Baby comes first – your tummy will sort itself out in its own sweet
YOU can tell a lot about a man by his attitude to his wife’s stretch marks.
The latest edition of Vanity Fair reports that Donald Trump told Melania that she could have a child as long as she ‘got her body back’ afterwards.
If true, this is reason 8,624 why I’m glad she’s married to him and I’m not.
Because, if you’ve just managed to push an entire other human being out of your own body, it’s not unreasonable to expect the man in your life to cut you some slack if you don’t leap straight out of the mater- nity ward and into your bikini.
The best kind of man already knows this. They don’t just put up with the new and fascinating (though temporary) elements of a woman’s appearance – leaky boobs, blancmange belly – but actively embrace them, or at least humour us by pretending to.
They are smart enough to look into their partner’s eyes and tell her with total conviction that they love every little thing about her, and, yes, that includes the stretch marks.
Because that body of hers has just performed a miracle and turned you both into something wonderful: a family. So a temporary decline in abdominal muscle tone really isn’t a biggie. It’s nature. And it’s worth it.
Besides, Melania might well have been happy darting off to the gym soon after she’d given birth, but the reality is that the human body needs time to adjust to the seismic changes of pregnancy and childbirth.
After three kids, my own experience was that, with gradual re-introduction of exercise, healthy eating and the odd hour to yourself, returning to your previous shape does not
need to be a battle, nor a race. It happens all on its own, as long as you give it time. So what’s the rush? I really don’t get it, particularly in this case. I can’t imagine, even post-partum, former supermodel Melania has the capacity to look THAT rough.
Of course, it’d be easy to paint Trump as the only culprit, but we mums can be our own worst enemy. We look at the celebs on the covers of magazines and, no matter how intelligent or media-savvy we are, there’s still a bit of us that convinces ourselves that this is the standard by which we must judge ourselves. We call these stories ‘inspiring’ but really they’re the opposite. So, if you’re a new mum, do yourself a favour and take my advice: cut yourself some slack and leave your old jeans in the drawer for a few more weeks and focus not on your squats, but your baby.
Summer Nights at the Moonlight Hotel by Jane Costello is out now