Please bear with me while I address a topic that, for many of us, is fairly sensitive: the mom bod. When we talk about dads that way, it’s always with an endearing tone. Sure, he’s a little out of shape, but look at the way he plays with his kids. Don’t worry about the flab that’s come with the kids. He had to let a few things go to take care of y’all, and isn’t he great? That dad bod, while not necessarily desired, is an outward show of all that he continues to sacrifice for his family. While it may not be their ideal, it’s also not condemned.
It’s not the same for moms.
Whether you’ve gained or lost weight, pregnancy and childbirth left you with a body that’s stretched, shrunk, withered, and wrinkled. You may have stretch marks splayed like tiger stripes across your belly, back or legs. Perhaps you have permanent dark circles under your eyes or premature gray hairs scattered through what once was luscious brown locks, now limply held back in a ponytail.
No matter what it looks like for you, the truth is that your body is not and never will be the same. For many of us, that’s a hard pill to swallow, often becoming lodged in our throats in a way that’s nearly suffocating.
To add to the problem, our bodies don’t just change once. You’ve just had baby number one. He’s so beautiful that you manage to overlook the stretch marks. Then sleepless nights hit, and your tired eyes are lined in ways you’ve never seen before. Once you feel you’re used to the lines and flab and wrinkles, you decide to add another, which takes a completely different toll on your body. It just compounds, each stage of motherhood adding to the changes from the last.
How do we love our mom bod when most of us didn’t appreciate the one we had before it? I’m that girl. This is my struggle.
I was a tall skinny girl, never gaining a pound through high school, college, or my first part of marriage. I had body image issues — because what high school girl doesn’t — but they were minor compared to most. Fast-forward to pregnancy. Oh baby, did hormones mess with my body! Then, not only did I deal with the natural weight gain from pregnancy, but I also found out, a few years later, that my coning abs and incontinence were not normal, but rather were due to severe diastasis recti. After my second baby, I could fit my fist between the gap in my abs. Add to this the hormone imbalances that often come along with pregnancy and childbirth. Suddenly, all of the “healthy” things I had done to lose weight and stay in shape, no longer worked. It’s been four years since my last baby and I still have the upper belly bulge of a woman who’s four months pregnant. I’ve learned to smile and laugh along with the well-wishers asking when my baby is due.
Many days, it’s hard to look in the mirror. I don’t like what I see. I don’t like what my body has become. After my second baby, I wrote a blog post telling people that if they didn’t like something about their body, change it. Let me tell you, I. Have. Tried. Life has a way of humbling us, and some things are out of our control. 
The secret to loving your body?
There’s not one, or at least, not one I know. I’m in the thick of the struggle along with the rest of you. But I read a quote one time that changed my perspective a bit:
“If you don’t like your body today, can you at least respect it?”
That was eye-opening. It didn’t make me love my body any more than I had the previous day. It was still the same shape, the same pudgy upper belly and a near pregnant look. But respect? Maybe I could do that. I knew what my body had created. I could literally hold the evidence in my arms. I knew all of the struggles that were outside my realm of control. I knew how many sleepless nights and feeding sessions, how many times I shoveled in the last chicken nugget from my child’s plate before I rushed to give them a bath. I knew how exhausted I’d been while still plugging along. Maybe I couldn’t love my body, but I could admire all of the things it had done.
I’m not there yet. In truth, I don’t know that I ever will be. But I’m learning that it’s not about my weight or shape. Turns out, I have the same insecurities now as I did when I was 30 pounds lighter. Every day I’m working at it. Every day I’m trying to manage the things I can do and find the things I enjoy.
