My life was simple right up until the moment that I decided that I needed to have a baby. Steve and I met at the gym. He was “the one.” We were married ten months later, and I had moved into Steve’s one bedroom apartment in Allentown. I was working on a business degree after my career as a flight attendant ended when the airline went bankrupt.
Steve and I slept until noon. We would eat lunch together and then hit the gym; every day. I was the aerobics Queen, spending a couple of hours a day taking step classes or whatever the latest fitness fad was at the time. Steve would hit the weight room so he could keep up those big muscles that first caught my eye. I lifted weights, but I preferred the long, lean looking muscles….nothing big and bulky. Anyway, that was our life: sleep, eat, workout and work.
I don’t know when it changed, but I remember Steve coming home from work one night to find me sitting in the living room crying as I was watching the end of the Lion King. Sobbing, I said to him “we need to have a baby, because if we don’t we will interfere with the circle of life; and then we are going to be old and alone.” Steve wasn’t quite sure what to do with logic like that, but he agreed to start a family as long as the baby was a boy.
It was six months later when I became pregnant with our daughter Sierra. It was time to move out of our little apartment and into a townhouse in the suburbs. We moved on the hottest day of the year with me eighty pounds heavier and irritated that no matter how much heavy lifting I did that baby was determined to be born on her terms, which was about 2 weeks later than my original plan.
Having a baby put a few kinks into our daily routine. There was no more sleeping until noon, going out to lunch was a lot more challenging, and going to the gym was a freaking production. First I had to nurse the baby, burp the baby and change the baby. Then I needed to pack the diaper bag and the gym bag; strap the baby into the baby carrier and drive to the gym. I would arrive at the gym; take the baby, along with the 500 – pound baby carrier into the gym along with two bags of accessories. That in itself was a workout. Having that one baby had sucked the life out of me. Instead of taking an aerobics class or lifting weights, as I had done before, I would spend my time walking on the treadmill and talking to my gym friends until my breasts would start to leak. That routine got old very quickly and I decided that I would go back to the gym only after I was done having babies.
Our second baby came twenty months later and my body was not bouncing back. Oh sure, everyone told me that breastfeeding makes the weight just fall right off of your body, but my kids were now one and two, and I still had thirty pounds of baby weight to get rid of. It was obvious that my body wasn’t getting the message and I was really too tired to care. For the first time in my life I was a size Large. Before kids, I had been a fashion model, an actress and a flight attendant. I had a sense of style, a great body and a fabulous wardrobe. I had gone from wearing haute couture to shopping the Kathy Ireland collection at Kmart. My formerly flat stomach looked more like a kangaroos’ pouch covered with stretch marks. My breasts were two different sizes and didn’t fit into anything that had a Victoria’s Secret label on it.
So it was 1998, and I was sitting in my kitchen wondering what to do next. I had two babies, a husband, and a mortgage. I wasn’t content being one of those moms who could stay at home planning Mommy and Me outings, driving around in a minivan with an emergency six-pack of juice boxes under the front seat and a sign that said “Baby on Board” in the back window.
Steve was working seven days a week trying to establish a career as a Real Estate Agent. We rarely were home at the same time. I was home with the kids when he was working and vice versa. Steve was visibly stressed, we were both exhausted. I decided that we needed a break. No kids, just us. I made arrangements for my mom to watch the kids for a week and made reservations at a spa in the Arizona desert called Miraval…..it was time to get my life back.