All baby my ass

I wasn't going to post any pictures of myself toward the end of the pregnancy because I am extremely embarrassed by them.  But after two weeks I've decided to let my vanity go and document the way I looked when carrying these babies.  Also, I am trying to get the weight back off and I feel posting this publicly might hold me a little more accountable during my weight loss effort.  Kind of like an on-line Weight Watchers weigh in.

This is me the morning I was induced.  Wow, right?  People kept telling me I was all baby.  Um, wrong.  I think its just that my belly is so large that it was distracting from the other parts of me that were getting entirely too puffy.  My face and neck pretty much say it all in this photo.  And the dress is one of about 3 things that were still fitting me at this point.

I ended up gaining about 42 pounds with this pregnancy, well over the 35 pound mark I once predicted I would never get to.  But I also thought I would never get to 38 weeks.  They say not to weigh yourself postpartum, but I've always been obsessed with scales (maybe something I should work on now that I have other more pressing things to worry about) so I couldn't help but step on mine the day I got home from the hospital.  My scale pretty much weighed me the same as the doctor's the entire pregnancy, so I knew it was fairly accurate.  2 days postpartum I lost 14 pounds of baby, placenta, and fluid.  I felt like a new person!  Just with a lot less muscle.

Now two weeks postpartum I am down a little over half of the 42 pound weight gain.  I would love to take a picture of me now to post, but I'm in that weird stage where my stretched out belly is still shrinking, my boobs are hideously, abnormally large and they wrap around to my back, my maternity clothes are all too big, and my regular clothes are all too small.  Right now I'm rolling around in workout shorts from college (they must have been big on me then) and a nursing tank.  My feet are also completely jacked up, and I've resorted to wearing my Birkenstock clogs around the house in an effort to get some tendons to loosen up.  I am the picture of high fashion.

I know its going to take a while to get back to pre-pregnancy weight after twins, so I'm really not concerned.  Plus things never went back to where they were exactly after Lillian, so I fully expect this time to be no different.  I am fully aware that the bed rest helped me gain enough weight that I had 5 and 6 pound healthy baby boys, and I am grateful and blessed for how things have turned out so far.  But I do want to eventually feel like myself again, and I think documenting the process will be interesting, if not just for a few good laughs.