A lot of women have trouble losing the baby weight, but for me, that was never an issue. Nursing gave me the metabolism of a hyperactive ferret. So much so that after having weaned, it’s actually occurred to me when I’ve gained weight that if I could just grab some random crying baby and nurse it, all would be well with the world. (Yes, I know that’s a little sick.) But while baby weight’s been a cinch to lose, I can’t say the same about toddler weight.
I’m not talking about the size of my toddler, who at 17 months, is a strapping 28 1/2 pounds and just so delicious I could eat him up. The problem is that I kind of do eat him up, with big slobbery kisses, and he’s always covered in food. Or trying to shove a soggy teething biscuit into my mouth. (Yum.)
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nd I also have been eating up the food he doesn’t finish. Like, we’ll go to a family restaurant and I’ll order some healthy diety item: a salad with protein and balsamic vinegar. For me. And for him, I’ll order him a grilled cheese sandwich, all buttery and oozing hot orange lava.
I’ll eat all my healthy diety entree. He’ll eat 1/3 of his grilled cheese sandwich. And whatever he didn’t throw on the floor, I’ll finish it up.
Not exactly all-out piggery–no quarts of ice cream, no finishing an entire thing of hummus in one sitting–but the pounds started creeping back on. I was in denial at first. I decided I had “PMS bloating” 3 weeks out of the month.
Then finally I had enough. I was unsuccessful at finding a random baby to nurse, but I did recall (from previous experiences losing toddler weight, with my other two children) that if you eat salads with balsamic vinegar and skip the uneaten grilled cheese sandwich on your child’s plate, you’ll lose weight. And so I did.
Now I am toying with the idea of losing an extra five pounds so that I can hit that “What, me, a mom of three?” weight, but part of me thinks that if I actually lost those elusive five pounds I’d enter a stage of obnoxious, narcissistic euphoria that would make me completely unlikable to everyone, including my husband, my children and myself. I’d be so proud of hitting sub-sub-baby weight that I’d take pictures of the scale after I weighed in and post them on Facebook, or start calling myself, “Lil’ ole me,” or saying things like, “Ooh, it’s so windy outside. I hope I don’t blow away!”