By the final weeks of my pregnancy last fall, I had gained about 45 pounds, causing me to waddle and wobble and tip over easily when kneeling. I wasn't a beached whale; I was the beach. And I spent as much time as I could lying on couches or slumped in chairs, impressing on my husband and employers the fact that I could barely move.
So when I saw M.I.A. on the Grammys last weekend, nine months pregnant and swooshing across the stage in a polka-dotted leotard, I feared for normal pregnant women everywhere. Sure, she looked deranged, like a knocked-up version of Minnie Mouse, but I could still imagine the ripple effect. "What do you mean, you can't bend over to lift that box? Didn't M.I.A. just do a cartwheel in front of Jay-Z?"
Pregnancy might be all the rage in Hollywood these days, but celebrities aren't doing us any favors. We get the M.I.A.-fueled myth of the pregnant wonder woman. We get the scramble for celeb-approved baby gear - because surely your child can't live without a onesie worn by Coco Cox-Arquette. We get the infusion of baby names like "Brooklyn" and "Bronx."
And we get the rush to shrink back into pre-pregnancy sizes immediately after the kid comes out. Last week, US Weekly published photos of Rebecca Romijn strutting down a sidewalk in flip-flops, yoga pants, and a slim-fitting shirt, a mere 30 days after giving birth to twins. "Hot mama!" the magazine crowed. And while the photos looked candid, a bitter-but-savvy friend of mine questioned how much work Romijn's publicist had done to ensure that the actress was caught on camera looking svelte.
Granted, Romijn is 8 feet tall and richer than God, and presumably has plenty of time for pilates. But it still bears repeating that this is not how one generally looks a month after giving birth. My 45 pounds might be mostly gone by now, but I have two souvenirs: a bouncy baby boy and a bouncy layer of skin around my midsection. I've accepted this as temporary reality; I recently bought a new pair of jeans, a size bigger than my old ones, and felt proud to be back in the world of button-up pants. (Proud and a little bit wistful. My favorite thing about pregnancy was the right to wear elastic with impunity.)
I know I'm not alone. When babycenter.com surveyed 7,000 new mothers about post-baby-body issues last year, 87 percent of them said their stomach hadn't returned to its previous size within a year or two of their children's birth. And more than half said their body image was worse after pregnancy, which must have something to do with those images of stars like Romijn, pretending nothing had happened to their bodies in the intervening nine months.
I propose that, instead of feeling bad for ourselves, we ought to feel bad for the stars. We go about our normal lives when pregnant, but the stars used to go into hiding, presumably because they didn't want to show off their swollen ankles or those extra pounds of flesh. Then Demi Moore promoted the idea that pregnancy could be sexy - which is true, I guess, if your photos are taken by Annie Leibovitz. And before long, celebrities were showing off their baby bumps and designer maternity gowns, and bragging (as Romijn did) about their ice cream cravings.
Now, Romijn and her fellow stars are slaves to sinister diets and industrial-grade workout regimens. (Not like mine, which involves hoisting a 4-year-old into her car seat, carrying baskets of laundry up three flights of stairs, and bouncing a baby who fusses whenever I try to sit down.) According to the celebrity glossies, Gwyneth Paltrow used Madonna's personal trainer, which couldn't have been much fun. Jessica Alba lost 25 pounds in two months by training for six days a week, crying the entire time.
Perhaps she was wishing that she could have simply gone up a jean size and bought herself some time. Maybe M.I.A. even would have preferred to spend the Grammys with her feet up on an ottoman. Pity the poor celebrities. They're trying to be like us, and it's just so hard.
Joanna Weiss can be reached at weiss@globe.com. 
