If I'm back to my pre-preg weight, why am I still fat?

I'm actually two pounds below my pre-pregnancy weight, yet there's still this jolly little belly hanging around. I had refused to buy jeans in a bigger size because I was sure I'd be back to normal soon enough, but I gave in yesterday. Now I have fatty jeans. I also ordered a corset on eBay. What, me exercise? Pfaw!

So it's been three and a half months since I became Momma Jenna, and I still can't get anything done. The advice I got most often when I was pregnant was, "Sleep when the baby sleeps." As I think I mentioned a few posts ago, that's not always possible when you're a "pumper." When she sleeps, I break out the breast pump. Then I have to wash it and get the bottles ready for the next time. And even though it sounds lovely to follow the advice of all the magazines that say things like, "The dishes can wait! Just take a nap!", they can't always wait. Eventually, you run out of things to eat on.

So the practical truth is that I don't nap. Pretty much ever. I need those times when she's sleeping to do things like eat, shower, fold stuff... I'm really not working yet. I am very, very slowly adding to a book I began about halfway through my pregnancy, and I'm about to be a judge for the Writer's Digest Self-Published Book Awards, which means I have a lot of reading to do over the next month or two. But that's it for now.

I have no idea how other moms do it, especially those who have more than one child. If I'm this exhausted caring for one baby, how in the world do people do this when they have two, three, or more little ones underfoot? Do they just never sleep at all?

I'm not one to admit this lightly, but the sleep deprivation is getting to me. It's not making me love this fantastic little lovebug any less, but it's making me grouchy overall. I haven't had a full night's sleep since about the second trimester (when I started having to wake up to use the bathroom sixty-five times a night).

On the plus side, we found a pediatrician who seems so warm and kind. And I've figured out a new way to make Sarina crack up (jazz hands over her head, while we look in the mirror). Good God, parents, you all knew this secret all along... hearing your baby laugh is the BEST THING EVAHHH! There is just nothing in this world that I've ever heard or seen that compares. It's the proof that life is good. When she smiles or laughs, the whole world could be exploding around me and I wouldn't notice. I'd just be grinning like an idiot and making Muppet faces at her.