Dear Cassie,

Stop kidding yourself.

Stop thinking you are going to start working out six weeks postpartum.  Stop thinking you'll be in a bikini by June.  Stop thinking you'll be in your old wardrobe by the time you go back to work.  You've done this before, haven't you?  Don't you remember how many times the baby wakes up at night?  Don't you remember how your house turns into a total shithole?  Don't you remember how many visitors you'll have to entertain?  Don't you remember answering emails and working when the baby was napping when you should have been napping yourself?  Don't you remember how much it hurts - you know - down there?  Don't you remember that there is no time to work out?  No time at all.  Not when your baby wakes up at 12:00 a.m., 3:00 a.m., and 5:30 a.m.  Don't you remember that you only have three or four hours with your kids when you get home from work, and the last thing you'll want to do in those precious few hours is work out?  By 8:00 p.m. when the baby is sleeping you'll probably collapse as you reach for your sneakers.  Why is that so hard to remember? 

Why don't you do us a favor this time around?  Let's remember that your body will eventually mutate back to its original form.  Just give it some time.  No amount of torture is going to speed up the rate at which your hips migrate inward.  In fact, this time around lets invest in a big storage bin.  Throw all of your pre-pregnancy clothes in the bin and hide it away in the attic like a time capsule.  Label it "Do Not Open Until August 2012."  You'll save us a lot of disappointment. 

This time there will be no standing in front of the mirror with a pair of size six jeans stuck around your knees.  No. There will not be seventeen pairs of pants strewn about the floor.  Maybe these?  No. Maybe these?  No. There will be no grabbing the skin around your belly button and squishing it to say "Feed me.  I'm hungry."  No. No, no, no.

One day, like a bear waking from hibernation, you'll know it is time.  You will wake from your delicate state of not really wake, not really sleeping.  You will instinctively wander north to the bin in the attic and rummage through your old clothes.  You will pull on your old pants and, alas, they will nearly fit!  Then and only then may you revisit the idea of working out.  Promise me you'll take my advice.  Pinky promise?