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When becoming a parent there are so many things on our minds. We are busy thinking about feeding routines, trying to catch sleep, preparing the house for the sudden surge of visitors the last thing we really want to think about is what we look like and how much weight we have put on over the last nine months.

Despite weight and fitness being the last things on our minds it's always something we just can't help but think about whether it be due to the media portraying so many 'perfect' looking people or whether it be our friend enquiring how we "Only managed to put on two stone? Amazing!"

Weight loss and being fit and healthy is a huge part of society these days. You can't read a magazine without an article about how to look trim, how to lose a dress size in ten days and the like, jump out at you. Pregnancy and parenting magazines also promote weight loss.

There are now exercise classes you can take your newborn baby too. The mere fact that these exercise classes exist alone shows that women are body conscious and wanting to get their prepregnancy figures back as soon as possible.

The pressure to lose weight is on all of our shoulders and even though I hate the fact that it toys with my mind I have to admit that I have been watching my weight and trying to diet since giving birth.

The want to wear nice clothes and walk around the park proudly with my baby is great. I don't want to look back at my baby's newborn photos and see myself looking larger than life on them all. I want to look back and think how good I look and sadly, I judge how good I look by how slim I look and which clothes I can fit in.

The fact that celebrities are seen in super amazing clothes and with super flat stomachs just weeks after giving birth is extremely pressurising. What a lot of people don't consider though is how happy they are? Who are looking after their babies? Are they breast feeding? What pressures have they gone through to get that slim so fast?

One of the first things you are told when talking about breast feeding is that 'it burns up to 500 calories a day' with midwives saying this as a positive it shows just how society thinks- in terms of controlling what we eat now. Instead of voicing it as 'breast feeding can be very tiring as it uses a lot of energy' they promote the fact it can help you lose weight. Surely this is yet again a subtle way of putting the message across to new mums/expectant mums that regaining our pre-pregnancy weight is what we are aiming for.

There are enough pressures when you bring a newborn baby home, it is a shame that we feel that we are less than perfect if we have put on weight after having been through a gruelling 9 months.

Society is trying to find a 'perfect' 'super mum' and we are always trying to better ourselves even when there are more important things to worry about- your new baby. Maybe we should stop being so body conscious but is that possible with the way the world is now and how the media is portraying people?

Better role models for new mums are a must I believe. We can't all be like Victoria Beckham and Paula Radcliffe.

Learn more about this author, Laura Marshall.
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