Happy End of Swimsuit Season!!!

Labor Day weekend is my favorite long weekend of the year.  I am always ready for a little break from the craziness of back to school.  Eric is always ready to head to Knoxville for the first University of Tennessee football game.  I also love it because it is my official kick off to decorating my house for Fall.  I have so many fun Fall decorations that I like to get them out early so I can enjoy them.  (I do the same with my Christmas decorations and get them out at Thanksgiving!)

But my favorite thing about Labor Day weekend is that it is the closing of swimsuit season.  Yesterday at the game I polished off a little bit of everything at our tailgate. I even finished Matthew’s touchdown dog after he took one bite and declared he was done.  I will do it all over again next weekend and the following and every other weekend hopefully through the SEC championship.  I can do this all guilt free because there is ZERO chance that Steph is going to see a swimsuit until next May.  Holla!!!  As long as I can still zip my jeans on Monday, I am golden.

Honestly how many women can say that they just love the way that they look in a swimsuit??  If you can seriously, awesome for you.  Over the last 10 years, my body has literally been through hell and back.  Years of fertility treatments, shots, surgeries and being restricted from exercise are not kind to your body.  When I did finally get pregnant with twins, I was in the hospital on bed rest for 11 weeks.  That is 77 long days of lying down.  The only time I was allowed to get out of bed was to go to the bathroom and to take a shower…and that was only if I was not having too many contractions that day.

My family and friends all felt sorry for me so they always came bearing edible gifts so that I would be spared one hospital meal.  I ate every single bit with a smile.  I was eating for three, right?   And some days, Arby curly fries were the highlight of my very boring day.

I remember lying in my bed at Women’s Centennial hearing the squeak, squeak, squeak of the scale making its way down the hall closer to my room.  Each week they would come around and weigh us on the high-risk maternity floor.  Week after week, I would lie in my bed and cry to see what that number had crept up to this week. 

Before I got pregnant, I was a petite girl who weighed 110 pounds.  I gained over 60 pounds during my pregnancy with Ethan and Ella.  I don’t say that out of vanity.  I say that to mean that is a lot of weight on a small frame!  I was beyond uncomfortable.  I hurt all over and there was nothing that I could do about it.  There were two positions that I could lie in and after 5 minutes, I got uncomfortable.

One day late in my pregnancy, the lady that cleaned my room came in to mop.  I had been crying a little bit and was embarrassed.  There was no such thing as privacy when you lived in a hospital.  I quickly wiped my tears so that she wouldn’t feel uncomfortable.  I painted on my happy face ready to shoot the breeze as she mopped away. 

I leaned over to grab my water off the table.  She said “Shooey Girl!  I didn’t realize you had those!!”  I asked her what she was talking about and she said “All those stretch marks on your hips!”  At that point I wasn’t concerned with making her uncomfortable and I just let the tears roll. 

So fast forward several years, and another pregnancy later, then you can see that swimsuit season is not my friend.  The last several years I have found a nice “slimming” tankini that hides most of my stretch marks and wobbly bits.  Since I had Matthew almost six years ago, I have become very good about exercising four to five times a week.  Unfortunately, that does nothing to erase my stretch marks on my hips.

Last summer we were at the beach.  The kids were actually playing well together in the sand, so Eric and I were able to sit back and relax.  I loved to people watch and I watched all the people walking in the surf.  After a few minutes I pointed out to Eric that every single lady that passed by was wearing a bikini.  Some rocked it and some thought they did.  And some just didn’t care. …heck they were at the beach!  The only lady that was wearing a swimsuit close to mine was 30 years my senior.  I turned to Eric and said, “Next summer I will either be in a bikini or a maternity swim suit.”  (We were in the middle of fertility treatments with our frozen embryos.)

After we had our last failed Frozen Embryo Transfer and we made it through the chaos of the holidays, I got serious about reclaiming my body.  I exercised and I watched what I ate.  Then I decided I liked to eat too much, so I compromised by eating a few more salads and exercising a little more.  As we got closer to Summer I spent way too much money on two bikinis that were supposed to be just perfect for my body type.  I sat out in my backyard wearing them to get a little color.  Because who doesn’t feel better with a little color??

When I took my kids to the pool for the first time this summer it required a pretty big pep talk to myself.  I felt pretty good but I was still self-conscious.  It didn’t matter if I had lost weight and got in shape.  I still had these stretch marks on my hips.  They had faded but they may as well have been bright red in my mind.   I put off taking off my cover up as long as I could.  And dang it if a kid didn’t ask me to take them to the potty as soon as I disrobed!  Now I had to walk across the whole pool deck in a bikini to take their little bottoms to pee.

My sweet little Cassonova, Matthew, would tell me every now and again how beautiful he thought I was.  It was such a good reminder.  My babies thought I was pretty and most importantly, Eric, thought I was perfect the way I was.  That was all in the world that mattered.  If anyone was looking at me and putting down how I looked, it was because they didn’t have a high enough opinion of themselves.

I decided that I am going to be healthy.  I am going to eat healthy so that I have the energy I need to take care of my family and myself.  I am going to eat a few more salads, so that I can devour half a pizza with Eric every Friday night.  I am not going to cut out all the fun stuff because life is too short to not have Arby’s curly fries.

I decided that I am going to exercise so I can be healthy.  I am not going to kill myself for hours at the gym.  That isn’t for me.  I will exercise a reasonable amount of time and then do the other 80 things on my to do list so I can have plenty of time to spend with my family.  I may not have a six-pack, but I am strong.  Last night I carried Matthew from the top of Neyland Stadium down to the bottom of the parking garage.  I held 45 pounds of dead weight, sweetness through crowds and down steep ramps.  I didn’t break a sweat or miss a beat until I had him buckled in ready to go back to the hotel.

I finally, at 37 years old, got to a very comfortable place in my life and it took a very uncomfortable piece of clothing to get there.  I will never be in the same place that I was 10 years ago.  Thank God for that.  Today I am stronger mentally, spiritually and physically.  And I will never be a size 0 again.  I will gladly leave that size to the teenagers of the world.  I am a gladiator Mama with the stretch marks to prove it.  Holla!!