“You don’t look like you’ve had six kids.”
It’s intended as a compliment. Hearing compliments can be nice. But this particular one bothers me because of the underlying implications. The implication is “It’s a good thing you don’t look like you’ve actually had six kids.” Of course, the compliment-giver pretty much never means that sentiment. The implication is so heavily baked-in that we don’t realize it when it’s spoken. We don’t realize that it’s actually a back-handed compliment.
Do we tell childless women “You look great for not having kids”? No, we don’t. That would seem silly. We know that having kids is supposed to change your body. But do we examine what that really means? What does having kids really do to your body?
“You don’t look like you’ve six kids.”
“Thanks. I definitely feel like I have.”
Women are praised for “bouncing back” after giving birth. This usually means that they look like they’ve lost “the baby weight”. Your body doesn’t “bounce back”. Bouncing back would mean that it reverts to how it used to be pre-pregnancy. This does not happen. Ever. Being pregnant changes your body. Giving birth changes your body in permanent ways, regardless of how well you “take care of yourself” (another term that is weaponized).
“Back then”, many women were forced to give up their baby after giving birth out of wedlock. Many weren’t even allowed to hold or see their baby for fear that it would “damage” them too much. They were expected to return to the real world as if “nothing had ever happened”. Looking at this now, we say “Good grief. What was wrong with people?!” But do we not judge women’s appearances based on how similar they look to childless women? Sorry, let me need to qualify that; what we think a childless woman should look like…aka…what a woman should look like. Full stop.
“Wow. She really let herself go after having kids.” What does that even mean? Did the woman let her younger, slimmer, hotter self loose in the park without a leash? Did her waistline see the growing baby and run for the hills? Where did she go? Now, I obviously “know what you mean” when you say “let herself go”. You’re commenting that she’s not as thin as she used to be. She wears her hair differently. She doesn’t “look” childless anymore. Again, what does “childless” look like? Slender? Untainted? Vacuum-packed? Sexy? Pure?
I’m one of “those people” who doesn’t have to put forth much effort to lose the “baby weight”. I’m using a lot of quotation marks here on purpose. When you become pregnant, you’re not just growing a baby without any additional weight. You’re growing a placenta to sustain the baby. Your breast tissue grows. Your blood volume doubles. Oh, and yes. You do store extra fat for breastfeeding. This information is probably not new to a single person reading this (I hope). We all know that those necessary tissues carry literal weight.
“Yeah, you need all that. But being pregnant doesn’t give you an excuse to turn into a land whale!” “Women use being pregnant as an excuse to get fat.”
– People on the internet/Rude ** humans
Women clearly have one goal: Make men miserable by tricking them into impregnating us so they can watch their prize go up in fatty flames. Not only are we gaining weight because we’re clearly animals with no self control, we’re doing it with malicious intent!!……
………………………………………..wow.
No, you don’t literally and calorically need “eat for two” during pregnancy. But these comments aren’t about calories. It isn’t about the food intake at all. These comments are stating “There is a way that a woman should look, and you’re trying to excuse yourself from looking that way.”
Some of you might be thinking
“Here we go…Another post where women need validation for being fat and unattractive.”
“Another mom trying to make excuses for packing on the pounds.”
“Another mom telling society that we need to accept fat women as beautiful.”
First off…what in blazes does my body or anyone else’s body have anything to do with you? If it’s not a big deal, why do you feel the need to comment on it? If someone else’s flesh and blood existence doesn’t offend you, what’s your problem?
Let’s be clear that both men and women are equally guilty of this. I used to do this and still subconsciously do sometimes. I used to view women who didn’t lose all of the “baby weight” as “making excuses”. I used to view women who weren’t actively working out as lazy. I thought that maybe other people just weren’t trying hard enough.
I grew up in a family culture in which other people’s bodies (usually women’s) were ridiculed. Women who chose to dress comfortably were called “frumpy”, especially if they looked tired. Overweight, or even just heavier, women were ridiculed for having unhealthy lifestyles. Younger women with husbands and short hair were “probably lesbians”. Older women who had quit trying to appear young and *****able were also “probably lesbians” or “didn’t take care of their skin”. Any sign of having aged “beyond a reasonable standard” or not looking like there was time given to your appearance was looked down upon. Unless women were beautifully presented in a highly effeminate manner and of high socioeconomic status, they were deemed morally inferior. Gross, I know.
My appearance mattered a lot growing up, and not just to me. I modeled from age ten to thirteen. In the fifth grade, I was told to print off my modeling headshots to give to my classmates (yes, I was made fun of because obviously). I was twelve and told a friend that I was cutting sugar out of my diet so that I wouldn’t gain weight (I weighed maybe 100 lbs at the time). This was a self-imposed expectation because it felt like something that I could control. I was thirteen and worried about having a chocolate bar with lunch in case it’d make my “acne” worse. I’d rub alcohol all over my already-dry face to ensure that it remained unspotted (it didn’t because hormones don’t care). I heard women in my extended family being ridiculed for showing signs of aging (like having wrinkles past age fifty). I was sixteen and dreamed of scrubbing my insides out with Clorox, telling my boyfriend (now husband) that I hated myself for weighing 115 lbs. Why was I unable to control my appetite at social events? Why couldn’t I just tell myself to stop eating? Now, I didn’t actually limit my calories, so 115 was a healthy weight for me. I hated not being able to not eat.
I look at photos of younger me and just want to give her a big hug. While I knew that I was beautiful, it seemed like that was my most important attribute. Yeah, it was cool and all that I could write and think for myself. But my face and untainted body were treated as the main qualities that would land me a well-educated young man from a wealthy, religious family at the local religious university. How would I ever meet said young man if I didn’t keep my skin clear and attain excellent grades that would land me in that university?! Thank goodness I said “**** your standards” and married the best man alive instead.
Being pregnant for the first time was hard. I didn’t have the confidence and mindset that I do now. It was the first time I’d ever weighed over 124. It didn’t help that I carry my babies low and extra sticky out-y. I had my baby at the end of August. My water retention was crazy high, and I looked super puffy.
Family members would make comments:
“Do you have gestational diabetes? You don’t? Really?” (she hadn’t been pregnant in over a decade and probably forgot. She also asked this about a subsequent pregnancy)
“You’re going to have to work off that baby fat!” (girl was seventeen and probably just parroting what she’d heard other people say)
“Here’s an old shirt of mine that you can borrow since your belly is going to get fat and hang out the bottom” (it was not a maternity shirt)
Well, I actually didn’t have to “work off that baby fat!” It came off by itself within 6-8 months postpartum. But the loose skin around my stomach sagged. My abs had separated from my growing baby and uterus (as do most women’s). This is a large part of what causes women’s tummies to stick out more postpartum. Wait..what?! It’s not a fleshy reminder of moral failure?
8 months postpartum.
Despite being back at my pre-pregnancy weight, I didn’t look the same as before. I didn’t “bounce back”. People still made comments:
“You have a pooch!”
An uncle told me that I had “leftovers”.
The implication with “bouncing back” is that if you don’t revert to looking like the ideal, childless woman that you have failed in some way. You haven’t. The process is supposed to change you. Forever. You cannot ever erase what pregnancy, childbirth, or parenthood does to your body. Ever. You never bounce back from it. Your body will adapt to a new normal. You can make changes. But you can never go back.
Let’s talk about plastic surgery for a second. Plastic surgery changes your appearance. It doesn’t change the story. One of my favorite women got breast augmentation because having babies left her chest completely flat. She didn’t like how she looked, so she changed something. Other women are left with massive breasts and back pain so they get a reduction. You are not a failure for doing what makes you feel best in your own skin. If that’s plastic surgery, great. If that’s working out to feel better about how you feel towards your body, fabulous. If it’s doing absolutely nothing because you feel happy in your body, excellent.
Someone is going to start throwing a tantrum about me advocating for “fat-acceptance”. Look, if someone hates how they feel about themselves and their appearance but insists that everyone else needs to love them anyway, then yeah. That’s not a healthy outlook. Other people shouldn’t need the approval of others to live their lives. But it’s also proving my point. The person should be working to feel happy and accepted by themselves in their own bodies. If they feel like trash, they can work to make changes if it bothers them enough to make them. What does that have to do with me? How someone else feels in their skin doesn’t need to involve my opinion of them for better or worse. They shouldn’t be working to impress you or me. Someone else’s appearance doesn’t need to be an offense to my worldview.
That being said, the scale isn’t always my friend.
Loving your body while pregnant (or not) is easier said than done. I currently weigh 160 lbs. I’m 25 weeks pregnant with #7 and have gained 24 lbs. I’ve kept records of my weight with all six of my kids for science because it’s fun to track the trend. This is about where I’ve been with the previous six (excluding #2), but 160 still feels like a lot. I’ve come to realize that my weight is not who I am; it is just another measurement of where my body is at.
I’ve decided to include some current pictures. Most people don’t see what having had six kids looks like. Some people have had fewer kids than me and look/looked bigger. Some have had more and look smaller. Or any variation of that. This is my normal. For context, I’m 5’6’’.
Here’s the same body two minutes later:
Oh. Two bonus pics below. These are from me at 20 weeks. This was barely over a month ago. I gained 4 lbs in between the above photos and these two.
I have a sister due one month after me who went from wearing a C cup to triple Ds. As you can see from my square torso and size A/Bs, my body doesn’t do that.
Do I count calories every day? Yes. I religiously track my macros on MyFitnessPal. It helps me to track how well I’m nourishing my body with protein, fat, and crucial micronutrients. When I go over my calorie goal of 2200 per day, do I say “Wow. You freaking cow. Chill out, will ya? Have some self control!”
I used to do that. Now, I ask myself “How did your day go? Did you give yourself what you needed? Are you hungry now? Great. Now go eat something nutritious and quit feeding your baby stress hormones. Get a good night’s sleep. She’ll be here in less than 3 months. You’ve got this.”
When people say “You don’t look like you’ve had six kids”, they don’t realize that the physical toll isn’t always visible. Stretch marks fade but never disappear. I haven’t acquired a single new stretch mark since 2016. I’ve been consistently sick with different colds since early November. This wasn’t the case with previous pregnancies.
My prenatal blood work always comes back normal and healthy. It may reflect as healthy and within normal ranges, but it doesn’t tell the full story. I’d probably need a full blood deficiency workup to know where I’m lacking. What have all of these pregnancies taken from my body? What is the price paid for creating seven beating hearts, seven brains, seven skeletons, and fourteen hands from scratch?
There are days when I feel guilty for being such a “wimp” that have nothing to do with my appearance. After all, women used to “do this all of the time”. There are still women who have ten children and claim to love it. But there’s also a reason why most women stopped having ten or twelve children. They finally had a choice. Oh, and conditions finally not being “My family will literally starve and go naked if I don’t give it my all today” helps too.
By the way…I’d written a post a few months back about having to pause my ketamine treatments. I called the Mother to Baby hotline to ask about ketamine during pregnancy. This is the hotline that OBs and midwives call when they’re not sure about a medication or substance being safe during pregnancy. Turns out that at low doses (like what I do), they wouldn’t expect to see any issues. Major disclaimer: don’t use recreational drugs or drink alcohol (like at all) while pregnant. No bueno. But PRESCRIBED, low-doses of ketamine are something that I’m able to do again. I cried when I found out. My treatments are the difference between being suicidal and bedridden vs. able to function as a mom. Most days, I’m doing okay. Baby is doing great.
I digress. I’ve been incredibly blessed with being able to get and stay pregnant. I don’t get morning sickness, just kinda queasy till week 9. Most of the time, physically anyway, I haven’t had much to complain about. Why does it feel like this time is so much harder?
The solutions that I used to use aren’t working this time around. I didn’t even feel round ligament pains until baby #5. Round ligament pains are a pulling, tugging, or sometimes stabbing pain that you get around your uterus as it grows. They “typically” start/stop between weeks 14-26. In pregnancy, the word “typically” probably includes about 10% of actual humans. Everyone knows someone for whom the rules don’t apply at all. Well, mine started at 9 weeks with #7. With #5, it was easy to get rid of them. I stood up for about 2-3 minutes or took some magnesium tablets. With #6, they hurt a lot more. Like a lot more. Standing up, walking around, and taking magnesium made them go away after a few minutes.
I even try using K-tape (tape that athletes use on injuries). Carrying around a 10-20 lb bag of water inside of my body just ain’t what it used to be. It doesn’t matter how much I adjust my posture, position, drink water, etc. It feels like I’m being stabbed.
It’s not like I’ve “gone soft”. I keep 10 and 25 dumbbell weights in my room to use on breaks (or while I’m typing with my laptop on a bookshelf). No, these aren’t powerlifting weights. That’s not really the goal right now. I use my resistance bands every day to mimic the machines at the gym since it’s easier to position them for stability when dealing with an unstable pelvis. Ironically, I’m more sore from working out at home because I work out more often now. I’m more active now that I canceled my gym membership because I’m motivated to passively do reps throughout the day instead of dedicating mental effort and time to go and be at the gym. Again, working from home is lovely.
But if I’m so strong, why does this still hurt so much? Why does it hurt to roll over, cough, or walk? I’m sure someone could find fault in what I do. Someone could point to what I do as “not doing enough”. Is that not always the case? Usually, the critic is me. Most people aren’t paying me any mind.
I was washing the floor on my hands and knees yesterday. After about ten minutes, my tailbone started to ache. Seriously? I’m cleaning the floor. This is a typical domestic task. Why is this difficult? Standing at the kitchen sink washes dishes for more than ten minutes is fatiguing. Why? Because the muscles supporting a 15-20 lb bag of water in the front of my body are tired. What was wrong with me? Why couldn’t I just keep going like I used to? Why couldn’t I just deal with this better?
But at least I’m not fat. Right? You can eyeball a woman’s midsection and ascertain her health and journey like a moral credit score.
My skeleton has shifted. My ligaments hurt. I pee myself when I sneeze if my bladder isn’t empty. I’m constantly sick with colds. After work, I spend hours in bed reading because my pep and zest is gone. But at least I don’t look like I’ve had six kids.
The reality is that I’m not nineteen anymore. I’m still under thirty (for nine more months), but I’ve also already created six other humans inside of this body. I have literally been pregnant and given birth more times than most women in history and have done that in under ten years. Can I give my body some credit and respite from the guilt?
At some point, I learned that my own approval wasn’t enough. I realized that I wasn’t good enough for myself. When you’re okay with yourself, you don’t need other people to be. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to appreciate how much I respect other women. Growing older has changed my perspective from seeing overweight moms with unkempt hair in the store with their “only” two kids to “Hang in there. We’re all in the trenches together.” I see elderly women doing their shopping and think “I’ll be you one day, and I don’t know how you’ve made it this long in this society.” I see the woman of color holding her baby in the WIC office and think “You’ve probably had it much harder than me. Kudos to you for doing it anyway.” Maybe that seems patronizing. It is certainly a step up from seeing myself as being in competition with them.
Being pregnant with #7 has made me realize that I don’t need “excuses” to take it easy. I don’t need to look elsewhere for validation that “Lady, your body has been through a lot. Will you chill out?” Pregnancy and childbirth are two of the most normal experiences for a woman to have. They’re not everything about a person. I am more than the children who I gave birth to. I am more than my weight. I am all that I love, hate, think, and do. But it’s still really cool that I’m making a seventh human.
I’m not a rubber band. I’m a full-bodied human being. I’ll never bounce back to who I was, but she gets to be part of my story
❤
None Given. None Taken. 