Baby Bumps: From Party Girl to Proud Mama, and all the Messy Milestones Along the Way

by Polizzi, Nicole

  Along with being the love of my life, Jionni was the father of my son. I had to make this right.

  He came back downstairs to the basement. I apologized to him, and told him he hurt my feelings, too. Even if he was angry—I’d never seen him this angry—he shouldn’t text such cruel things to me.

  He asked, “Is there anything else you need to tell me about last night?”

  “I also made out with Ryder and Deena. And maybe Laura, too,” I confessed. “But that’s it!”

  It was like tearing a scab off. His eyes turned cold, like he didn’t even know me. “Pack your bags and get out,” he said.

  Hysterical, I took a drive around the block and called Jenni. She was on my side, of course, because she’s my Boo. She also knew what I was capable of when blacked out. In a certain light, I was on good behavior that night, compared to other nights before I met Jionni or got pregnant.

  “He told me I wasn’t the mom or the fiancée he wanted,” I told her. Jionni had also mentioned something about rehab.

  Jenni said, “Jionni chose to be with you, he chose to get you pregnant, he chose to propose to you. He has to choose to be with the real you. You don’t need rehab. You just needed a break.”

  Thank God for Jenni. She was my sounding board, and let me get it all out. But our conversation did make me question who the “real me” was. I wasn’t a 21-year-old kid anymore. I was a 25-year-old mother. I couldn’t just say, “My way or the Parkway. Accept me or forget me.” Jionni and I had a baby! The thought of breaking up, fighting over custody, and being apart was terrifying. Any fight is ten times worse when children are involved.

  His point was that a good mother and loving fiancée wouldn’t behave like a sex addict mental patient on furlough. My point was that it was just one night of going overboard after ten months of being a saint. I had no intention of getting bombed every night, or even any night in the future. I saw it as a one-time letting loose kind of thing. He had to forgive me.

  The old “real me,” pre-baby, would have crawled back into bed and sulked for a few days. I would have only thought about my own hurt feelings. But I’d changed. This fight wasn’t really about me being true to myself, or a woman’s right to make a drunken fool of herself. It was about compromising for the sake of our family. I took out my pink leopard print notebook and wrote down a few points to bring up later, if I could get Jionni to talk to me. I needed to write my thoughts down so I would remember the words later on.

  I went out and got a feast for us. Jionni’s heart would definitely soften over sushi. (Sushi fixes everything.) I went to our favorite place and got a ton of takeout. I brought it home and set it out for us. That got him to the table.

  He’d calmed down by then, and actually smiled at me. He wanted to work things out, too.

  “What’s in the book?” he asked.

  I put it right next to the sushi. He couldn’t not notice it. “I wrote some things down,” I said, and read my notes. “When you get angry, you say really mean things. I don’t want you do that anymore. It hurts my feelings. If we have fights, it’s between me and you, and not Lorenzo. Love me even when I mess up. You have to still love me and not hate me.”

  “I always love you,” he said. “I was discussing last night only.”

  “Don’t bring up the past,” I read. That was a big thing for us.

  “I’m going to work on that. You can’t go by what I said. It’s not true. I do love you for who you are. I was wrong for saying those things. I was pissed.”

  He regretted his words. I regretted my actions. Well, okay, then! We apologized and made up. We both wanted this family to work. I vowed then and there that I’d stop drinking. I didn’t ever want to fight like that with Jionni again. It was fucking scary. I hated it. I just can’t make out with girls again. No major loss.

  If I wasn’t going to drink anymore—and I’d barely had a drop since my egg hatched—what was I going to do? I decided to start getting super healthy and back into shape.

  During the pregnancy, my attitude was, “I’m fat. Deal with it.”

  But now that I’d been through the experience and was starting to feel like myself again, I wanted to get back in shape and be a fit mom for Lorenzo. I’d have to drop some pounds if I wanted to run errands with him on my hip. I didn’t want to lose my breath putting his stroller in the car. Just rocking him to sleep required stamina. My arms felt sore after bouncing him. Nope, I had to start working out and building up my muscles to enjoy my new life to the fullest. The extra weight wasn’t going to just disappear, though. I had to burn it off.

  I was told that it wasn’t safe to exercise until six weeks postpartum. I had to wait it out, and felt frustrated the whole time. I’ve heard the phrase, “Nine months on, the rest of your life to take it off.” I thought it would be impossible to get rid of all the weight I gained—forty plus pounds—at least, impossible to get rid of fast. I might never get rid of all of it, which depressed me. My vision of motherhood was to be a hot mom, a MILF. I couldn’t picture myself as a normal mother in baggy sweats and white sneakers driving a minivan.

  As soon as I cleared the six-week hurdle, I called my old friend and trainer, Anthony Michael, and started hitting the gym. The first twenty pounds came off pretty quickly, thanks to working out and milking my boobs. Breastfeeding burned 500 calories a day! I pumped every three hours to get out every drop of the good stuff, and to burn every possible calorie. It was like doubling my workout, but all I had to do was lie on the couch and watch TV.

  After dropping the first twenty, I hit a plateau. For the next two months, Anthony pushed me through a 90-minute daily workout, but my weight stayed about the same. I didn’t realize I was replacing fat with muscle. But then the muscles emerged and my clothes got big. By the time Lorenzo was six months old, I managed to take off all the weight. Forty-four pounds. A lot of people have asked me how I did it. I used three revolutionary strategies. Prepare yourself for breaking news. This is totally outside the box:

  I busted my ass.

  I didn’t give up.

  I ate healthy.

  No magic bullet. No pill. No secret powder. No laxatives, contrary to the trash some people write about me. I did it the old-fashioned way: I sweated my balls off!

  My Workout

  I committed to a daily 90-minute workout that included an hour of Plyometrics. Plyometrics is a muscle confusion method of explosive jumps and lifts. You’re just standing there, and then—bam—you jump on top of a two-foot high box. Your muscles are like, What the fuck is going on? Blood rushes into them and makes them grow stronger and bigger in less time than if you just jogged or walked at an even speed. With Anthony, I do a combination of stuff on the mat and with weights.

  Jumping jacks. Yeah, just like when I was a kid, except badass. Sometimes, the jumping jacks are just regular style, starting with your legs and arms open like a starfish, and then jumping the legs together, hands clapping over your head. But to confuse the muscles, I do a set with clapping, arms parallel to the floor and in front of me, Flipper style. After twenty reps, you will bark like a seal.

  Box jumps. Stand facing a steel or metal platform, legs slightly apart. Bend at the knees and explode up and jump onto the box. Then jump off backward to where you were standing . . . and jump onto the box again, right away. Two sets of these, I pant for air. Five, nearly dead. My trainer has me do a set of ten.

  Planks. Oh, man. They look so easy, right? Anthony has me do a plank—up on my palms and toes, arms straight, facing the floor, flat back. I need the upper body workout because I have little T. Rex arms. After holding the plank for a few seconds, I move my left hand to cover the right, putting all my strength on one arm. Then I move the left hand back and cover it with the right, shifting all my weight to the other side. Meanwhile, my back is screaming from holding the plank for so long. Your whole body shakes after ten reps.

  Burpees. Sadistic! You start in standing position with your arms at your sides, and do a vertical jump
as high as you can, arms pointing up to the ceiling. When you land, you drop your palms to the floor and kick the legs out into a plank. Immediately, you jump your feet back up to your hands. Then you lift your arms over your head—throw in a BURP to let out the air—and do another vertical jump. I’m sweating just writing about this move. You will seriously die after ten of these.

  Lunge jumps. Start in a lunge position, one leg in front of the other. Both legs are in a deep knee bend, as deep as you can go. The back knee is almost on the floor. Arms are bent at the elbow at a ninety-degree angle, fists tight. Then—BAM—you explode out of the crouch into a vertical jump, fingers open, arms reaching for the ceiling, legs open. You land on the opposite side, and go immediately into a deep lunge knee bend with the opposite leg in back. Twenty of these and your thighs will burn.

  Shuffle jumps. I feel like an Olympic speed skater when I do these. Start by standing on your right leg, left leg hovering a few inches off the floor. Then jump to the side, a big jump, landing on your left leg, with the right hovering over the floor. Balance on one leg, then shuffle jump back to the right leg. Meanwhile, your arms are swinging back and forth like you are building momentum on the ice. Do twenty laps around the rink, and your outer quads will pop.

  Push-ups. Not a normal push-up! Normal push-ups are for pussies compared to Plyometric push-ups. Go down like a normal push-up as low as you can, boobs almost touching the mat. Then push up so quick and hard that your hands come up off the floor, like a hop. You land on flat palms, and go down again. At first, I couldn’t do one of these. Now, I can do ten. Oh, yeah, I’m a baller.

  Anthony and I also use weight machines to get the same effect, with sudden bursts of muscle power. You have to do everything with proper form or you might hurt your joints. It’s a good idea, I feel, to do at least one or two sessions with a trainer to get the moves exactly right before you do the workout on your own.

  To cool down after an hour of jumping and lunging and making my muscles beg for mercy, I do 30 minutes on the treadmill. I can now run two miles in 18 minutes, and then I walk for another mile to cool down. It’s funny that I used to think walking on the treadmill was my whole workout! Well, that was before I went through a pregnancy and gained over forty pounds. My body changed, and I had to change my workout.

  I love Anthony to death, but a girl can do only so many platform jumps before she wants to scream or throw the box out of the window. So when I get bored with trainer sessions, I take a spin class or do kickboxing or Zumba. In Zumba, you get to shake your ass and frolic to an African beat. Love it.

  You have to love your workout, whatever it is. If you don’t, it won’t last. You can keep it going for a year on sheer willpower, maybe. But to really stick with it, you need willpower, a sense of fun, and motivation. Why do I kill myself at the gym for 90 minutes at least five days a week?

  I do it for Lorenzo. He’s the only motivation I need. He’s starting to crawl now. Soon enough, he’ll zoom around the house like a Ninja baby. His favorite pastime is for me to hold him under the armpits on my lap, and he does his little baby Plyometric moves, jumping on my thighs. He’s going to be just as athletic as his dad. And I have to be fit and strong so I can keep up with both of them. Every squat and lunge and push-up I do now is insurance for the future that I’ll have the strength and stamina to chase after Lorenzo—and his three brothers or sisters to come. It’s going to take a lot of energy to run all over town, keeping up with four kids and their school, activities, and play dates. I’m going to need to be Super Mommy, with super buns and guns.

  My Diet

  My life used to be about looking good for the camera and feeling good in a sensual way (getting drunk, smutting, pigging out). Now I only want to feel strong in a mental and physical sense. Feeling good means building my muscles and putting only healthy food into my body.

  For the first two-and- a-half months after giving birth, whatever I put into my body came out through my boobs and into my milk. I wanted it to be pure and taste good for Lorenzo. You know how you can go to Whole Foods and get milk from grass-fed-only California cows who get daily massages and whatnot? Well, I wanted to be like that healthy cow. I also wanted to make sure Lorenzo loved his milk. I ate whatever would make it taste creamy and rich for him. Ice cream, lots of cheese, and red meat. When my milk dried up, though, I cut way back on fat and carbs and upped the protein. My trainer Anthony’s company has a food delivery service called Express Fitness Meals. For $30 a day, they deliver meals and snacks right to my door. I’m not a cook, at all. So having someone else take care of that for me keeps my calorie count—about 1,300 a day—in check. I don’t have to shop for and prepare my food, and can spend more time with Lorenzo. A few sample menus for a typical day:

  Breakfast

  Egg white omelet. My friend Dr. Oz is a big fan of protein in the morning to give you energy throughout the day. I do what he says. If you cut out the yolks, eggs are as light as air. My omelets have five egg whites (only 75 calories), a half a cup of broccoli florets (15 calories), and are cooked with a half a teaspoon of healthy coconut oil (60 calories). Even someone as awkward in the kitchen as I am can make this. You whisk the whites until they’re fluffy. Heat up the oil until it glazes the pan. Pour in the eggs. When it gets a little brown around the edges, pour the chopped broccoli on one side. Fold it over, and flip it a couple times for fun. That’s it.

  Fruit cup. I don’t care if fruit has sugar and is packed with carbs. It tastes great and is full of vitamins. It’s practically the only sweet food I eat, and I’m not giving it up! I love it all: pineapple, berries, citrus, grapes. I chop it up into pieces and eat a small bowl of fruit salad every morning. Even the sweetest cup of fruit isn’t going to be more than 100 calories.

  Total: Around 250 calories. I eat the same breakfast nearly every day. I keep it from getting boring by changing some of the ingredients. I mix up the kinds of fruit in the salad. I substitute spinach or peppers for broccoli. If I feel like I’m going to crazy if I have one more omelet, like I might throw the pan out the window, then I know it’s time to have something completely different for a few days, like yogurt or oatmeal with fruit.

  Lunch

  I rely on Express Meals for lunch. It’s just so easy to open the package and dig in, no worries about portion size, calories, or ingredients. Anthony’s meals are dairy free. This is a huge plus for me because it means no gassssss! A few of my faves:

  Turkey tacos. God, I love these! They’re 99% lean turkey meat cooked in a little olive oil with low sodium taco seasoning in a whole wheat shell, with romaine lettuce, avocado, salsa, and light cheddar cheese on top. So good.

  Chicken salad. Grilled chicken with cranberries and goat cheese on a big mound of greens, tossed with light balsamic vinaigrette. I love chicken for protein. The greens fill me up.

  Wrap sandwich. Anthony has one called “The Italian,” with grilled chicken, roasted red peppers, basil, and fresh low-fat mozzarella, stuffed with spinach and rolled in a whole wheat tortilla.

  Flat bread pizza. The flat bread pizzas are the size of a personal pizza you’d get at a restaurant, with a no-sugar homemade tomato sauce and 2% mozzarella with basil and bits of either chicken or steak.

  Total: Depends on the meal, but all of the choices are around 350 calories.

  Dinner

  More Express Meals, or just stuff I can cook for myself.

  Burger! I love to have a burger because it’s yummy, and you can order it in any restaurant. But skip the bun. That’s where the carbs come in, and I don’t want them or need them. To hold the carbs, I wrap the burger in lettuce leaves, and stuff pickle and tomato slices in there, too. Ketchup is basically red sugar, so I skip it. Instead, I use Dijon mustard. I also order a side salad with vinaigrette.

  Meat and Two Veg. My classic dinner is usually some grilled chicken or fish with all kinds of seasoning and healthy marinades, like lemon dill or low-sodium teriyaki, with a steamed green vegetable like asparagus or broccoli and a b
aked sweet potato. Love, love, love steamed cauliflower. I make a full plate, and I never feel hungry afterward. The main thing is portion control. Some men can order a 16-ounce steak and suck that thing right down. I try to keep my steak in the six-ounce range. Otherwise, it’s more food than I need, but I’d eat it all if it was in front of me.

  Total: Around 500 calories.

  Dessert

  I give myself permission to eat something sweet but small every day. Another fruit bowl. Protein chocolate chip cookies. Almond fudge brownies are the absolute best. I used to think that almond butter could never satisfy like real butter. Or that agave was no substitute for sugar. But I was wrong. When I eat using healthy ingredients, my taste changes to like them better than the other stuff. If I tried to eat regular butter, sugar, or flour now, I’d feel kind of sick.

  Total: Depending on the dessert, around 100 calories.

  Snacks

  I keep my metabolism going by splitting my meals into smaller portions. That way, I never get hungry during the day. The one time I do get that empty feeling is right before bed—the worst time to eat. If I eat too much, I get nightmares about screaming goats with evil eyes (seriously). But if I don’t eat at all, well, I get hungry! I don’t ever want to feel deprived because that’s when binges happen. So I make a snack, such as:

  Brown rice cakes with almond butter. The almond butter is low in carbs, high in protein, and totally hits the spot. Two of these, and I don’t need another bite.

  Yogurt and fruit. A graham cracker crust cup (you can buy them at any supermarket) with half a cup of low-fat yogurt, two dollops of Cool Whip, and fresh fruit on top. Yum.

  Total: Only 150.

  Grand total for the day: Around 1,500.

  Some days I eat more, some days less. It’s just a ballpark number that works for me. It seems like hardly any calories, but I eat continually all day long, including a dessert and snacks. I’m a pretty small person, so I don’t need as many calories as someone larger than me. One day a week, I splurge and have ice cream and chips. I make up for it by adding time to my workout the next day. Watching what I eat has helped me get back down to my pre-pregnancy weight of 105 pounds. This is the weight where I feel healthiest, and it’s where I want to stay . . . until the next pregnancy.