Baby Weight Wrap-Up

I'm sure the girls will ask me about this someday (I know I questioned my own mom about it), so I thought I'd write down a summary of my weight gain and loss for each pregnancy.

With Elsa: I gained 48 pounds, but I had pre-eclampsia and was really swollen by the time I delivered, so I'm sure a fair amount of that was water weight. Then of course I had c. difficile after Elsa was born, and couldn't eat much of anything for about a week after delivering. Between those two things, I had lost 30 pounds by the time Elsa was 8 days old, leaving me with just 18 to go. I reported on this blog on Oct. 25, 2006, that I had 10-15 pounds left to go, and I think I started dieting right after that. I did a standard 1200-calorie-per-day diet for about 4 weeks, and was about 2-3 pounds above my pre-pregnancy weight by Thanksgiving. Those 2-3 pounds stayed on until I started going to the gym regularly when Elsa was 10-12 months old. At that point, I finally lost those few last pounds that were still hanging on.

With Claire: I gained 47 pounds, but there was no pre-eclampsia to pin it on this time, and no c. difficile to help me lose it (fortunately, I guess). So, it was much, MUCH tougher with Claire. I had lost 16 pounds by the time I left the hospital (almost 10 pounds of that was Claire!), and a total of 25 pounds by the time Claire was 3 weeks old, without modifying my eating habits at all. At that point, my weight loss stopped and I actually even gained a few pounds back. That was alarming, so I started dieting on Memorial Day 2009. It took me a total of about 4 months on a 1200-calorie-a-day diet to get back to my pre-pregnancy weight (I sometimes ate even less, down to around 1000 calories a day). I lost about 8 or 9 pounds in the first month, then plateaued around the end of June and didn't lose anything for a few weeks. So at that point I started going to the gym again and began working out with a personal trainer, twice a week for 30 minutes each time. My weight loss kicked back in again when I started that.

So there you have it, girls—I hope your experiences are as (relatively) easy as mine.