Are women under too much pressure to shed their excess baby weight?
About six months after my son was born, I was picking up some dry cleaning, and the woman behind the counter smiled at me sweetly as she handed over the bag of shirts. “So,” she said, “when are you due?” “Oh, last fall,” I said, forcing a smile. “He’s crawling.” The woman looked confused, then mortified. I did my best to act like it was no big deal. Then I got in my car and cried, vowing to go on a diet and find a new dry cleaner. The truth, though, was that I really couldn’t blame the woman. Like many other new moms, I was fat; not obese, not fat in the gastric-bypass, reality show spectacle way, but a solid, undeniable, 15 to 20 pounds over the range that is considered healthy for my height. I’d spent the majority of my pre-pregnancy years bouncing around in the top third of this range, always a little heavier than I might have liked, never the sort of girl who would ride a bike in a bikini or ask a salesgirl why the stores carried so darn few size zeros, but a solid, healthy woman w
