Baby Weight

Note: The audio for this piece includes a lot of ad libs, a crow going nuts, and my newborn crying. Highly recommend!

Loners,

Sid was 11 pounds when I had to start going to physiotherapy. I was somewhat embarrassed, and even skeptical, that 11 pounds was a weight that should cause the constellation of issues I was dealing with. Show me the movements you’re doing with the baby, the doctor asked me. The room was nearly entirely mirrors, and I was distracted by the slovenly way I’d dressed, baggy shirt, workout pants. I pretended to rock an invisible baby, leaned over and back up with my ghostly child as if placing him in and out of a bassinet. I continued through a series of pantomimes, still wincing at the gestures even with empty arms

Sid at 2 months-ish. Kettle ball vibes in full bloom.

She nodded her head, confirming something important. Would you do these movements this way with a kettlebell? Definitely not. To imagine my 8 week old baby as a kettlebell immediately helped me see how improperly I’d been carrying him, rocking him, lifting and depositing him. I stuck with the treatment plan and began to imagine my little kettlebell as a weight to be considered, however harmless the action might be. I always imagined that carrying and lifting would happen less, not more often, and I’m of course here to admit that I am still lifting, swinging, throwing, and holding my now 40 pound baby daily.

Surprised to find a photo from physio on my phone!

I started weight training in January of 2025. Twice a week, nothing extreme. I told my trainer that my goal was to bench press my son. This was a decision made after an afternoon of swimming where I found I could not lift Sid from the water onto the dock at a lake near Tegan’s house. Since I started my weekly training, I’ve more than met my first goal and, while I’m not transforming into the Hulk, I feel strong, and I can see my progress. Which is both strange and wonderful. I like brushing my teeth in short sleeves so I can look at my biceps!

There are two exercises that I struggle with. The first is deadlifts with a barbell. I have hurt my hip multiple times and have given up for now on attempting to master the movement. The second is pushups. According to recommendations, a woman of 45, should be able to do 11. No knees. At my training sessions I have to do three sets, and I generally can do 7 and then it decreases from there with each set. I’m trying not to feel discouraged. I’m still working at it every week. I excuse myself as a top heavy person, damn you breasts, wrecking everything since puberty.

This is a very specific part of my parenting journey. Carrying babies against the exact part of my body I’ve always struggled with most. I’ve never felt so at peace with my chest, so connected to it, because of how easily the bodies of my children fit there. I’ve even found myself grateful for my breasts at times, the obvious comfort. This is just a matter of matter. They’re soft, duh.

I’m reminded of when I was drawn to the bodies of my parents and grandparents. To be wrapped in arms, to be invited in, or sometimes just crashing into a space that one day, inevitably, becomes off limits or completely out of reach. With my stepdad it was his biceps. With my grandfather it was the generous stomach that was both soft and hard, a small mountain to climb.

Is it the infinite number of times I must have rested against my mother’s chest that makes the memory impossible to locate?

Side note: Sid thinks I’m a boy, and my breasts and insistence that I am a woman will not change his mind.

Puberty fractured my connection to every body, especially my own. But as a parent, I was returned to the uncomplicated muscle memory of being pressed against someone you trust, someone you love. It is a well to drink from, and a door to slam too. Don’t touch me, Sid will sometimes say when I try and hug him or place kisses on his neck.

The discomfort and pain I feel most acutely when holding Rudy is in my back. Like a power grid lighting up, flickering off, across my shoulder blades and down my spine. The carrier helps. Though at 14 pounds, Rudy becomes less easy to hold, to pack around, for hours a day. After he’s in bed, or in Stacy’s arms, I go to the sink to do the dishes and the numbness and prickling of pain remains. I remember someone told me to stand with one foot on a stool.

On Saturday, Sid tripped walking home from Tegan’s house. He was cranky, hungry, and once the tears started, I knew his walk home was over. I lifted him up and started out across the park and up the hill to our house. It felt like I could carry him forever if I had to. It helps when he holds onto my neck, lets his body meld into mine.

When I pick him up from the couch where he’s crying, resisting my demands to go upstairs to start bedtime, his body is powerful, his resistance overwhelming. Now he feels heavier than a suitcase I’m trying to lift into the overhead bin or the trunk of an Uber. Lifting him from his “vacation bed” in Mexico last March, I felt something snap, and for the rest of the trip I took Tylenol and sat in the hot tub with tears in my eyes.

My little carry-on, Sid

Our little baby, Rudy, is in the 97th percentile for length. Could mean everything or nothing at all. For now, he’s bigger than his big brother was at the same age. He pops his head up like a turtle, pursing his lips at me during tummy time. His kicks are alarmingly strong. Maybe he will want to play soccer in the rain, and I will spend weekends shuffling from one foot to another with strangers under umbrellas on the sidelines.

This is Rudy and me a month ago. The trouble with a second baby is you don’t take as many photos. Public apology to Rudy for being a slightly lazier parent. The good news is that I’m way more relaxed. Pros and Cons, Rudy!

I’m objectively in better physical shape than I have ever been. How do I know? I don’t really, but between healthy eating, consecutive nights of 8+ hours of sleep, and regular weight training, I don’t feel like I’m lying either. I was always thin, but I don’t think I was ever strong. I was always injuring myself, and there was a resignation about how to change that. More than avoiding injury, I feel like becoming a mom and finding my way to weight training has been the greatest recalibration of my relationship to my body.

Every new parent must be gifted Robert Munsch’s I’ll Love You Forever. If you didn’t read it as a kid, or haven’t read it as an adult, please do. I’m convinced there is no possible way to read that book aloud to a child you love and not bawl your fucking eyes out.

With Mr. Munsch in 2023. What a legend.

When Sid was 10 or 11 weeks old we began a bedtime routine, and this meant reading aloud, even when it felt like he couldn’t possibly understand a word we were saying. I sat with him in my lap, not quite cradled in the crook of my arm. It was high summer. The air conditioner in his nursery and the blackout curtain were annoyances, both visually and sonically. I was uncomfortable, back pain humming, and perhaps stubbornly not yet entirely convinced that this bedtime ritual was having an important impact on our baby.

I started to read and almost immediately my throat flexed and seized. My voice broke. I remembered the story and its ending. Still I read. The baby becomes a man and the mother becomes so old she can no longer sneak into her son’s bedroom to hold him and say the words repeated throughout the book: I’ll love you forever, I’ll like you for always, as long as I’m living my baby you’ll be. Until the end of the book, when the son sneaks into his mother’s house, and then bedroom and holds her in his arms, finishing with, as long as I’m living my mommy you’ll be. Then he has a baby, and starts the whole ritual again with his newborn.

It is devastating. Is there another book that nails the cycle of life and love like this?

Unless AI unlocks a miracle cure for aging or some kind of robot skeleton is in my future, Sid and Rudy better get ready to start carrying me across the park and up the stairs to bed, because I have earned it.

-Sara