I dont often come across another website and squeal in disgust, but I had to when I came to this one. A website devoted to showing pictures of what happens to the female form after rearing children, it aint pretty and I don’t advise visiting. I am a mother of three and an avid couch potato. I love being lazy and I will ever defend my theory that the smarter you are, the lazier you are able to become. Having said that, Let me tell you why I have a problem with this so called “Shape of a mother.” I can appreciate the morbid curiosity, I stare at car accidents, I gawk at pull-offs and I get my fair share of celebrity scandal in. I understand where the site is coming from, with the whole shock treatment but what I don’t understand is why. So you want to shock the world by claiming that you love your stretch marks and that the extra sag your butt has after birthing kidlets is just heaven, right? Stop lying to yourself. Children are beautiful, Pregnancy is beautiful, but stretchmarks and sagging skin are an ugly afterthought. There is a difference between loving something that is wrong with you, and accepting it. Stretch marks are damaged skin, from weight gain. They can appear almost anywhere on the body but are mainly found on the stomach and upper arms. Stretch marks are what happens when skin rebels against it’s vessel. This is not something to embrace, but something to treat and move forward from. Hooray for moms, dont get me wrong. But you can’t expect me or anyone else in the entire world to believe that you are actually happy about these, you cannot suggest that these are an improvement over what you had before. “I love having saddlebags, I never have to worry about fitting into that cheerleader getup again!” Yeah, embracing these flaws is just a simple way of saying that you do not care anymore.  Reading the site reviews, “I love my stretchmarks!!” is interesting, these women seem to really believe that stretchmarks are what makes the mother.  I am honestly sad that they need to live theirs lives this way. Accept yourself and don’t worry what everyone else thinks. Work hard and get rid of those pesky trouble spots and stop making excuses for why they are so great. The shape of a mother is not a stretch marked abdomen, the shape of a mother lies in the strength and size of her heart, the way she loves her family relentlessly, the way she continues to sneak vegetables into her children’s food, and love notes into her spouse’s briefcase.  The shape of a woman is the way she loves.*

Celebrate your children, not the havoc they reap on your body.

*Courtesy to You, My reader, has been shown by refusing to display damaged skin as a testament to how much we love our children. Feel free to visit “The Shape of a Mother” if you’d like to be disgusted.

© 2009, AntiSoccermom. All rights reserved to the original author unless stated otherwise.

I am a very lucky woman, with three beautiful and healthy children who amaze me more every single day. I am also very lucky to have baby daddy, the man who decided to cash in his last paycheck and become a stay-at-home dad to the kids so that I could write this blog and he could do whatever he does when he isn’t doing that. I know that I am lucky, but that doesn’t make my life any less frustrating. Today upon waking up and realizing that it was a Monday morning, I panicked. Monday is the first day of every week where I am left to juggle baby and business without his helping hands,and this morning I find that my toddler son was already a crumpled heap of hysterics inside his crib. Baby daddy decided to take it upon himself to, without consultation with the mother/babysitter/SAINT, throw out every bottle in our home. Now I am writing this not as a rant, but more as a warning. A warning to any parent who makes a life-altering decision, without consulting the other parties involved. To take the bottle or to move the baby out of his crib or to suddenly stop feeding him cheerios for dinner, are all things that need quiet conversation between all the adults involved and nothing less is acceptable. My toddler was probably ready to lose his bottle as it was taken when Baby Daddy found a puddle of milk underneath the crib, Yes, he might have been ready, But I was not. My son, not yet two, would take a bottle only to lay down for his naptime and at night when he was drifting off to slumber. He has been an exceptional sleeper since his first birthday, when we introduced a box fan into his routine and the noise of our home was blacked out. He no longer felt like every nap time, as soon as he drifted away, we hosted an immaculate party with cake and streamers and clowns and we never once invited him. His fear of being left out of a good time shifted in to a comfortable affection for his mid day slumber and by the time he was one, slept well throughout the night and for several hours during the day. This is no longer the case. The terror and drama that occurred between this child and I cannot be adequately described without implicating one or both of us in at least one minor crime. It was such an interesting and terrifying day that I was compelled to place a  note on the casing of my doorbell. Simply threatening the health and safety of anyone willing to ring the doorbell after I had finally rocked my listless son to sleep, the first such happening since I quit breastfeeding almost a year ago. After an hour I realized that we made it through without either of us ripping out any hair and neither of us drinking anything but the bitterness of our battered pride.

Bottle 0

Mikey 1

and

Mommy -13

So I had a minor accomplishment, in that no one was harmed throughout the entire day, even if we did experience every emotion in the trainwreck station of toddlerhood. We live and we learn and really, Im the only one that is worse for the wear. He went to bed smiling sweetly and humming to the tune of his Baby Einstein cd. The question remains, What to do with Baby Daddy? Do I kill him for making this irreversible decision without me? Do I force him into solitary confinement with said toddler and come back in 12 hours when he has met the same frustrating fate as I have? Decisions.Decisions.

He is cooking dinner, I know that.

© 2009, AntiSoccermom. All rights reserved to the original author unless stated otherwise.