Woman Doesn't Want to Lose Baby Weight

You know the drill. A woman carries a kid inside of her for nine months, pushes it out into the world, and then does a mad dash to get back to her pre-baby bod. We’ve seen it recently with face of the Atkins Diet Kim Kardashian (amongst handfuls of other famouses), and we’ve seen it with real people we know outside of Instagram. If you’re not at least trying to drop the extra cushion that carrying a live human puts on your bod, then you’re doing life wrong, society says.

Luckily, there’s one woman who isn’t buying the obsession with pre-baby bods. In a personal essay for Romper, body positive hero Katherine DM Clover explains why she doesn’t give a hoot about trying to drop her pregnancy pounds, and we’re here for it. She said this:

There is this idea, one that’s very prevalent in our size-obsessed culture, that every new mom must want those “extra” pounds gone as soon as possible. In fact, the world is full of diets, exercise plans, and more, all designed to help new parents with what seems to be the ultimate goal: losing the baby weight. If you work out every morning in an attempt to get back to your pre-pregnancy body, that’s cool, you do you. As for me, though, I’m never going to try to lose the baby weight.

I wasn’t interested in our diet-obsessed culture before having my son either. I’ve tried hard to be as body positive as possible in my lifetime, and it’s an important value I’d like to pass on to my child. There was nothing wrong with my body that needed fixing then, and I don’t think there is anything wrong with it now.

It’s not every day that we hear people making the case for keeping the pregnancy pounds, so cheers to that.

Clover also explains that, surprise, between balancing work and home life, she doesn’t have much time for the gym. And besides, she’d rather be doing more fulfilling activities in her free time than focusing on her weight, she says. Like, ya know, spending time with the CHILD SHE JUST BIRTHED. Imagine that wild concept.

And she didn’t stop there. Clover’s essay got more exciting with every mouse scroll, with little gems like this one:

All of these pounds are a part of me, and I can’t think of any good reason why some of them would be keepers while others need to be quickly shed.

As a body-positive person, I strive to love my whole body exactly the way it is today. Does it look a little different after creating and growing a whole other human? Sure thing. Does it still wake me up in the morning, carry me from point A to point B, and ensure that my son is happy, cared for, and loved? Hell yeah. My body is my body, and it’s great.

This feels like a dip in the sea on a stifling afternoon in July. We love everything about Clover’s message on why losing the baby weight isn’t a necessity and wish this idea would get a little bit more mainstream. We also have a strong feeling that her children will be major winners at life with a rad mom like this.

[Romper]

Eliza Dillard