Journey to pre-pregnancy...

For as long as I can remember I have struggled with self esteem issues, I feel anxious if I leave the house without make up and the numbers on the scales have always been a little too important to me. As I grow older, I'm now realising that I'm silly to worry, I've never been in clothes larger than a size 6 or 8 and those numbers on the scales have never been into double figures but somehow, even knowing all of this, I would still find reason to hate my body.

This all changed when I found out I was pregnant. I stopped caring about numbers and just loved every minute. I've never been as comfortable in my own body as I was during my pregnancy, I adored my bump, I adored the little life inside of me and I felt like my body had a purpose. However, once I hit around 38 weeks, little niggles started to creep into my mind, I was all bump but it was one hell of a bump and I began to worry about losing the weight once Theodore was born. 

By the end of my pregnancy I had gained around 3 stone and for the first time in my life, the scales were in double figures. I was more than okay with this, I was growing a human but a big part of me knew that the little human was coming out soon and at this stage, I wasn't sure how much of that weight was baby. 

Theodore was born 5 days overdue and I was completely in shock at how much my massive bump shrank within an hour of his birth. I was so in love with this little guy that I had made but I almost immediately missed my bump, I'd grown so fond of it and I still miss it every single day.

I weighed myself at 3 days post birth and was so shocked to see a stone had disappeared already and it has continued to steadily drop off since then. The loss was quite rapid at first and has now slowed down. 

I have lost around 2st and although I still have moments in which I moan and claim to feel 'fat', it's a different kind of moan than pre pregnancy. I feel strangely comfortable with my body, don't get me wrong, I do want to get my body back but I'm in no real rush. My body did an amazing thing, it grew a life, a whole new person and my body is the way it is now because it grew a life. A life that I look at and smile every single day, my body grew something that is now my whole reason for living and I don't think it could be possible for me to ever hate my body again. 

I feel blessed that this is my body at 4 weeks post birth but I feel even more blessed each time I look at my son. Pregnancy and birth have given me a kind of body confidence that I didn't know existed and I couldn't be happier!