Weight. Wait.

Since the happy arrival of my beautiful son, I have been counting the days when I can fit into my old skinny jeans again.  Days, weeks and months have gone by while I watched my son's weight steadily climb up and patiently waited for my waist size to drop just a few more centimeters.  Everyone from next door neighbors, to shoe sales ladies and even my mother started telling me I looked slimmer, that my belly is flatter and my thighs were trimmer, but no matter what I did, every time I squeezed myself back into my skinnies, something just did not look right.

Maybe it was the newly formed muffin top across my waist, or the piece of my thigh oozing out of the destroyed part of the jean or the fact that I could no longer bend my legs as I walked, suffice to say that I did not look "slimmer", 'flatter" or 'trimmer".

I went back to my mother to question her false compliment - I mean why set me up just to see me fall so far down? My mother laughed at my weight gain, sure, but even she wouldn't be so cruel as to destroy my confidence completely.

Her answer was this - you're a mother now, your body just went through 10 months of hell in preparation for your baby, and for good cause too, ever wonder why you can always usually spot a mother against someone who has never given birth?

Now that I think about it, the thick arms, broad back, strong thighs, they were not the characteristics of a woman who had one too many chocolate overdoses, they were the tell tale signs of a woman who bore child, who woke up 10 times a night to nurse her baby, who fought between holding her crying baby sweeping the floor, who hunched over on the sofa and stared into nothing when her child finally went to sleep.

The weight put on during pregnancy might be easily shed - I myself lost over 15 Kilos in the first few months after giving birth, but what I'm left with is a newly armored body, a body that will outlast, endure and persevere, a mother's body.