Read Confessions of a Scary Mommy: An Honest and Irreverent Look at Motherhood: The Good, the Bad, and the Scary for Free Online

Bacon and eggs and tuna fish sandwiches topped with potato chips and pizza with extra cheese and meatball subs and chocolate milk shakes. And that was just for breakfast. I visited the food court at the mall and ate my way around the world in a day. The next day, I did it all over again. Personally, I think the whole craving thing is a crock, anyway. I think women always crave particular foods, knocked up or not, and pregnancy just gives us the excuse to indulge rather than deny ourselves. Finally . Admittedly, it’s not the healthiest way of getting through nine months, but for me, it was the silver lining to an otherwise miserable experience. The Hershey’s Kiss–filled silver lining.
    With all the vomiting I did, you’d think that I would have gained a modest twenty pounds or so, right? I mean, I was basically an unintentional bulimic. Unfortunately, that was not the case and I gained a whopping sixty-five pounds. Once, while I was shopping for baby clothes around my seventh month, the Korean woman at the dry cleaner fought with me over my due date. “No way you have two more months,” she informed me,waving her pointy finger in my face. “You ready to pop now!” A salesperson at a clothing store actually had the audacity to ask me whether I was carrying an elephant. (I wasn’t entirely sure I wasn’t.)
    When Lily was born, I naively packed my semiskinny jeans for the return from the hospital, thinking that once the baby was out, my stomach would shrink right back up. Between the seven-plus pounds she weighed and all of the shit that poured out of me, surely I’d lose at least thirty pounds, right? The other thirty-five would melt off quickly and I’d be back to my prebaby self in no time. Ha.
    Sadly, baby weight is just like any other weight, and it’s a bitch to lose.
    I’ve seen countless celebrities boasting about how once they delivered the baby, their weight simply melted off like butter. Their bellies are flat again and their thighs, tight and cottage cheese free. The only remnants of a baby are the porn-star boobs pouring out of their red-carpet dresses. Worst of all, they claim that they’re so busy running around that they just forget to eat and poof! Baby weight gone and they’ve never looked better.
    Bullshit.
    First of all, there is no running around after a newborn. Maybe you’ll dash over to them if you hear a loud thud, but certainly not often enough to break a sweat. No matter how large your house, I highly doubt that normal life with a newborn constitutes an aerobic workout. Even in Hollywood.
    And how does one forget how to eat? Like, ever? The only time I ever came remotely close to not eating three square meals plus snacks daily was when I was working in an office for ten hours a day, in a cubicle all alone. But babies eat regularly. Toddlers areconstantly asking for snacks and meals and treats. Never mind that their plates constantly need to be “cleaned.” As a mother you are surrounded by food—how on earth is it forgettable?! Unfortunately, losing weight is the simple math of taking in fewer calories than you burn. So, either you’re munching on baby carrots all day, working out constantly, or you’ve become a milk machine and simply aren’t eating. Period.
    Unless you are that freak of nature whose weight just evaporates, at some point after giving birth, you will catch a glimpse of yourself and barely recognize the reflection. I remember staring in the mirror for almost an hour, feeling a mix of repulsion, fascination, and awe. And then I took a look at the side view and bawled. My stomach was understandable—it had housed a baby, after all, of course it would look like a half-deflated tire. But my ass? There was no excuse for that.
    Getting serious after that nine-month-long binge was tragic. I was grumpy and short-tempered and in a constant bitter mood. Mostly, I just missed the seven-hundred-calorie breakfast sandwich I’d become so accustomed to. I’m pretty sure the