, and I guess one failed. We were scared, since we were so young, but excited. I knew my body would change, but I was fairly confident that my belly would bounce right back like everyone said it would because I’m so young. Then I developed preeclempsia. I am 5’7″ and started at 121 lbs before pregnancy, dropped down to 119 right after I got pregnant, and then barely gained 12 lbs in the entire first two trimesters. Then I started jumping up at least 5 lbs a week from water weight with preeclempsia. Nothing I did prevented this, not even the extremely low sodium diet I was put on. When I went to the hospital at 41 weeks to be induced, I weighed 189 lbs. I lost nearly all of the water weight within three months of giving birth. I breastfed/pumped until my milk dried up at 4 months pp, and none of the real weight (all located in my belly and lovehandles) went away. The rest of my body looks the same as it did prepregnancy (aside from the one saggy boob lol), but between my bellybutton and vulva I am stretchmarked, saggy, blobby, and jiggly. It looks gross and makes me a little sick to look at it. My stretchmark color isn’t what bothers me, they’ve faded to a light lavender/pink/silver, it’s the fact that most of them are a 1/4 inch wide, and I even have a few over a 1/2 inch wide. Not long. WIDE. You can physically see the tears in my tissue under the skin. My tummy skin is saggy and floppy and makes me think of Adam Sandler’s tongue belly on Click. My love handles FORCE me to wear mom jeans up to my bellybutton, because anything lower gives me a muffin top of colossal proportions. I can’t wear sexy underwear, because the effect is ruined by all the flab spilling out over the top and my cellulite and stretchmarked butt. I’ve dieted, eaten right, walked, done yoga, and every other exercise I can do without danger to my health (I have exercise induced asthma attacks so I can only do exercises that don’t make you breathe fast or hard). Now my daughter is walking and running, and I’m also chasing her around. Nothing helps. My husband says he loves my body, and tells me I’m beautiful, but I know it’s because he doesn’t want to upset me. He may love me for me, but there is NO WAY to be attracted to my midsection below my bellybutton. I have always been a person who hates clothing, and if given an opportunity I would never wear them, but it’s sad now for me to have to be fearful of wearing certain clothes because they make me look lumpy or gross.
Pregnancy also ruined my health. My immune system is shot. Before I got pregnant, I was the kind of person that got sick maybe once a year. I developed recurrent strep after I had my daughter, and get it at least once a month. I also get recurrent sinus infections, and catch any illness I am or am not exposed to. I exercise regularly, and yet normal everyday activities like getting off the couch and cooking dinner make me out of breath. I am not overweight for my height 5’7 at 132 lbs, but I FEEL fat. Not like the way I look, but the way I feel when trying to move around. Fat and old and unhealthy. I just want to be healthy and pretty again so much that I go on good sob fests probably every week. I can’t afford to go to the doctor to see what is wrong, and I am so sick and tired of being sick and tired. Does this ever end? Will I ever feel like a healthy happy woman again, comfortable in my body?
~Age: 20
~Number of pregnancies and births: 2 pregnancies, 1 birth at 41 weeks. 1 miscarriage at 8 weeks.
~The age of your children, or how far postpartum you are: 1 year old
Having a Cesarean Section (Anonymous)
Previous post here.
When I was six months pregnant, I stepped out of the shower one day and caught a glimpse of myself in a full-length mirror. Looking at my bulbous belly, I realized then and there that the only way my daughter – I already knew the baby was female – could be born was by caesarean section. I went into labour naturally three months later. After 36 hours of futile pushing, however, I found myself strapped to an operating table as a team of doctors cut my little girl out of my abdomen. (I was conscious during the surgery.)
My caesarean was necessary. The baby was too big; I was too small; and without medical intervention, both she and I would likely have died. That knowledge didn’t necessarily make recovery any easier: I distinctly remember my bandaged belly aching whenever I laughed and my stitches moved. Three days afterwards when a nurse took off my bandages and stitches, an angry red mark greeted me where I’d literally been sliced and diced.
The next few weeks were a blur of breastfeeding, diaper changing, setting up my computer so that I could work at home, and touching base once again with friends and colleagues. I didn’t reflect in any great depth on how my daughter was born. But then one morning in July (about two months after the birth), it seemed to all come back to me, almost out of the blue. On one hand, I wasn’t particularly surprised at having had to give birth abdominally. I was almost 39 when my daughter was born, and older first-time mothers are at greater risk of delivery complications. My three sisters all had their children by caesarean for the same reason I did: baby too large, mother too small (in medical terms, cephalopelvic disproportion). Add the fact that I’m fairly narrow in the pelvis, and I knew even before seeing my bulging belly in the mirror that my chances of being sectioned were fairly high. Nonetheless, it was a bit disconcerting to contemplate the fact that without modern medical technology, I would most likely be dead now. In a sense, my body had failed me.
Since that July morning, I’ve read a great deal about other women’s reactions to having a caesarean section. At one end of the spectrum, some mothers feel cheated of a ‘real’ birth experience by not being able to deliver vaginally. Other women in contrast specifically request a caesarean even without medical indication because they do not want to go through what they view as the pain of a so-called normal birth (famous example: Britney Spears). I admit that during the last weeks of my pregnancy, I briefly toyed with the idea of asking my obstetrician to give me a c-section because I didn’t exactly relish the thought of suffering through labour. Then I had the fantasy of labouring without a hitch and triumphantly expelling the baby in one or two big pushes. I did indeed go through labour – and ended up with major surgery and a cut belly nonetheless.
This May 8, that will be six years ago. The angry red mark that awaited me when my bandages were removed is now a small white line along my abdomen. It’s fairly inconspicuous, but it is visible. As one of my nieces said, ‘Aunt Emilia had a crack on her tummy.’ It’s really the only tangible bodily sign that I actually gave birth: I don’t have stretch marks; my breasts haven’t changed at all despite nursing my daughter for over two years; and all my pregnancy weight was gone in two months.
As with the operation itself, women’s feelings about their caesarean scars vary from person to person. One woman interviewed in a 1980s book on pregnancy and childbirth felt inconvenienced by her scar because she, in her own words, had a thing for ‘bikinis and such.’ On the other hand, a second woman who had undergone a c-section said she looked on her scar as a badge. My own feelings about my scar are more like those of the latter woman. I remember a discussion with an ex-boyfriend (not my daughter’s father) where he told me that if I had a caesarean, I’d always have to wear a one-piece bathing suit because otherwise everyone would see the mark on my belly. ‘Oh, but you’d probably be proud of your scar,’ he added immediately afterwards.
I am proud of my scar. I don’t feel I have to hide it if I go to the beach, for example. And any sense of failure I might have at not being able to give birth ‘normally’ has long dissipated. I am also aware that if I ever get pregnant again (a very unlikely occurrence, for lack of both desire and – at 44 – ability), I will in all probability need another caesarean. A VBAC (vaginal birth after caesarean) would not likely be in the cards for me if I ever found myself ‘with child’ now.
Six years later, my caesarean section seems less of a ‘major surgery’ than simply the way that my daughter came into the world. So in that way, my scar and the operation that led to my daughter’s birth seem worth celebrating.