Strollerderby : baby weight

4 Ways Birth and Breastfeeding Will Ruin Sex

Cole Gamble — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 16:29:00 GMT

Okay, I’m a guy so I don’t have much to input about sex after birth from a woman perspective. Personally I’m for it and really down with pregnancy sex. Too personal? Okay. Men, however, worry about what sex will be like after the big show. And this can also differ quite a bit due to the form of birth: c-section or front door. I am familiar with the Madonna Complex: when a man watches the baby comes out of his wife’s vagina he has a hard time seeing said vagina as a sexual object, instead viewing it more like a mommy tool or portal (and not a sexy portal either).

But a guy’s perspective isn’t going to help you, as it turns out many women lose their desire for sex after birth too.

So for the lady’s perspective, we turn to Hilda Hutcherson, M.D., gynecologist and author of What Your Mother Never Told You about Sex. Hilda cites four main culprits for less sex after birth, some physical, some emotional.

#1 Prolactin

When a woman breastfeeds her body boosts her prolactin levels. Prolactin is a hormone that kills your sex drive. For some reason your body does not want you having sex while your breastfeeding. Could it be a way of nature telling you to wait on making another baby until the first one is a little older? Whatever the case, as long as you breastfeed you won’t have desire to knock boots, so says Dr. Hilda.

#2 Mommy on the Brain

Now that you are a mother your focus switches off your relationship with your partner and onto your relationship with your baby. Taking on the role of mommy, you may stop seeing yourself as a sexual being.

#3 Bad Body Image

You probably saw this one coming. Many of you feel funky about your post birth body. Things got stretched out; baby weight is still hanging around. No matter how much your partner tells you you’re desirable, you just can’t believe it.

#4 Fatigue

Yep, babies are freaking exhausting. Hell, two year-olds are really exhausting. And when you’re that exhausted a vigorous romp is the furthest thing from your mind.

What do you think? Is Dr. Hilda full of crap and are you post-birth ladies getting it on with no problems?

More by this author:

Smackdown: Boob Nazis - Is Breastfeeding that Big A Deal? NO!

Should You Take A Risk on Orgasmic Birth? (Orgasmic Birth Video included)

8-Year-Old Too Young to Divorce?

The 33 Most Ridiculous Toys Ever

Pete Wentz: "I've Tasted Ashley's Breast Milk."

Teacher Beats Student to Death for Late Homework

A Guy’s Take on Stay at Home Moms and Dads (Part 1: The Cons)

Banana Dildos and the 10 Worst Toys and Gifts This Christmas (part 1)

Desert Island Disks – Kid Music Edition

What Bristol Palin Can Expect, After Baby Algebra

JeanneSager — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 15:56:00 GMT

Even a knee-jerk liberal mom like me can feel bad for Bristol Palin. Not because she’s facing the end of childhood before she’s even allowed to vote (or drink for that matter – how will she get through parenthood?). And not because her mom has thrown her to the ~~wolves~~ media by signing on to a national campaign for vice president during her teenage pregnancy. That's just the icing.

Here's the cake: By the time the nation’s possible Second Grandkid comes screaming into the world, Mrs. Levi Johnston (nee Palin) will be looking for sympathy for saggy boobs and stretch marks. And where's she going to find it? Grandma-to-be has the type of 44-year-old body that can hide a seven-month pregnancy, and we don't mean the type where you eye the belly and go "hmmm, do I risk getting smacked if I ask her when she's due?"

Even the moms deeply entrenched in Republican rhetoric are building voodoo dolls with a Sarah Palin head. Trust me. No mom has a body like that and makes friends on the playground. She’s the mom you shake hands with after you change a diaper – before you wash your hands. And I’m just another mommy. I’m not her hormonal teenage daughter.
Sorry Bristol, the books might say “nine months on and nine months off,” but you might want to hire a personal trainer before you pose for the next set of family portraits. That’s if you can find time for those "normal" mom moments.

Because she's going to come home from the hospital after an exhausting labor and delivery, and all she will want to do is sink down in the tub for a hot bath while that hunky hockey hubby takes care of the baby for 5 blessed minutes.
But wait, what's that knocking?

“Up and at ‘em, the early bird catches the moose. I was back to work in three days while your father took care of the baby, let's go babe."

So let's all take a moment to feel bad for Bristol Palin. . . . Oh, man, that knee is jerking again.

Image: Celebrity-Gossip

Preventing Teen Pregnancy, One Tick at a Time

The New "Good Mother"

Kelly Mills — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 16:02:00 GMT

In the olden days of long, long ago, when our dinosaurs roamed the land and our mothers were having babies, there was a certain amount of pressure on moms. Mothers were supposed to raise the children with patience and a cheerful air of total domestic fulfillment. In the fantasy, the house was spotless, and a lovely dinner was served every night with a chic apron and a smile. Then came the glorious liberation of women from the home, and all of the sudden there were new pressures. Now moms were supposed to be successful in careers while maintaining close and loving relationships with their kids. Time was somehow divided efficiently between being an equal breadwinner and an involved parent, with board meetings flowing seamlessly into baking brownies for the PTA bake sale.

We pretty much know both those visions are crap, right? But that didn't stop women from feeling pressure to meet that ideal, and carrying around a sense of shame if they fell short. Well, you are in luck ladies, because nowadays there's a new kind of "good mother" and so now you have a whole other set of unrealistic expectations to try and meet!

The new perfect mom? She looks like she hasn't had babies at all. She only gains the teensiest amount of weight during pregnancy, and simply glows the entire nine months. Even in the delivery room, the new good mother looks radiant in her designer birth gown, posing for pictures that could grace Us magazine or be suitable for a classy birth announcement. Once the baby is born, she immediately drops all the weight she gained, without earning a single stretch mark or stomach wrinkle. You'd never know she had a baby, except for the fact that she now has gigantic boobs spilling out of her stylish dress.

Naturally a big part of the new mom pressure springs from the celebrity baby boom, when famous and genetically blessed women with access to nannies and plastic surgeons have their photos plastered everywhere, featured in lovely gowns and heels along with the news that they gave birth only seconds ago. And in other ways, I think this new mom was created by the whole "hot mom" phenomenon, where mothers railed against the idea that having children meant they became frumpy and sexless. But as is the way with so many trends manipulated by people who want to sell you stuff to make you a better you, this one turned around and became an expectation rather than an escape.

As a personal trainer, I see women who are three weeks postpartum and who are desparate to lose the baby weight. I totally applaud anyone who wants to get back in shape, but I can't help but feel for some of these mothers, who clearly believe they let themselves go during that whole pregnancy thing. When I was three weeks postpartum I would have been happy to find my car keys, let alone embark on a new fitness regime.

Truth is it doesn't matter how awesome you look in your post-birth hospital photos because no one really cares. You don't have to abandon the notion of being hot and fit and outfitted stylishly, but you also don't have to be that way 24-7, especially when you have a baby or two. But you all know this, right? Now, if we could only believe it too...

They Like Big Butts, and They Can Not Lie: Survey Finds Men Prefer Bigger Body Sizes

Cole Gamble — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 21:30:00 GMT

Drop that rice cake. I said drop it! For years, okay centuries, women have tortured, teased and starved themselves in the hope of reaching that ideal body size. One would assume this was all for the men. If that’s the case, someone should have asked the men, because ladies have been doing it wrong all along.

According to a body survey in the UK mag Fabulous, women claim their ideal body size is a 6. When asked, the men said they though the ideal female body size should be a 10. See the pic for a comparison.*

*These are UK measurements. Size 8 is equivalent to the U.S. size 6, size 12 is a U.S. size 10 and size 16 is a U.S. size 14.

Which begs the question, who have women been starving themselves for? When you ask your guy, “Do you like skinny girls?” and he says “no,” instead of reflexively calling him a liar and hitting him, maybe you should listen. He’s been telling the truth all along. So maybe it’s time to cut out the unending parade of diets and accept the fact men like women the way they look, maybe even more so with a few more pounds. And maybe before you ladies lose all the baby weight, take a second look at how thin you really need to be. The first round of fettuccini is on me.

For the record, I think all those ladies up there are hot.

More by this Author:

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The 9 Most Racist Disney Characters

The Sh*t List: 10 Bizarre (or Terrific?) Potty Gadgets

Nipple Jewelry: 5 Products Moms DON’T Need

10 Naughty Things We Do to Our Kids (but keep doing anyway)

18 Kids From One Vagina: Woman Births 18th Child

The 26 Most Disturbing Kids Movies Ever

5 Ways to Keep the Kids from Growing Fat this Summer

5 Ways to Not Go Broke (with Kids)

What's Next, Shock Collars For Your Kids?!

7 Ways to Make Your Baby to Sleep Tonight

Babble Talk: The Truth About Percentiles

Jen Chaney — Wed, 28 May 2008 17:32:00 GMT

Yay for Jeanne Sager, who has written a fascinating essay for Babble on a subject I have long wondered about: Those percentile charts that are constantly mentioned each time we take our kids to the pediatrician.

Sager's piece notes the anxiety many parents feel when their babies rank on the low end of the spectrum for weight. She even mentions one case in which a mother was told her baby's lack of pounds represented a "failure to thrive."

I understand the percentile insecurity complex firsthand. My son, at 15 months, has yet to hit double percentile digits for weight. He looks healthy, he eats well and he is a happy kid. Yet there he sits, in the seventh percentile. Every time I come home from the pediatrician, I wonder: Is he ranking on the tiny side simply because most American kids are too big?

Sager's story says, actually, that might be right: "According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the fatal flaw of the percentiles used by most U.S. pediatricians to chart growth is this: they compare children to other American children, and other American children are, well, big. Thanks to the U.S. obesity crisis, many of them are in fact way too big. And that leads some parents of smallish children to look at the charts and believe their kids are undernourished."

The story goes on to mention WHO's recommendation of using a fixed standard of healthiness to judge our children, rather than simply comparing them to each other. I gotta say, that makes a lot of sense to me.

But what do you think? Have you ever developed a percentile insecurity complex because of your child's weight? How did you overcome it? And was your pediatrician helpful or harmful in helping handle shrimpy kid syndrome?

Photo: Melissa Drenzel/Babble.com

Sleep Burns Off Baby Weight

Cole Gamble — Mon, 19 May 2008 16:00:00 GMT

Let me just start by saying my wife is Wonder Woman, or perhaps she just has tapeworm, for when Nicole got pregnant for the first time she lost all her baby weight in six months. And this was no cute couple of pounds. Nicole had put on 100 pounds (or about 75 kittens). Seriously, here is a picture at Christmas time when she was bigger than the tree:

(Picture deleted by blogger's wife. It is not clear why she has access to the blogging network.)

I'd pass along her weight-loss technique, but it's a safely guarded secret that involves cases of Diet Pepsi , nicotine and a fey, wish-granting miniature space alien named Frazoo. Now it turns out the aspartame-poisoning, smoker's hack and putting up with Frazoo's inability to wear even the most basic of clothing and conceal his space bits was all for not. Turns out Nicole could have lost all that weight by getting more sleep.

This study shows that women who get five hours of sleep or less a night retained an average of 11 pounds more than new mothers who got seven hours or more. Part of the reason is sleep deprivation causes your brain to send appetite-inducing chemicals making one feel constantly hungry.

Now, we all know why mom is not getting sleep; there is a little someone who wants to eat at all hours. As result, you want to eat at all hours. So maybe now you have the husband do the late-night feedings. Let him get fat. It's not like he has plans to wear a two-piece.

Celebrity Tips For Losing the Baby Weight! (BARF)

Kelly Mills — Fri, 16 May 2008 20:33:00 GMT

Omigod, Forbes has this ah-mazing article on how celebrities lose the weight right away after they have their cute little babies. Oh, sure, the article acknowleges right away that famous mamas have all this pressure to drop pounds immediately, and that can be frustrating for regular old moms to watch. And yeah, we'll all admit celebs have personal trainers and chefs and full-time nannies and so on to help with the baby weight loss endeavor. But that doesn't mean we common folk can't learn from celebrities, right?

And the first big thing we learn is that celebrity weight issues must make money for mags, because this article has about as much substance as JLo's postpartum dinners. You know what we are supposed to take from the lifestyles of the rich and famous moms? 1. Be motivated, just like those poor famous people who have tons of cameras documenting every postpartum jiggle; 2. Breastfeeding will help you lose weight--except some celebs say it won't; and 3. Get fit before you conceive, and maybe exercise carefully during pregnancy. Gosh, that is sooo insightful and helpful, I'm sure we've never heard anything like that before. Next you'll be telling us we should "burn calories" and "eat healthy"! Thank gawd we have the chance to worship at the altar of fame, because we gain so much!

Can I share something with you? The focus on post-partum weight loss among the A-, B-, and C-listers is idiotic. These people start with a genetic advantage, have every resource available to make weight loss a primary life goal, and are sometimes shedding the pounds in unhealthy ways and at a dangerous rate. Screw. This. Shit. If you care about dropping the baby fat, at a minimum tell yourself "Nine months on, nine months off." And better yet, just enjoy your newborn, because you have time to lose the weight, and your infant is only going to be this little and precious for the blink of an eye.

J. Lo doesn't care about losing weight, until she does

Brett Singer — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 22:00:00 GMT

At first, new mom Jennifer Lopez said that she was in "no hurry" to lose her baby weight. That didn't last long: the Daily Mail reports that she has lost 40 pounds in four weeks, which would be a lot even if she hadn't just had twins.

I say more power to her; she can do whatever she wants (well, except for doing a sequel to 'Gigli'.) I was a little disappointed though, since if she had stuck to her guns, it might have made women who were having trouble losing weight after pregnancy feel better about themselves. To lose the pounds, she's been spending 3 hours a day working out, which begs the question of who is watching the kids. I guess Marc Anthony doesn't have a lot going on, and he's skinny enough already.

Stand In Kitchen, Lose Weight

Madeline Holler — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 18:02:00 GMT

Wanna lose the baby weight? (Even if the baby is now a toddler or, Christ, in junior high.)

One "expert" recommends heading straight to the kitchen. But not for a snack or even to throw out the high-calorie, high-carb salt & vinegar kettle chips.

He wants you to throw out your toaster, your George Foreman grill, that chipped platter that just sits there and sits there. Feel the pounds melt from your thighs!

We've already heard this clutter guy's claims of weight loss when you declutter your life and clean your house. Now, he's especially focused on your kitchen.

His analogies, though, read counter to logic.

From the NY Times:

“If you walked into a new restaurant and saw a messy, disorganized kitchen and dining area, you’d turn around and walk out the door,'’ he writes. “You wouldn’t eat dinner in a place like that. So why would you do it at home?'’

In that case, should we be increasing the clutter all over our countertops. Wouldn't that make us turn around and walk out the kitchen door?

Apparently not. He recommends getting rid of appliances that take up counterspace where you could be preparing healthful meals. And tossing anything that isn't used for food storage, prep, serving or cleanup.

So I can keep the stash of kettle chips?

Strollerderby Playdate: Doggie Style

Adrienne Martini — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 18:29:00 GMT

Show of hands - how many moms looked at their post-baby belly and immediately started to sob? How many were doing the same thing a year later? How many are making peace with how things in the boob-and-belly region are now? How many of you find keeping your hand in the air is aerobic exercise enough?

You are not alone. You know this, of course, but sometimes it's nice to read about someone going through the exact same issue who is able to eloquently express the struggle. Which is why we're playdating with Hillari Dowdle, a former Managing Editor of Cooking Light and Yoga Journal, who now blogs for Fit Pregnancy.

You know when she gets here we're all going to sit down and chat about House reruns, Hershey's Kisses, when baby weight just becomes weight, regression and downward dogs. I'll bring a yoga mat, my wobbly glutes and mojitos.

Sleep Away the Baby Weight!

Karen Murphy — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 12:28:00 GMT

I think I'm in love. Combine sleep and weight loss in one package? This is totally something I can get behind. And you can too, that is, if you've been lamenting the difficulty in losing the baby weight. It turns out that new mothers who sleep less tend to hang onto more of their baby weight, while mothers who slept more were able to just let it go.

But this sounds like an evil trick, doesn't it? What new mother actually gets sleep?

Trick or no, mothers who slept less than five hours a night averaged 11 pounds heavier than did the women who got more than seven hours of sleep. (The women who slept 5-7 hours apparently slept with the researchers and screwed up the data)

So...losing baby weight has nothing to do with breastfeeding and everything to do with sleep. So those of us up four times a night breastfeeding are doomed to a little extra gushyness? Sounds like mother nature's little way of ensuring that babies get enough to eat, if you ask me. Too much skinniness may signal something about a famine and affect the milk supply accordingly. Or something like that.

Mamas who aren't bf-ing, by the way, totally have my permission to sleep more. You can tell whoever might complain about it that I said it's okay.

So how long after the baby is born is it still considered "baby weight"? My youngest just turned four and I need to know if I can use this excuse to get more sleep.

Celebrity Lessons: Where's Fat Brit?

Kelly Mills — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 20:07:00 GMT

Yeah, her dancing and lip-synching was as obviously fake as the creepy colored contacts she wore, and no one is putting Brit forward for a mom-of-the-year award, what with the lax carseat policies and the coke-filled baby bottles. And the whole "mistake" thing. But when I follow the Music Award performance debacle, there's one thing that stands out for me. This is fat? I mean, she has gotten crap for being "unfit." Unfit, for those at home, for once doesn't refer to her parenting, it just means fat. It means she needs to lose weight. It means she's pathetic for tarting around after not losing all that baby weight.

Now, I'll admit, perhaps my perspective has been distorted by spending too much time with real women with real bodies. Women who had the nerve to want to actually deliver the placenta before they hopped back on the stairmaster. Women who do not have the benefit of airbrushing and plastic surgery and full-time nannies so they can work out for hours with a trainer, then go home and "eat" a specially-prepared raw veggie smoothie. Britney has access to all that stuff. So how come she didn't whip herself into top form before going on TV?

I don't know, and I don't care. But I know lots of moms who think they are lazy for waiting three months post-partum before starting the weight-loss regime, and it makes me sad. "Fat" Britney looks relatively normal to me. She looks like she had two kids. And yes, she is scantily-clad and selling sex, so maybe she is opening the door for a critique. I guess celebrities aren't supposed to look like that.

But honestly, I'm kind of glad to see a celebrity body that doesn't look like it was starved for nine months. That belly is (do I go to hell for this?) kinda sexy. I suppose my big post-partum advice is this (listen up, Britster): Work on your health. Enjoy your baby or kids. And while I can't believe I'm saying it, if you wanna emulate Brit's body, go right ahead. Copy her on this one thing. She looks fine to me. Just don't, um, phone your performance in.

Normal-Looking Pregnant Celebs Get Flack From Losers

Kelly Mills — Sat, 18 Aug 2007 17:24:00 GMT

Time flies, doesn't it? It feels like only hours ago that I was posting about how women feel pressure to lose pregnancy weight by watching celebrities squeeze themselves into size four jeans ten minutes after giving birth. I recommended getting your celeb news with a dose of snark, and now I'd like to clarify that position. Don't get it from the lame-ass mockerazzi that picks on lovely pregnant ladies like the wonderful Salma Hayek. Because when you read this, and notice the 47 related stories, all a variation on "Salma Hayek is really big, yuck" then you know lameness, and its name is trashing pregnant celebrities for not having wee little bumps.

Stuff like this makes me want to pound my head against my keyboard repeatedly. Pregnancy should be a time when you do your best to take care of yourself and your growing fetus, not worry about being svelte. Of course, many people also feel very comfortable in making dumbass comments like "Wow, you must be due any day now, you are huge" and "Are you having twins? Because I've never seen anyone so big." And if you are famous, I suppose those comments just get nastier and come from folks who find great pleasure in attacking famous women for looking, well, pregnant. I think Salma is geee-orgeus. And the haters should be condemned to a lifetime of undies that go all the way up to the chest, inexplicable cravings, and swollen ankles. And the only cure would be to drink a nice glass of shut the f*ck up.

Post-Partum Celebrities Make Women Feel Fat

Kelly Mills — Sat, 18 Aug 2007 13:56:00 GMT

Remember those early days with your new baby? The sleepless nights, baby's first smile, the endless dieting and four-hour workouts so you can get back in your pre-pregnancy jeans... Riiiight. Well, perhaps this was your reality if you were a hardcore celeb-stalker. Meredith Nash is looking at how the fascination with baby bumps (the bumps, the bumps, the lovely lady...ahem) and celebrity pregnancies are affecting civilians in our perceptions of pregnancy and weight. All the women she interviewed cited getting back into those pre-preg jeans as a primary goal. Check it: "She has also found that subjects who regularly read tabloids are more likely to describe themselves as 'fat' than those who do not follow celebrity culture, and feel heightened pressure to lose their baby weight quickly after delivery." Oh lordy.

I hate the fact that women feel pressure from themselves or others to instantly drop all baby weight, and I have to say that it's ri-stupid-iculous to go for the pre-pregnancy clothes for many reasons, including the fact that bearing kids brings changes in hip and waist size that aren't even about the pounds. I mean, you were probably happy those hips had spread when you tried to squeeze out junior, so ditch the low-slung skinnies that are so last year anyway. My advice: 1) think of this as your big opportunity to shop (mmmm, shopping), and 2) if you must celeb-watch, do it with much salt and perhaps go for one of the funny sites that tells it like it is (I'm partial to FameCrawler myself.) It's easier not to get caught up in angst when your celebs come with a healthy dose of snark. And forget about Heidi Klum's weight loss.

Celebrity Versus Real PostPartum Bodies

Kelly Mills — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 16:43:00 GMT

Getting sick of seeing pictures of celebrities who are already slim one month after giving birth? So was Bonnie Crowder. She started a website, Shape of a Mother, and posted photos of her stretch marks. Soon she was getting tons of photos and essays from other moms, even (gasp) naked ones. "'Instead of seeing them as just stretch marks and an ugly scar, now you can see them as the mark that your body did something amazing,' said Crowder." Many of the women share their feelings about their bodies after during and pregnancy, and to my knowledge not one used the celeb weight-loss method of ~~plastic surgery and a wet nurse~~ a crash diet and five-hour daily sessions with a personal trainer.

The idea is pretty cool, since we get enough pressure to be bikini-ready, and perhaps aren't prepared for the "when are you due?" questions you get when you go out sans baby two weeks after delivery. I know for some of us, the notion that breastfeeding makes all that weight fall right off is just crap. The only thing breastfeeding made fall was my boobs. Most of the photos on the site are of bellies, but naturally I immediately clicked on "vaginal trauma". No photos there, and I'm sort of relieved. If yet-to-breed women saw pictures of the hoo hoo one month post-birth, it could spell the end of the species.

Kids Everywhere Are Perplexed Too: Post-Preggers Tori Spelling Dilemma

Jessica Ashley (Sassafrass) — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 22:04:00 GMT

Gather 'round, kids. Put down your Duplo building blocks and your Dora backpacks and your sippy cups. Stop reading ni-ni books and please, keep your curious little chubbers fingers out of your nostrils for one very important moment. No, this isn't a time-out or a boy-parts/girl-parts talk. This is a much more critical issue that we need to discuss.

Children, this is about Tori Spelling.

Now, you probably don't remember Tori from back in the 90210 Donna days of cavernous cleavage and interminable virginity, but Mommy does. Mommy will remember for you that it was clearly a case of obligation and access to the beachfront condo that coerced Kelly to stay BFFs with Donna until the show came to a long and drawn-out end.

Mommy will remember with a cringe the commercials for Tori's self-mocking show on VH1 and the excrutiating boredom while sitting on a delayed plane on a tarmac in Portland that led to reading each and every one of the five page spread on how Tori and her now-hubby met, wooed and wed each other. And the sidebar on their cast-out spouses. Oh yeah, and the pictorial on their beach bonfire ritual after the nuptials. Cringe if you will but mommy will remember.

Now that Tori's made her way back to media darlingdom as a new wife, new mom, newly reconciled with her own mother, new owner of a B & B and new star of a reality show, her life has some dramatic questions looming that you, my babes, are aware of. Prepare yourself, the most pressing question needs your full attention: How will Tori Spelling lose her baby weight?

I know, I know. It's a big one.

But not to worry. She's been jogging with her husband and the kind folks at NutriSystem are going to take very good care of Tori's (surely) massive post-partum jelly belly after gaining (oh God) 40 pounds while pregnant. It'll all be OK.

Try not to worry your little heads, kids. I am sure it all be just fine.

Patricia Arquette Refused To Lose Baby Weight For "Medium" Role

Alisyn — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 11:05:00 GMT

Hot and slightly weird in an attractive way, Patricia Arquette has long been one of my favorite actresses. She choses interesting, offbeat roles, and she always brings a sense of reality to her characters, including the psychic detective and mother of 3 she is currently playing in the crime drama Medium.

In real life, Patricia is mom to 18 year-old Enzo and 4 year-old Harlow, and is proud of the fact that her body reflects her pregnancies. She told the ladies of The View that she refused to lose weight for the role, even after one of the producers commented on her size. "One of the producers said, 'Honey, you gotta do something about your weight.' I said, 'Why? This [character] is a mother of three.' I'm sick of that image everywhere."

Patricia said that if she feels the role calls for it, though, she's happy to slim down. "I've done movies where I'll work out like a demon cause I decided the character needs look like this. But if I put in my head that a character should look like this, then I'm stubborn about it. But our [Medium] creator Glenn said, 'You look great. What's the problem? I don't have a problem.'"

Nope. Me either. No problem at all.

[Via CBB]

Jen Garner On Boobs & Baby Weight

Alisyn — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 13:13:00 GMT

Jennifer Garner seems so... normal. As far as Hollywood goes, she's as down-to-earth as they come. She's Allure's April covergirl, and talking to the magazine, she sounded more like a mom you might overhear in the local coffee shop, than the famous actress-type.

She talks about nursing her daughter Violet, now 15 months, and says she was surprised that breastfeeding wasn't the miracle diet friends told her it would be. "I really thought, 'This is the ticket, the best diet in the world' - and it just wasn't. I kept waiting, and I just didn't lose weight. It took six months before I did. I also, though, used breastfeeding as an excuse to eat whatever I wanted. I've always had a flat stomach, and now everyone's just always going to think I'm two months pregnant for the rest of my life." But she admits that having a curvier figure isn't all bad: "My body felt so much more balanced out. Because I've always had a biscuit [butt] and I've never had boobs, and so I finally felt like, 'Oh, this is how it's supposed to be.' "

At last year's Academy Awards, Jennifer wasn't the only one aware of her new breasts: "Jack Nicholson was in the audience in front of me, and halfway through the night he said, 'Jennifer Garner's going to be able to feed the whole row!' " (Oh, Jack. You old perv.)

Being a working mom, Jennifer often brought Violet to the set of The Kingdom, filmed last summer, and nursed her between takes, in costume. "I would feed her and then go back out [and film]. I was covered in blood and mud and dirt, and so her little sweet pink outfits would be caked in fake blood by the time she went home."

She just sounds so... human. Did you, like Jennifer Garner (and I), think that nursing would just peel the pounds off automatically - and were disappointed? Or did you love your extra curves?

[Via Celebrity Baby Blog]