Having a baby is hard. Getting rid of the evidence (the baby weight, not the baby) is even harder. Two months into it, and I’ve officially arrived at the 10th stage. Hit me up if you want to raid the clearance racks at Old Navy for some seasonal muumuus.

Stage 1: I’m Hot Shit

You’ve just had the baby, and depending on how long your labor was, gone from bloated whale to (relatively) svelte mermaid over the course of a few hours. You’re only a few days into your postpartum journey, but you are digging your new NOT pregnant body, and riding the hormonal high (or swimming through sleep deprivation induced delusions) of how skinny you are…comparatively.

Stage 2: I’m A Walking Talking Milk Machine Who Will Be In Skinny Jeans In No Time

Weight is pouring off of you. You’re a couple of weeks in, and you feel like every day you lose five pounds. You’re eating more than you’ve ever eaten, but you need it because you’re feeding a baby every 2 hours around the clock.

Stage 3: Sayonara, Maternity Jeans, Hello Pre-Pregnancy…Wait, What The Fuck?

Weight loss is slower, but you’re pretty sure your pre-pregnancy pants will fit. Until you try them on, that is. Then it becomes painfully obvious (literally painful, if you try to button anything) you still have quite a ways to go before your can rock your pre-preggo pantalones once again. But no matter, you just had the baby a few weeks ago. You laugh at yourself for being so silly as you slide back into your maternity jeans, relishing the comfort of the nylon expandable waist, while you finish the box of girl scout cookies.

Stage 4: Your 6 Week Post-natal Check-Up, AKA The First Time You Get Weighed And Fall Into A Deep Depression

You’re feeling good. You can’t wait to get to the doctor’s office and jump on that scale just so your nurse can say, “Damn, girl! You look amazing! I can’t believe you are back to your pre-pregnancy weight, minus five pounds.” But instead you’re blindsided with the news that you have only lost eight pounds, seven of which are accounted for by the baby. This explains why your clothes don’t fit, but is confusing because isn’t the weight supposed to be melting off? When does that start? Should you be wearing more clothes so you are hotter so the weight melts off? What do people actually mean when they say the weight will melt right off? Like, off your body? Not just melt down your torso into your thighs, right?

Stage 5: Damn You Baby Weight, I Will Squeeze You Into Submission

The weight isn’t going anywhere in a hurry, so you decide you will break its will to stay by hurting it. You pack up your maternity clothes, scornfully glaring at their elastic waists, and squeeze your body into your pre-pregnancy clothes. It doesn’t feel good, and if you’re being honest, it doesn’t look that good, but fuck it. Muffin top (or mountain top if you’re like me) be damned, you’re doing this thing.

Stage 6: OH MY GOD I CAN’T WEAR CLOTHES ANYMORE

This can happen anywhere from 3 minutes after stage 5 concludes, to anytime you are under pressure, hot, annoyed, moving, breathing or otherwise being alive. Clothes will be removed with haste, but the impressions stamped into your soft flesh from the seams, buttons and zippers will remain as a reminder that your clothes don’t fit. You will lounge around in your skivvies, pondering your options, and dreading doing anything that will require you to get re-dressed.

Stage 7: Two words: Yoga. Pants.

Bless whoever invented yoga pants, for no matter how much you thought you’d never be yoga pants mom, here you are. And you know what? It feels so good.

Stage 8: Sayonara, Yoga Pants, Hello Pre-Pregnancy…Wait, WHAT THE FUCK?!

It’s been months. You had a salad for dinner last night. You’ve been working out, sort of. But more than all of these things, you’ve been sustaining a growing human with food your own body is producing FOR MONTHS, and your goddamn clothes still don’t fit. You hate your clothes, and seriously contemplate burning them in the alley next to the old mattress that someone spray painted a giant green weiner on.

Stage 9: Deep Muffin-Top Induced Depression

You are tired of wearing yoga pants. Your jeans make you feel like your legs are being eaten by anacondas. Your husband may or may not find you standing in front of your closet, tears in your eyes, as you do your own sad version of the Truffle Shuffle while trying to remove the super saucy tank top that is suffocating your mid-section. All seems lost. You face plant hard into rock bottom.

Stage 10: Time To Buy New Clothes

You wake up one day realizing this weight took 10 months to get on, and will maybe even take 10 months (or more) to come off. Angels sing as you come to terms with your new size, and subsequently cancel your appointment with the banker to take out a second mortgage to pay for lipo. You don your yoga pants, just once more, and proudly go pick up a few things in a size you’d never thought you’d wear. But damn, you look good. And more importantly, you, and your muffin top, are comfortable and happy.