I was having dinner with a friend the other night and we got to talking about how, unless we had plastic surgery, we may as well kiss bikini’s goodbye. My friend said this was something she accepted a long time ago and is totally fine with it. I am so not there yet.

I was literally in the best shape of my life before I had the kids, but isn’t that how it always goes? Here’s a picture of me the Christmas before I was pregnant:

Seriously, best shape of my life. So when I got pregnant I wasn’t overly concerned, I also didn’t know I was having two. Then when I didn’t gain any weight the first three months, I actually lost weight, I overcompensated during the last 6 months. Ok, really the last three months. As a parent of multiples, I’m sure you get this, all you want is big fat healthy babies. The sheer thought of the NICU scared me and I wanted my kids to come out big and healthy and wanted them to come home with me. If that meant eating spaghetti with meat sauce almost everyday for lunch, so be it. Seriously, I did eat spaghetti with meat sauce everyday for lunch for like a week in my 9 month.

(Scott and I the day before the kids were born)

I was definitely successful, the kids were 6lbs 12oz and 5lbs 12oz. They were actually ready to go home before I was. I totally succeeded and hit my goal, I should have ecstatic, not to mention I had two gorgeous children. The problem was I still had like 60 extra pounds that didn’t magically go away. You know how people tell you “Oh you’ll only look like you’re 3 months pregnant when you leave the hospital”, yeah that’s bull. I looked like I was at the minimum 6 months pregnant. I had also swelled after my c-section so that didn’t help….at all.

Add in the totally insensitive comments from people I knew and total strangers. Someone actually asked me why I put the photo above on Facebook, after all I looked like sh*t in the photo. Gee, thanks, that’s what I needed to hear. I also had a nurse at the local hospital ask me when my next child was due, yeah I had the kids with me. My 4 day old newborns. I almost jumped the counter, no lie, hormones do that to you. When I told her I wasn’t pregnant and I just had them, she said, and I am not even kidding, “Oh is there a triplet in there and they just didn’t take it out?” Again, almost jumped the counter. And yes, we complained, in case you were wondering.

So needless to say I felt AWESOME (sense the sarcasm) about how I looked. It took awhile to get all of the weight off, I mean after all it took 9 months to put on. But something you don’t plan for is that just because you weigh what you weighed before you had kids doesn’t mean you look like you did. Right now I weigh maybe 5 more pounds than I did in the first picture, and I look nothing like it.

Like I told my friend at dinner, I realize I sound whiny, but it was definitely an adjustment that I was not ready for. I’m fairly certain I will never look like I did before the kids, but I want to get as close as possible, non-surgically. In the end though, I need to be happy that all of this wasn’t done in vain, I have two beautiful and healthy children. Maybe I didn’t need some of those double cheeseburgers or bowls of pasta, but in the end it was worth it.

Seriously, how could I not be grateful after looking at those faces?

Farewell bikini, it was fun while it lasted!