Do women feel pressured into losing weight quickly after giving birth?

Yes

6 of 9

by Shannon Hines

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Having a baby is an experience most all girls dream of from a young age. It's the "American family dream" starting at the youngest age you see little girls walking around with their baby dolly pretending to be mommies. Like all dreams, having a baby is something that is fantasized about and not seen in reality....until reality comes crashing down fast, and for 9 long months.

At the moment the stick turns blue, or states positive, or you see that adorable little happy face appear, everything is perfect. Life is amazing, you are pregnant! It's wonderful, but the part of this fantasy that is left out time and time again is the part where you GAIN THE WEIGHT. Part of having a baby is the process of a woman's body making a home for that baby. The excess weight comes from multiple sources including but not limited to the excess water, the infamous placenta, the baby itself, and unfortunately the food we women crave that falls hand in hand with the bearing a child. So as we are the happiest we will ever be in our lives carrying the baby that we will love and raise, we are also hostel and very irritable. One reason for this irritability is due to the fact that although we are the happiest and most excited we will ever be, and our adoring significant other is telling us how beautiful we are every single time we have a meltdown, we secretly look at every other woman and hate her. Yes, we are glowing and irresistible, but we also see every other skinny girl wearing her adorable, fitting, and sexy outfits, not needing the constant reminder the she is indeed beautiful. She feels it and knows it... lucky her. This secretly leaves us with an unannounced self consciousness.

Having a baby is a joyous experience, but once the baby comes out you no longer have the excuse of merely being pregnant. You no longer have the "glow" and the enthusiastic reminder consistently emphasizing your beauty. Women indeed have to feel pressured into losing weight quickly after giving birth. Not necessarily from outside pressures but from that internal voice constantly reminding you of the necessity to be pretty and sexy, and how long you have now LACKED IN THOSE AREAS. This overwhelming desire to be back the way you were eats at us women with consistency and a vicious decay. The longer we hesitate to follow though with these desires the more it eats away at us.

Mistakenly, the pressure to lose the weight can be blamed on the media, the super skinny stars, or their amazing ability to make their "baby fat" vanish, but the real name to blame is our genetically inherited emotion, JELOUSY. The pressure is on and it's time we take a good look in the mirror when evaluating the reason for this pressure. There is no doubt it's there and there is nothing wrong with feeling it, it's when things don't go as we plan and the weight seems to stay on our eyes start to wonder. Remember, your the winner in the blame game.

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