The Shape of a Mother

[pegkerr]

I'm grateful to naomikritzer for pointing out this blog, The Shape of a Mother. The blog is subtitled: A mother's body is beautiful. Period." And below it reads: "Becoming a mother changes everything in your world - including your body. Here we share images of our bodies during and after pregnancy so we can see what real women look like." I appreciate Naomi's commentary here, too.

As I have been trying to rev up my motivation, to help me resume my exercise program, I have been eyeing with exasperation my belly, with its stubborn little mound of avoirdupois nestled around my navel. (I bought a stability ball today--can anyone suggest good intermediate exercise DVDs for the stability ball, by the way?) And so it was very comforting to look through the pictures on this blog and realize that yeah, my body, with its evidence of prior pregnancies, is totally normal.

Comparatively, it really looks pretty good.

Comments

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

While I admire and support the idea behind this, I have a bit of trouble with "Becoming a mother changes everything in your world - including your body."

Not necessarily. I know that you don't think this way, and probably the person who wrote that doesn't, either, but there are people--in my experience, mostly women--who do not consider women who are parents by other means than giving birth to be "real" mothers. As I think you know, for myself I couldn't care less what "people think," but this viewpoint is quite hurtful to some adoptive, step-, and foster mothers (and any category I may have forgotten), and is discouraging to women who are thinking of joining one of those categories.

[cedarlibrarian.livejournal.com]

For stability ball videos, I like BLT on a Ball by Karen Voight, and the stability ball segment of Kathy Smith's Lift Weights to Lose Weight II.

I haven't tried them, but you could probably handle the Tracie Long Training videos. They look really unusual and interesting, but I don't think I'm strong enough to try them yet.

[aeditimi.livejournal.com]

I want to thank you for pointing me to this link, Peg. You have no idea how much I needed it. Actually, you're a woman and a mom, so you have a really good idea how much I needed it. Thank you again.