My post pregnancy body: unrealistic expectations

I loved my baby bump and the months I spent carrying my children and as I said in one of my previous posts "pregnancy is beautiful". But let’s be real, at times, I honestly thought my body resembled an orangutan 😂

But so what 🤷‍♀️I was bringing life into this world and once that baby was out I would snatch back right???....In 6 months time I would be ready to rock my bikini and saunter across the sand on a beach holiday with abs on show and baby on hip just like Fern Mcann, Beyoncé, Jessica Alba and the rest of the celebs on Instagram.

So 6 months post baby and f*** that!! I had lost a lot of my baby weight BUT not in the right places. All the extra junk in the trunk that I was hoping to keep had gone, my boobs had migrated south, my stomach skin looked like crumpled tissue paper (despite all the Bio Oil massages I did during my pregnancy) and every time I ate a good meal I was at risk of people giving up their seat for me on the train 🙈

I don’t like to admit it but it really bothered me and I wasn’t feeling how my body looked at all. The first day of my holiday I sat on the beach, covered up, feeling like my babies had robbed me of being beach-worthy.

However, looking around there were mums of all shapes and sizes, some with stretch marks, some with wrinkly skin, some with not so flat tums, many in itsy bitsy bikinis and ALL with absolutely nothing wrong with what they had on display.

THIS was reality, not washboard abs weeks after your body has carried and grown another human for 9 months. The image celebs mum portray is a result of personal trainers or extreme diets or cosmetic procedures or Photoshop (or all of the above). For the average mum of a young baby getting a chance to take a long soak in the bath is a challenge let alone working out every day or spending weeks recovering from a tummy tuck.

The standards I was holding myself to were not reality and I had a distorted view based on what I seeing in the media. Turns out no one around me (including my hubby) was expecting me to have a Kendall Jenner or Bella Hadid body. Once I focused less on having the perfect body and more on loving the skin I was in I was able to have a fab holiday and enjoy building sandcastles on the beach (in a bikini) with my bubbas.

So fellow mummas whether you have a tiny baby or kids in their teens feel proud of what your body has achieved, embrace every imperfection and love the skin you are in 😊