An honest journey from a mum who’s been there.
After giving birth to four kids in five years, Joanna Venditti was attending a wedding recently when she started to think about all the changes and transformations her body had gone through.
“I looked around the room and I realised that I’m the mum of four and there are a lot of beautiful young women there and I’m kind of in this different category now,” Venditti, who lives near Toronto, Ontario, told TODAY Parents.
“I was really surprised with myself about how OK I was with that. That’s my new phase in life and that’s great and I’m really proud of myself.”
The moment inspired Venditti, 32, to write a column for her blog that’s generating buzz for her honest portrayal of her post-pregnancy figure and how she’s come to terms with it.
Her focus now: Celebrating what her body has done, rather than thinking it was somehow “ruined,” and losing the baby weight, but taking her time.
“My goal is to be fit, be healthy, and feel good in what I wear. I’m not looking to be rail thin,” she said.
Venditti’s first two pregnancies were routine, with fast and easy deliveries that required zero recovery time. At 5 feet and 2 inches tall, Venditti normally weighed about 57 kilos, gaining 22 with the first two babies and losing the weight within months.
Then, she found out she was pregnant with twin girls, a “total surprise” that made her and her husband so giddy that they laughed for three days. But Venditti was soon nervous about how large her belly would grow and she was overwhelmed by the countless doctor’s appointments, ultrasounds and blood tests that came with multiples.
It was a rough pregnancy, Venditti recalled. So she came up with a mantra whenever things got frustrating: “You are a vessel, you are a vessel,” she would repeat to herself out loud. It helped her disassociate her mind from her body, putting the focus on the babies, she said.