Breaking News: New Moms are Fat

These days I'm getting upwards of 25 press releases a day to Mom101. Most I scan quickly and delete. A few, if I'm feeling snarky, get a response like, "You know, if you took the time to read my blog and not just pretend that you read it, you would know that there's no way I'm going to write about your canned tomatoes/Precious Moments crap/corporate apartments where I nearly died."

But today I got one titled New Study Links Lack of Sleep to Weight Gain in New Moms.

(Maybe you got it too - you, and you, and you, and you. Maybe even you? Nah. Probably not.)

And I thought, hallef*ckinglujia, just what every sleep-deprived new mom has been hoping to find in her inbox.

Indeed I am beyond delighted to know that Sage's continued insistence at waking up every 2 hours all night leaves me not only cranky, irritable, limited in my brain capacity and looking like crap, but now it's making me fat.

Forget the fact that the research was conducted by Kaiser Permanente--who after seeing Sicko, is not exactly on my holiday list. What am I supposed to do with this information? How am I supposed to respond to an email that informs me that "getting enough sleep – even just two hours more – may be as important to mothers as a healthy diet and exercise."

It's like getting a pitch that says "If you just made more money--even just $100,000 more--you may have a better quality of life."

Um, thanks for the tip.

Call me cynical, but no insurance organization does research for the betterment of humanity at their own cost. Is it possible that the research is paving the way towards more reasons not to pay out? Sorry 'bout your diabetes and hypertention, fatty...if you had just slept more instead of watching Grey's Anatomy after having those kids, we might have approved you.

DECLINE.

Or maybe this is the first step towards insurance companies covering night nurses and daytime doulas for us all for the first six months.

Because that sure would be nice.