By Samantha Wassel of Between the Monkey Bars
Lisa Denham, of Cellu Heights, NJ, found herself in a tight spot last week after she successfully put on her pre-pregnancy jeans, only to realize that she couldn’t remove them.
“No, I can’t get them off,” the mother of three told us in a recent interview. “But I think people are missing the point. The point is, I got them on. That’s all that matters.”
Denham says she’s been struggling to lose the baby weight ever since her youngest—twins Kit and Kat, age three—were born.
“I’ve tried everything,” she said, crumpling the Taco Bell bag she brought to our playground-side interview and tossing it into a nearby trash can.
[adsanity id=”35664″ align=”aligncenter”/]“The celery juice thing. The exercise thing. Those belly wraps. Hot yoga. Cold yoga. Lukewarm yoga. I mean, I’m the fucking Goldilocks of yoga.
“I even ate my placentas after birthing those two,” she said, gesturing to the sandbox, where Kit and Kat were busy ingesting some questionable-looking clumps of sand.
“I mean, it was disgusting, so I had my midwife bake it into a cake, and then I had to deep-fry the cake to really neutralize that bitter ‘afterbirth’ taste, but still. They said it’d boost my metabolism.”
Denham, whose eldest just started second grade, said she was making cupcakes for a school bake sale when she finally decided she’d had enough—not of the cupcake batter because, as she tells us, “That shit was fucking delicious,” but of feeling powerless in the struggle against her own burgeoning waistline.
“I needed that sense of control back. I think I just lost myself in my role as ‘mom,’ and I needed to feel like me again. Don’t get me wrong; I love my kids. But those little shits really destroy your body. The things we sacrifice for them, amirite?”
At this point, Denham excused herself for a moment and made her way toward the sandbox, where an elderly woman in a wheelchair appeared to be coaxing the twins into trading their mysterious “sand lumps” for a couple of Snickers bars.
[adsanity id=”35667″ align=”aligncenter”/]“Kit, Kat! We don’t take candy from strangers!” I heard her yell. “Give those to Mommy now, please.”
“Where was I?” she asked, unwrapping one of the candy bars and stuffing the entire thing into her mouth.
“Oh yeah, the bake sale. So there I was, making cupcakes for that bullshit fundraiser because Sharon asked me to, and you can’t disappoint Sharon unless you want to be the PTA pariah, even though Sharon never bakes anything because Sharon ‘organizes’ and Sharon ‘delegates,’ and I just got fed up with it. All of it: the bake sale, my body, the way things were just spinning out of control. And I look over, and there’s this huge can of Crisco just sitting there on the counter, lid off, calling to me.”
We assumed Denham was about to tell us she’d gone on a stress-induced shortening binge, so what she said next caught us by surprise.
“And I was finally like, Fuck it! I’m doing it. I’m putting on those pre-pregnancy jeans if it kills me. So I dug them out from the bottom of my dresser, slathered my legs in Crisco, and those bitches just slid right up like a well-oiled trombone. Kind of made the same sound, too.”
Denham told us that although the jeans don’t fit “exactly like they used to,” she’s just proud she got them on. And according to our social media gurus—who discovered an abundance of well-angled selfies on her Facebook and Instagram accounts—she’s held nothing back in flaunting her accomplishment in the faces of her local moms groups, high school rivals, petty sister-in-law, and, of course, Sharon.
[adsanity id=”35665″ align=”aligncenter”/]“I may look like the Michelin Man up top, but from the waist down, I’m sex on a stick,” she said. Ironically enough, it looks like Denham won’t be having sex anytime soon, as she’s been unable to remove the jeans since putting them on last week and has refused assistance from emergency medical personnel.
“Oh yeah, my husband tried to let the firefighters cut them off me, can you believe that?” she said.
“These aren’t your typical Walmart mom jeans. These are from the fucking Gap. Besides,” she shrugged. “It’s cheaper than a vasectomy. And I have a doctor friend from college who was able to hook me up—literally—with a catheter and colostomy bag.”
She nodded to the large IV pole next to her as she wheeled it toward the bottom of a nearby slide, where her toddlers sat perched, throwing pea gravel at children as they came down.
“Come on kids, let’s go. And can one of you tie my shoe? Mommy can’t bend over.”
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About the Author
Samantha Wassel is an Army Wife and SAHM to three energetic boys and three lazy AF cats. She enjoys running, writing, kettle-belling, reading, nerding out, and eating exorbitant amounts of goat cheese and Peanut Butter Halo Top ice cream (but not together, because barf). You can find more of her work at Between the Monkey Bars.