Life with a new baby is full of surprises - among them, a body that hardly resembles your pre-pregnancy figure. It'll take some time, but you CAN lose the baby weight and fit into your normal clothes.
Who says labor ends with the birth of your baby? The definition of labor is “physical or mental exertion, particularly for some useful or desired end; toil; work.” Although that does perfectly describe the process of bringing baby into the world, it also accurately fits the description of what you’re in for when the birth is over: the struggle to regain your pre-baby body. We all seem to know the rare woman that wore her pre-pregnancy clothing home from the hospital and was back to her svelte self within a couple of weeks. Unfortunately, we tend to hold ourselves to that rare woman’s standards and are disappointed when we fall short. But the truth is, nine months of stretching and pulling and growing and gaining takes a real toll on the body, and it’s unrealistic to expect that it will bounce back immediately. It isn’t just your bread-dough stomach and expanded hips that need time to get back to normal; there are also displaced tendons, joints, bones, and muscles that must return to their usual size, shape, and position.
Where does all that weight come from, anyway?
It seems baffling that we gain twenty to thirty pounds (or much more, if you’re like me) and end up with a seven-or-so-pound baby. Here’s a breakdown of what’s packing on the poundage:
Baby – approximately seven and a half pounds
Fat, protein, and nutrients – seven pounds
Increased blood and fluid – eight pounds
Uterus – two pounds
Amniotic fluid – two pounds
Breast growth – two pounds
Placenta – one and a half pounds
That’s a grand total of thirty pounds. Throw in some cartons of Ben and Jerry’s and a killer french fry craving, and you’re even higher on the scale. Then, if you are the unfortunate sufferer of certain pregnancy conditions such as pre-eclampsia or gestational diabetes, you may gain even more. During the last month of my own pregnancy, my pre-eclampsia caused me to gain eighteen pounds’ worth of fluid retention in twenty-one days.