No time to lose

How much time does a new mother get to lose the baby weight before people start, you know, talking? There's no official deadline, but one thing's clear: She gets less time than she used to, thanks to standards set by a new crop of celebri-moms such as Jennifer Lopez, who give birth one day and seem to appear on the red carpet the next --radiant and toned.

Although it's difficult to recall, postpartum pudginess was once a private matter, an issue between a woman, her doctor and her jeans. But in an age in which People, Us Weekly and lesser gossip rags track the stars' postpregnancy weight loss with a laserlike focus, the pressure on regular new moms to slim down starts in the maternity ward, as they flip through glowing articles about Hollywood weight-loss triumphs.

What woman would feel good reading a headline such as this (from the Daily Mail): "New mum J-Lo loses 40 pounds in four weeks with aid of grueling workouts." Or this, from Star magazine: "Wow! Body After Baby!" Does a new mom really need to know, as Star reported in April, that Nicole Richie's down to 98 pounds three months after birth? Or Christina Aguilera's at 115 two months after birth? Or Gretchen Mol is 115 pounds after five weeks?

All these glowing insta-weight-loss stories and gorgeous photos might be entertaining, but they also raise expectations for average women, most of whom don't have personal trainers, round-the-clock nannies or chef-prepared healthful meals.

"You don't want to be compared to the stars," said Ami Cipolla, as she pushed her preschooler on a swing on a Brookline, Mass., playground and kept an eye on her 4-month-old twins, sleeping in their stroller. "But it's a celebrity-driven world. Everyone's reading the gossip magazines and looking at the pictures."

Comparisons are unavoidable, she added, noting that both she and Lopez had twins this past winter.

"She's on the cover of People magazine," she said. "What's my problem?"

Celebs create pressure

Her problem? With all respect to Shakespeare, the fault lies not within ourselves, but in our stars. As Meredith Michaels, co-author of "The Mommy Myth," points out, the pressure to slim down as fast as celebrities do is "insidious."

The message of perfection "creeps into your consciousness and becomes kind of a gold standard," she explained. "You know that you can't reach it. You know that you can't live your life that way, but the fact that somebody does creates this sense of envy and failure and resentment."

Perhaps no one's better positioned to see the increased pressure on new mothers to reclaim their prepregnancy bodies than Dr. Laura Riley, author of "You & Your Baby" and medical director of labor and delivery at Massachusetts General Hospital.

"It's on every magazine cover now," she says of postpartum weight loss.

Riley recommends that patients lose their weight in four months if they've gained the recommended 25 to 30 pounds during pregnancy. If an expectant mother gains 45, 55 or 65 pounds, "it's not coming off so fast," she concedes.

Four months would be an eternity in Hollywood terms, but in the real world it goes quickly, especially for mothers too stressed, exhausted and busy with work and baby to hit the gym.

Let's be reasonable

Heidi Murkoff, author of the bestselling book "What to Expect When You're Expecting," is more generous with her time frame.

"It takes nine months to put it on," she said, "so if it takes nine months to take it off, that's understandable."

Although there's no formal cutoff at which the so-called "baby weight" morphs into simply "weight," it happens to many women. Murkoff said the average mother keeps at least a couple of extra pounds as a "permanent memento" of each pregnancy.

No one knows that better than Andrea Youman of Newton, Mass., mother of a 1-year-old and a 3-year-old. Working two jobs and nursing her youngest have made weight loss all but impossible, so her plan is to wait until after her third child to lose her excess 30 pounds.

"It doesn't make sense to lose it just to gain it again," she said.

Unless, of course, you're a star bulking up to play the part of a woman who can't lose her weight. Then it's Oscar time.