This essay really isn't about lack of cooperation from my daughter; it's about the lack of cooperation from my own body in shedding that baby weight! It was originally published on http://www.parent.co. You can read it in its entirety here:
https://www.parent.co/3-ways-i-promot....
I hope you enjoy it!

When the sonographer told me I was having a girl, I was stunned. How could I, and the dozens of strangers who had stopped to comment, been so wrong about the size and shape of my baby bump? But a girl it was, an incomparable gift, now three years old and whose feminine identity I am tasked with molding.

To me, one of the most important aspects of this molding is promoting a healthy body image. Through thinking and muddling and talking with friends, I’ve settled on three main ways I’m going to do that. I’m sure when she’s 16, M will let me know where I got it wrong.

1 | Ditching the “us versus them” rhetoric

I wanted to like Meghan Trainor’s “All About That Bass.” I did like it at first, in fact. I would play it and dance with M in our underfurnished entryway. The local Y played it at their family festival. It became an anthem of body positivity that I was happy to enjoy. Over and over and over again.

All that came to a crashing halt one day when I selected the wrong version on YouTube and heard Megan cheerfully belt out a line about “skinny b****hes.”

Huh?

I looked it up after I heard that and learned that critics had raised this same point. Is it really positivity if it’s based on attacking other women for their shape? In my house, the answer to that question is no. People, regardless of gender, should not be shamed for their weight.

I’m not saying this because I’m skinny. I need to lose about 25 pounds. I feel a little bit of dread every time swimsuit season rolls around. I don’t try on clothes in stores, preferring just to buy them so that a glass of wine can ease the process.

If a magic spell turned us all into horses, I wouldn’t be prancing along daintily with ribbons streaming from my mane. I’d be pulling the Budweiser truck. When I ran two marathons in six weeks while taking a weight-training class and watching my calories, I wasn’t skinny. Back then, I was a big-legged runner. Now I’m a big-legged ex-runner with a knee injury.