Mom Bod

I’ve written before about my struggles with my body confidence since having the twins. It’s not something I really anticipated before having kids. I think I just blocked the thought of it out and hoped for the best. When I was younger I didn’t like my body. I worked hard to learn to love it and now that that’s gone again I often get upset about it. Last week I was disappointed to learn that my waist is bigger than it’s ever been without a baby in my belly. For someone that used to pride herself on her “Brick House” measurements, (36″, 24″, 36″) this was a bit of a gut punch. Exactly what you want to learn the day before you take a trip to the beach right? Ugh.

I was determined not to let it ruin my trip though. Determined to make sure that I was in pictures of our first family trip to the beach. It’s such a Mom thing to be the one taking the pictures and not in the pictures. There are so few pictures of my Mom and grandmothers because they were always behind the camera or didn’t like the way they looked. I want my kids to see that I was myself with them. Thicker waist, jiggly thighs, and all the parts I don’t like. (I say jiggly thighs because my child, of course, felt the need to point them out while we were in the pool. Kids are a-holes.)

I’m so glad I got over myself and flipped the bird to that ugly voice in the back of my head. I had so much fun with my babies. When I look at the pictures I still see all the parts I don’t like but I also see the laughter. We spent like ten minutes trying to get pictures of us jumping in the air. It was a bit of a fail but it was hilarious and we had fun.

At the end of the day I even felt a little bit sexy despite being sandy and gross. I felt stupid for wasting so much time worrying about how I looked before our trip. I felt a little mad at myself too. It’s easy to forget that this body has done wonderful things. That it works hard every day to keep going so my family is taken care of. So here I am, rocking the Mom Bod and making my kids and husband laugh.