Losing It

Don't worry. I'm not losing my mind. (Well, maybe a little.) I'm losing pounds. That's the plan at least.

As of yesterday, I am six weeks out from welcoming our tiniest girl (a tiny girl who still needs to be given a proper blog name!). And I've lost more than 2/3 of the weight I gained over the course of my pregnancy. And I know that is pretty good, right? Maybe even better than pretty good? Then why am I so obsessed with dropping the final pounds? Why can't I just relax and say, Ah, they will come off in time. It took nine months to gain the weight and I should give myself nine months (or at least three!) to lose it?

I don't know. I don't know why I am not embracing the laissez faire approach to postpartum weight loss. Probably because I don't really take this approach to anything in life. Probably because I have a pattern of being exceedingly hard on myself and a major control freak. Probably because I am wildly wrapped up in appearances, and affirmation. It's probably all of these things. There's likely more to it, too.

Here's the weird thing. For the first 27 years of my life, I never weighed myself. Even when I was in nutsy pre-wedding mode, I never stepped on a scale. Never. It was not until I learned that I was pregnant with Toddler (again, she needs a new blog name!) that I got into the habit of weighing myself every day. I think I was fearful that I would gain a million pounds and didn't want that to happen, so I made sure it didn't. Like this pregnancy, with each of my first two pregnancies, I gained within the recommended range. And then? I shed the pounds pretty quickly because parenthood is really the best cardio exercise ever and also because I was a bit crazy like I am being now.

So. Here I am. In a familiar spot. Heavier than I want to be. Thinking a bit too much about the extra pounds I'm carrying around, that frankly I should be carrying around a mere six weeks after the fact.

And so. Instead of whining about them, those pesky pounds - in addition to whining about them - I'm doing something about them.

As of this week, I'm eating differently. I refuse to use the D word, to even write it here, because I do not believe in the word and (much more importantly) I do not want my girls to know that word. So. Instead I speak very vaguely of wellness and health around them, but here I can be a bit more specific. For the next little bit of time, I am having healthy (and very small. wah.) prepared meals delivered to me. The program is actually specifically for nursing moms so I will be getting adequate calories and nutrition to nourish the wee one. (I do not want to publish the name of the program here until I know whether or not I like it.)

You know what? Writing this post, just writing it, feels a bit eh. I feel a bit embarrassed and ashamed that I am writing about something that is admittedly so much more superficial than other things I could write about - my sweet smiling girls, the arrival of spring, the new characters I'm putting to the page. And so I worry a bit - that if writing this post makes me feel a bit uncomfortable, reading it might have an equally eh effect on you. And it might. I'll take that risk.

This post? It's silly. It's superficial. It's shallow. But it's also honest. Maybe too honest. But it's where I am. And where I am is home and happy and harried, surrounded by impossible love and brilliant life and yummy little ones. But where I am is also in this head, and this body, this different and amazing body I know I should perhaps honor a bit more than I do. For what it has done and what it is doing. For what it has been through.

For what it has brought us.

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• Do you think it's crazy or understandable that I am so intent on getting my body back so fast?
• Do you think my approach to postpartum weight loss is just an extension of my perfectionist approach to self and life?
• Do you think I am a victim somehow of cruel societal expectations of women, of mothers?
• Are you careful about what you say about body and weight around your children?
• When it comes to your body and your own appearance, are you forgiving or exacting?
• Speaking of forgiveness, will you forgive me for this decidedly non-profound (and potentially annoying) post?