A couple of months after Joey was born I realized exactly how unshapely I had become. I had lost quite a bit of weight from breast feeding around the clock but I was looking more like Jabba the Hut than a proud new mom. Since Doug and I had agreed that we were not going to wait long before trying for baby #3, I wanted... rather... I needed to do something to get into shape. Quick.

I had seen a sign on the side of the freeway that read MMA Fit- Train Like A Fighter. Considering that at one point or another during what I will call my "youth" I had a black belt in Tae Kwon Do and had a job for a couple of years as a bouncer at a night club, I thought that this would be right up my alley. I looked at the website and, while perhaps a bit intimidated by the photos of well built men and skinny ladies, I decided that this was just what I needed to whoop my behind into a shape other than dumpy.

My first week or two I knew instantly how much a 10 pound baby destroys your stomach muscles. I could barely start many of the exercises let alone hold them for the 30 seconds, 60 seconds, or other incredibly impossible amount of time the instructor would call out. I would lay there feeling like a fish on shore. My body would curl up, my eyes wide open, panting, and searching for someone else's gaze to commiserate with my sheer exhaustion.

After a couple of weeks of what many might call masochism, I started to feel stronger. I noticed that the jeans that I had crammed my body into a couple of months postpartum, would actually pull up without me doing that hip shimmy thing. A few weeks after that, I shocked myself by going to the bathroom and when I was getting ready to pull up those same jeans, I realized that I had pulled them down without unbuttoning or unzipping them. I pulled them down like maternity jeans!

I still have a lot of work to do to get to my ideal weight but I feel so much better about the possibility of becoming pregnant now. I will be starting off lighter than I did with either of my children. And, if it should take me a while to have a happy and healthy pregnancy, I will just be that much healthier when it does happen. Thanks so much to MMA Fit!(Facebook)