I had an epiphany today about postpartum weight loss and breastfeeding.\u00a0 Most people know breastfeeding helps a mother more easily lose weight after giving birth but I always just assumed it was from the baby taking calories from the mother which the mother wasn\u2019t replacing.\u00a0 Well, today it occurred to me that maybe for me it\u2019s a different reason.\u00a0 I have never had a baby that didn\u2019t insist on nursing while I was eating also and I\u2019ve found that it\u2019s not that easy to eat a full meal when you have a baby on your boob!\u00a0 For me, it causes me to eat less because I get bored of trying to eat my meal over the baby and usually don\u2019t finish (or now know not to take as much to begin with).\u00a0 This is just my personal theory, of course!<\/p>\n
The weight issue is one that probably every mommy has struggled with at some point in her life.\u00a0 Whether is how much you gain during pregnancy or losing it after baby arrives, it never seems to go the way mommy wants or expects.<\/p>\n
I am no exception. As a dancer I\u2019ve always been very conscientious of my weight though I\u2019ve never actually dieted.\u00a0 If my weight goes up unexpectedly I just try to eat healthier and exercise more until it stabilizes.\u00a0 I don\u2019t obsess over it, I\u2019ve just always been very aware of what\u2019s going on.<\/p>\n
However, I have been on a weight yo-yo for over 6 years.\u00a0 In that time I\u2019ve lost and gained a total of over 200 pounds (112 lost, 106 gained).\u00a0 My yo-yo adventure started when I broke my foot and couldn\u2019t dance for 12 weeks.\u00a0 I lost a pound a week of muscle weight.\u00a0\u00a0 9 months later I got pregnant with Honeybun\u00a0and I\u2019ve been pregnant, breastfeeding or both ever since.<\/p>\n
I gained around 30 pounds with each pregnancy (give or take a few pounds) but lost a lot breastfeeding.\u00a0 With both Honeybun\u00a0and Sugarplum I was back to what I now realize is my \u201cnormal\u201d weight by 2 months postpartum and lost a pound a month more while breastfeeding full time.\u00a0 After starting to wean, I gained about a pound a month back.\u00a0 With Honeybun\u00a0this was only 3 months before I became pregnant with Sugarplum so I started my second pregnancy 7 pounds less than the first and gained the least during her pregnancy.\u00a0 (Fun Fact for those who knew me 10 years ago:\u00a0 I weighed less the day I gave birth to Sugarplum than I did at the end of my freshman year of college!)<\/p>\n
I think the more kids we have and the busier we get in life the harder it becomes to lose the baby weight (aging probably doesn\u2019t help either).\u00a0 I don\u2019t feel like the weight from Doodle’s pregnancy is coming off as quickly as it did with the girls, but I know I will get there eventually.\u00a0 I know breastfeeding will help and my new teaching schedule won\u2019t hurt either.\u00a0 I guess I\u2019ll just have to \u201cweight\u201d this one out!\u00a0 (haha\u2026see why I didn\u2019t pursue comedy?)<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I had an epiphany today about postpartum weight loss and breastfeeding.\u00a0 Most people know breastfeeding helps a mother more easily lose weight after giving birth but I always just assumed it was from the baby taking calories from the mother which the mother wasn\u2019t replacing.\u00a0 Well, today it occurred to me that maybe for me […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,8,14,16,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-976","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-a-mommys-life","category-baby-business","category-ballerina-mama","category-breastfeeding","category-family-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/976","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=976"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/976\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2813,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/976\/revisions\/2813"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=976"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=976"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=976"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}