I’ve already written about the media’s obsession with pre-baby and post-baby weight and why the two should never ever stray from each other for too long (like, a month tops).

But I feel the need to revisit it again. I recently read that Jessica Simpson (currently, I dunno, five, six months preggers?) signed a $3million dollar deal with Weight Watchers to help her lose the baby weight.

(Before I get into my rant, a side note: $3 million is a pretty sweet deal, I won’t lie. I’ve written openly about my struggles to remove the blubbery mass from around my midsection and I know I haven’t helped the process with my addiction to all things sweet and delicious. And I don’t necessarily want to go into the distinction between “real” moms and celebrity moms because if I had that kind of money, I’d like to think I was a “real” mom too, just with waaaay more money and resources.)

But I do want to say that we’ve got a long way to go in terms of accepting what pregnancy actually does to the body. In some cases, it’s rough. I didn’t know that I wouldn’t walk out of the hospital in my pre-baby jeans. After all, with both of my kids I was mostly belly. Only gained about 20 pounds each time and I popped out nine pound babies so I figured it would take a couple days for my bump to go down and then I’d be set.

Did.not.happen.

Things shifted in ways I didn’t expect. Boobs went out, then in, then down (a bit). Belly went from being round and full to being saggy in parts, wrinkly in others. Arms were full of muscle from holding a baby (and then a toddler) all day. Booty did not get bigger (until the second pregnancy, and even then, not by much).

And I felt bad about that for a looooong time. I was breastfeeding, which they said would help me lose weight. They lied. All it did was make me super hungry, which I suppose is okay because my body was probably telling me it needed more calories to nourish the baby. Fair enough.

So it makes me wonder why we don’t allow mothers the opportunity to simply be. I used that “I just had a baby” excuse for the longest and felt bad about it, but why should I? Bringing forth life and then birthing a child and taking care of a child is incredibly demanding and yes, I think it entitles you to be able to sit on your butt and breastfeed your kid, and not worry about your gym membership for a while.

When we focus on the pounds gained and pounds not lost, we essentially say, “Okay, you’ve had your chance to be lazy and let yourself go. Now it’s back to work!” But creating life is more than just a number on the scale or a waist circumference.

I wish someone would have approached me about doing a magazine spread post-baby. I would have slapped them so hard the lens would have popped out of their camera. I wasn’t interested in showing nobody nothing. You know how long it was before my husband saw me naked after the baby? Go ask him. He’ll tell you. It was probably a full year.

By offering Jessica a deal before she’s even had the baby tells me one thing: we should be consciously thinking about how to get back in shape—no, planning it—before the Braxton-Hicks contractions even start. Really? Is that where we are now?

I say: Screw that noise. Get pregnant, eat your cravings, listen to your doctor or midwife or doula, give birth, enjoy your baby and then decide on your own terms what you want to do to become a healthier you. Don’t let the good folks at Weight Watchers or the editors at Us Weekly make you feel bad about not hopping on a treadmill after pushing out a human.

What do you think? Does it make sense that they would offer her this deal? 

So I sucked this week. A lot.

I haven’t worked out since last Saturday. As in the Saturday before Mother’s Day.

See, what had happened was that I was on a roll. I was working out, eating my salads, being more active that usual, rolling on the floor with the kids. Basically just doing the damn thing.

Then I did all that and got sore. Figured, let me give these hard-working muscles a chance to rest a day. One day turned into two. Two days turned into, “Nope, I don’t need to get up early to workout! I work hard all day and I deserve an extra 20 minutes of sleep, not sweat!”

Boo-hiss to me. I deserve better than this. I deserve to feel good about myself. I’m a good mother. A good wife. A good friend. A good employee. Why can’t I make time for myself and actually follow through consistently? Whenever there’s a change in my schedule, the workout is the first thing to go. I figure I’ll squeeze it in later, but alas, later never ever comes.

To top things off, my hubby bought me an elliptical for Mother’s Day. He knows how hard it is for me to find time to workout, so if I had access to some cardio equipment, how easy could it be?

But he assembled it on the “other” side of the basement, where the workbench is. The TV is on the finished side of the basement and I don’t exercise without a TV, man. If I don’t have a Golden Girls episode (don’t laugh – the writing is on point!) or a King of Queens rerun to distract me from the fact that I’m sweating and huffing and puffing then forget it.

In the O magazine interview with the First Lady, Oprah asks Mrs. Obama how she manages to keep her 5 a.m. workouts. She said that she would get up at 5 a.m. for her job or get up that early for the kids, so why wouldn’t she get up for herself? I love how she doesn’t consider working out to be optional, but rather, a “must-do.”  

So I promise to do better. No more putting myself last all the time. I will stick to my workout schedule. No more excuses.

Okay so remember that post I did a few weeks back about losing the baby weight?

Um…yeah. About that.

*Sigh* I still have about 15 pounds to lose. Well, if I lose 5 I’ll be happy.

I started my quest to lose weight by getting up at 4:30 every morning to work out. 4:30 a.m. As in, four and a half hours after midnight.

It was rough. This is what my day looked like:

4:30 - Alarm goes off. Hit snooze.

4:32 – Don’t really go back to sleep so I get up and turn off alarm. Stretch for a moment then go to the living room (literally six steps away) to search the Exercise On Demand channel for something that will help me lose weight but won’t make me sweat a lot and curse the TV.

4:55 – Finish workout

5:00 – Shower, shove a handful of cereal in my mouth and go wake up my son.

5:15 – Change son’s poopy diaper (always wakes up with poopy diaper) and take off his dirty pajamas. Wrap him in blanket and sit on the couch and watch Married with Children while feeding him. Burp him, let him barf all over me. Niiice.

5:20 – Finish feeding him, wipe vomit off shoulder, arm, leg, back, hand, etc.

5:25 – Put him in that day’s clothes plus a bib to catch additional vomit. Go look at my still sleeping husband and fight urge to hit him with a shoe.

5:32 – Figure out what I’m wearing that day while bouncing my son on my hip. Spend 38 seconds ironing my clothes.

5:40 – Son vomits. Start process all over. Change son’s clothes again.

5:47 – Hear daughter whimpering. She wants to get up out of bed. Glance at husband who is STILL SLEEPING.

5:55 – Can’t take the whimpering so I go get my daughter and feed her her breakfast of orange juice, yogurt and Cheerios. Gets yogurt all over her pajamas and gives me a big grin. I wipe her down and put on her clothes for the day.

6:05 – Husband is still sleeping.

6:20 – HUSBAND IS STILL SLEEPING. WAKE UP ALREADY!

6:30 - Husband stumbles to the bathroom to start shaving.

At this point, I’ve been up for two hours and it’s time for me to throw on my clothes and sprint out the door to drive the 65 minutes to work.

I can’t get up at 4:30 anymore. I just can’t. So I need to move my workout, but I don’t know when. At 5 p.m. when I get home from work? But then who would make dinner? Argh!!

Maybe I’m just destined to carry around this extra weight for a while, until my life slows a bit. Lord only knows when that’s going to be. Maybe I should listen to Laila Ali and her tips for moms to get in shape…

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6iUIPnP3QM]