You may have heard me rant before about the whole “body after baby” thing. This topic makes me crazy. Bat-shit-bananas crazy (did you know there was such a thing?).

Without naming any names. There is a particular group of exercisers, that are marketing a “get your body back” type thing for moms. I see it on Facebook. I see it on Twitter. I see it, I see it, I see it and it makes both my middle fingers go upward and point at my computer screen. I’m pretty sure you understand how I feel about this, right?

Ladies. We are hard on ourselves. RELENTLESS. FIERCE. We have to have it all, be the best, be the most, be the most fantastic woman/mom/friend/wife/partner/cook/housekeeper/soccermom/student/lover/career-person/anything-and-everything-person-extraordinaire. Period. No margin for error. Nope. No. Don’t even think about it! Quick! Change hats! Hurry!  But, there’s more: Tutor/tear-dryer/crust-cutter/launderer/chauffeur/philosopher/butt-wiper, and please remind me of anything I’ve forgotten (big breath).

Excuse me. Did you somewhere in all of that forget that you needed to get your BODY BACK? You know, the same one you had when you were 21? Who gives a shit that your mid section stretched out some 60 inches. And that your thighs stretched and breasts stretched and hips too. You really need to spend some time, money and real estate in your brain getting that body BACK to the way it was before you had that baby. Or babIES.

Well, I for one call bullshit. Who made it STANDARD that we all have to have a certain body type to begin with, let alone get it back after we have grown a human in our bodies and birthed it? If there is a person responsible for this, please tell me who he is so I can have words with him.  However, it would do me no good to blame a certain person, or a certain society or culture. The answer, ladies, lies in us. The answer isn't easy, I know, but it is possible.

Sometimes I feel like a little goldfish swimming upstream in the most tremendous current against me. With a very small whisper of a voice that is trying to speak out against a consensus that tells me we need to look and be a certain way after we have children. But, the bottom line, and I don’t have a more intelligent and articulate way of saying this; but the bottom line is that THIS IS A LOAD OF SHIT.

SHIT, SHIT, SHIT, SHIT, SHIT.

Mamas, I urge you to take a look in the mirror, acknowledge the changes, and stop being so hard on yourselves for having extra skin, stretch marks, sagging breasts, and maybe some extra weight. We as females were chosen specifically and given special powers to do something truly, amazing. To make babies inside our own bodies. To me, this is spectacular. Stupendous. Badass. And of course it goes without saying, but the fact that we can make babies, kicks ass.

I wonder how the world would change if we just accepted that. One sentence: Women’s bodies change after babies. Period. What if we embraced our bodies after we had babies for what they are, instead of racing to change them back? What if we just embraced our bodies period? People might fantasize about a magical world, a new life, a million dollars….I fantasize about a world, a culture, a time when we as women accept our bodies and ourselves just as they are. Without judgment, without criticism, without hatred, without comparison.

Imagine that….

My daughter, Sydney, born 9/15/2009.