Baby weight and why we should leave new mums alone...

(I'm not writing about myself today since I have absolutely nothing to report. However an article I spotted on Facebook earlier lead me to writing today's post...)

I try not to read celebrity gossip too much, the obsession with weight and appearance drives me nuts. However I must admit to silently cheering last July when Kate Middleton, several days post-partum, appeared to the world’s media looking, well, five months pregnant. In a time when it is only acceptable for post-baby celebrities to look as if the pregnancy and ensuing baby never happened, I felt that Kate was particularly brave.

We seem to have forgotten that gestating and delivering a baby takes a huge toll on our bodies and we don’t simply ‘shrink back’ to pre-baby bodies overnight, even if the media would have us believe otherwise by endlessly printing annoying ‘How I got my body back’ articles.

Now I'm not claiming my weight-gain has anything to do with my last baby, it hasn't. I got back into shape fairly quickly after I had him in fact. But I do think society puts enormous pressure on women to lose baby weight quickly, and this can often tip women into despair if they don't manage it.

A controversial picture has been doing the Facebook rounds recently, featuring mother of three fitness enthusiast Maria Kang looking super slim in a bikini, surrounded by her baby and two toddlers. Overhead is the caption, ‘What’s your excuse?’

Aside from the astonishingly patronising tone of this, Ms Kang seems to miss the point that most new mothers are exhausted, sleep deprived and otherwise occupied in the weeks and months following childbirth, and the last thing they need is to see photos of smug post-baby fitness fanatics berating them for not being in similar shape.

In a recent study, Dr Julie Wray of Salford University found the accepted wisdom – that it takes just six weeks to be ‘back to normal’ after giving birth – was a fantasy, concluding that it takes closer to a year for a woman to fully recover. Certainly this has been my experience, although I too have succumbed in the past to the pressure to lose the baby weight as quickly as possible.

After having my first child – fueled by a story I’d read about Catherine Zeta Jones on a treadmill just hours after giving birth – it became a point of pride for me to regain my pre-baby shape. And so, as soon as I got home from the hospital I embarked on a ludicrous 80 sit-ups a day regime in a desperate bid to flatten my stomach. Nobody told me that my abdominal muscles needed eight weeks just to knit back together and that the sit-ups were actually preventing this from happening. I only discovered my error when I complained to my district nurse that my stomach seemed make a funny triangular shape whenever I sat up!

Sometimes I think our generation of women have gone slightly mad, going to enormous lengths to disguise what is only natural; as if inhabiting a post-baby body is something to be ashamed of rather than celebrating. Back in my mother’s day, women stayed in hospital for two weeks after giving birth; these days we’re sometimes home in a matter of hours! Again the message seems to be ‘pull yourself together, stop making excuses, and get back to normal quick sharp!’

And it’s not just the media that exerts this pressure, other people – especially women – can be remarkably tactless at times. Three days after giving birth to my youngest child I returned to the delivery ward to complete some paperwork. The nurse behind the desk – yes a health professional - eyed my still-swollen abdomen, laughed and said ‘are you sure you’re not still pregnant?’ which frankly went down like a lead balloon. I’d like to say this was an isolated incident, but annoyingly the same hilarious comment was made several times over the following days. Lucky for me it was my fifth baby, so I knew quite well that it takes several weeks for the uterus to descend back into the pelvis again, but to a new mum the first sight of a post-baby belly can be quite a shocker.

And so, as a bit of a veteran of pregnancy and childbirth, I’d like to humbly offer some advice to new mothers or those who are soon-to-be, and it is this: Chill! Enjoy your new bundle, cuddle them, bond with them and, just for a while, forget about what you look like, because at the moment it really doesn't matter. Babyhood is fleeting and you won’t get this time again. Your favourite jeans will eventually fit – I promise – but for now just be kind to yourself.