Today, on the way home from dropping my daughter off at kinder, a friendly old Italian lady stopped me outside her house.
She – oh two babies, beautiful.
Me – yes, thank you
She – looking at my stomach, are you having another one?
Me – No! I just did!
She – oh, I see *scuttles into house*
oh dear! I’m so fat now, I look pregnant! One year ago, I was a svelte young woman(!), now I’m fat and middle-aged…..and pregnant again, apparently! At least I’m not barefoot!
My metabolism is slow enough to make time stop still. Pregnancy sends millions of little messages to every fat cell I have saying, “horde and store, just in case you are catapulted from your comfortable existence to a land of plague and famine!” And so now, yet again, I must start the post-birth dieting, grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!
April 19, 2007 at 5:12 am
oh! I sooooooooooooooooo know! I KNOW!!!!
but I am starting a diet too… kind of a blogging teams diet challenge thing… so we can stay motivated. I’ll introduce it soon as I feel better ia. I hope u’ll join me!
April 19, 2007 at 6:24 am
yes, I’d love to join, I need ALL the motivation I can get! The problem for me (and lots of mums) is exercise. I’ve got three kids and only a double pram! My daughter isn’t big enough to walk very far. So walking is impossible and that is how I’ve lost the weight in the past. I have an exercise bike but the kids grab my feet when I’m on it and try and climb on top of me, either that or climb on top of the baby! So since I’m not exercising I haven’t bothered monitoring my food intake. Bad move!
And here I am trying to be the perfect mum, what about Sunday morning baking?!!!!! I’ll have to make granola muffins or wheatgrass slice!
April 19, 2007 at 6:29 am
and I have an entire wardrobe full of clothes that I can’t wear, that’s depressing! and I’m in love with that cargo abaya you linked to on Nisaa and there’s no way I’ll fit into it now!
April 19, 2007 at 11:58 am
Oh dear. That must’ve been embarassing
April 19, 2007 at 2:08 pm
it will happen again habibti, you WILL be slim, don’t worry!
April 19, 2007 at 10:20 pm
Welcome to my mummy blog!
yes, very embarrassing!
but I have to DO something about it and that’s a major hassle! Staying slim is extremely difficult for me unfortunately…oh well!
April 20, 2007 at 7:59 am
There needs to be some education out there. Unless a woman has a baby sticking out from between her legs, you NEVER assume she is pregnant! And if she has the baby half way out, it means she isn’t going to be pregnant much longer anyway.
There – I’ve said it. Let’s spread the word.
Don’t worry too much. With three young children I am sure the weight will slip off as you run around after them. Is your little one too big for a sling? That way you can carry the little one and have the older two in the pram. Not only will your legs get a work out but your back too!
You could also try playing chase around the house. If you can manage to keep it up for 20 minutes (obviously vary the scenarios – you can be a tiger or dolphin (yes we had to do that once), a robot or an alien etc) then you’ve done a mini-workout. And the kids get tired so they go to bed early. BONUS!
April 20, 2007 at 11:49 am
LOL, my thoughts exactly! I have a pouch for my son but he’s already pretty heavy and it hurts my back to use it so I don’t. Pushing my kids in the pram is about 35kilos and then add another 8 or 9 for my baby in the pouch, it’s just too much. I did go to the local shopping center like that recently and so many people looked at me despairingly…’oh that poor downtrodden Muslim women, all those babies hanging off her, see, they breed like rabbits!!’
Playing chase is a great idea. We do a lot of dancing.
April 21, 2007 at 11:52 pm
Hmmm…I hate to add to any stereotypes…butt(as in post partum big ones)…after the birth of my first son, my Italian landlady told me she never knew I was pregnant because I was “so chunky”…I was chunky because I was pregnant!!! I stayed in the shower for the first couple of hours of my labor as I keep puking and it was very comforting.My downstairs neighbors later told me that the landlady told them I was taking long showers to lose weight!
Uff.
Tricycle time for your big girl!
April 21, 2007 at 11:55 pm
Oh and my 1st’s pediatrician asked me if I was pregnant again at one of our appointments. Idiot.
April 22, 2007 at 11:23 am
since when have long showers made you lose weight? I’d love to let my daughter take her trike out but my son would be so jealous and he would insist on riding his too and he is way too small to manage it on the footpath!
April 22, 2007 at 6:29 pm
Everytime I come by, I think HOW does she do it?? Well, I have 4 and I don’t know how I do it.
Though I don’t feed them much lately as I hate dragging my circus to the grocery. Maybe this keeps there energy at bay? No! I just get so frustrated.I have never been one to draw attention to myself, well I certainly do these days. I want to pop people when they say “my you certainly have your handsfull.” OMG and they way people react when you tell them you have more than two kids, as if they didn’t even know that was legal or physically possible.
but the kids grab my feet when I’m on it …yeah crunch time is wrestle with mom time and you should see them watch the excercise videos I USED to try! “Mom’s watching the naked ladies again!”
April 22, 2007 at 6:31 pm
Oh, by saying I have four I am by NO MEANS down playing your three!!! Yours are so tiny, masha Allah!..you know what I mean…
April 23, 2007 at 1:37 am
My friend has lost a lot of weight on the Zone diet and says it’s really easy and intuitive for her and she feels it’s well-balanced. Just a thought. And my mom is a big believer in the Callanetics exercise program (you can look online for DVDs). I think it’s a good program too.
April 23, 2007 at 3:19 am
Salaam dear Hana, thanks for your suggestions. At the moment I’m just gonna try and be healthy, not too many muffins! How are you, how’s the studying going?
April 23, 2007 at 3:24 am
Brooke, you know I struggle! Can’t you get your zawj to do the shopping instead of taking the circus? I do it on the weekend while he looks after the kids, but when I was pregnant, I asked him to do all the hunting and gathering and alhamdulillah it made things much easier. LOL, I’m not sure it is legal anymore!
April 23, 2007 at 6:23 pm
My zawj is working the stoopiedest hours ever right now, alhumdiallah, though normally and soon, inshallah I will. I do enjoy the shopping by myself. I think it’s pretty funny that just buying yogurt and eggs can be retail therapy, but it is! And I love going with just the baby and pretending I am a young mother with my first child and oggling and googling over her. Haha! I know the Alaska winters have sucked every bit of deweyness out of me!
I know a ummi that had twins before her first’s 1st B-day, alhumdiallah. She seldom went out for the first year and even still. I remember this picture from a book on China, it had an older women carry two babies hanging from a balance of a long stick across her shoulders and the kids hanging down in baskets. I’m sure you could rig up something like that
April 25, 2007 at 4:27 am
I hate when people say that! It happened to me five years ago when I thought I was wearing a pretty frilly skirt which I ripped into pieces when a sales clerk congratulated me on the pregnancy. Idiot!
April 26, 2007 at 6:48 am
LOL, Brooke….it IS retail therapy, I know exactly what you mean and thank you for a marvelous suggestion, I’m just looking for a long stick!
Suroor, people should just know not to ask, idiot indeed!
April 29, 2007 at 11:04 pm
i’m announcing the challenge sometime this week… inshaallah!! and I’l including you on the post
and a couple others, but hopefully a lot of ppl can join so we can get some motivation and support… somehow I think this is key 
April 29, 2007 at 11:05 pm
oh, and re the cargo abaya… I bought one and it does NOT fit me around the hips!!!!!!!!!
April 30, 2007 at 11:29 pm
it is so nice 2 hear 4rm normal women tha think the same as i do i remb a time wen sum 1 turn around n said 2 my friend if i wos their mum i was only 32 at the time same age as my friend only differenc wos tha i wos expectin i think tha wos enoug 4me had a beatiful girl named her hannah she 6month now trying 2 lose weigth after tha comment so many months ago makes me laugth wen people say u lost weigth straige after u have given brith HELLO!!!!!!!!!
April 30, 2007 at 11:36 pm
CALLING IT A DAY 2DAYS BEEEN LONG HANNAH PLAYED HELL OVER THE WEEKEND BUT RELAX 2DAY MAYBE BEC HER BROTHER WERE IN NURSERY N SHE GOT PEACE N QUITE ANYW ALL U MUSLIM WOMEN HOPE U SLP WELL N MAY ALLAH BRING U SO MUCH 2MR TAKECARE