The Baby Excuse

Pregnancy and babies can give a woman a ton of excuses.

They can also help give us happiness and confidence in areas that were once quite the opposite. No matter how difficult your pregnancy is or what the first days home with a baby are like, every woman can cling onto these wonderful excuses. The only problem is that they don't last forever. Let me explain...

You find out you're pregnant...AND

-your once unloved belly is immediatley your cute little baby bump (even at just 5 weeks)

-later on in the pregnancy people love to touch and look at your belly, it's suddenly something so wonderful. We take photos of our belly, measure our belly, write about our belly, etc, etc.

-we wear tight shirts to show off our belly

-it seems like the bigger our belly is the more people tell us that we're cute

-you are suddenly encouraged to eat more, after all, you're eating for two...right?!? So, why not eat that extra piece of cake, after all, you're pregnant! (unless of course you can't hold food down or you've lost your appetite).

-Hit the gym, exercise...nope! Those pregnancy books encourage us to walk

-the house isn't cleaned up, no dinner made, that's ok, you're pregnant!

And then you have the baby...AND

Well, you've just had a baby, so...

-you still have a little extra dough in the tummy area, but after all, you just had a baby!

-you'll never find a photo of a woman's belly post labour, yikes!

-our clothes become looser, no tight shirts anymore. We surely don't want anyone to see the actual size of our belly

-you're still encouraged to eat a little extra, especially if you're nursing! And you do, except for it's not just the healthy stuff like the pregnancy books talk about, it's the junk food that we love to eat as well

-exercise, who has time for that?!? Especially when the baby is your second child, your husband is gone to work or school all days AND you have only one car.

-house is still untidy and dinner isn't made as often as it once was, no problem, you have a new baby!

AND THEN IT HAPPENS...

Your baby is four months old. That little extra dough in the mid area, it's still there, and there are not really any excuses for that anymore. Extra eating, well, you're still nursing but you feel a little bigger than you were a month after the baby was born, what happened there?!? Exercise, well you guessed it. Not much of that happening, especially with snow covered sidewalks and chilly temperatures (my current excuse). The house is still untidy much of the time and not as clean as you'd like it to be, however it's not for a lack of effort, you've got an almost 2 year old, and a BABY!

And so you can see that I'm pretty much out of excuses at this point. Looks like it's time to tone down that mid area and eat a little less. Wish me luck!