Beyoncé Shares Her Pre-Labor Preparation Details

Last January, before it was time for Beyoncé to go to hospital, she was acutely aware that she was PEOPLE’s Most Beautiful Woman for this year, and she meant to look like one all through the delivery! Now she laughs as she remembers how she was preparing for it: laying eyebrow wax, arranging her hair, having her feet and nails done and laying some lip gloss. She felt she was ready to strike up a pose of a perfect mom… Until Blue Ivy started to come, and then the focus shifted.

In a while – Beyoncé says – she no longer felt primed and primped, and found consolation only in the fact that it goes for everybody. “After being pumped with all those fluids and gaining so much weight … I barely recognized myself,” the pop star confessed.

Then came hours of labor, and Beyoncé found herself worrying about her appearance less and less while her mind turned to her and Jay-Z’s “miracle.” The new mom shared she began to feel connection with her body, her power and – finally – the meaning of what was happening.

Beyoncé came through the delivery with extra 50 pounds, nearly a half of it gained during the last month of pregnancy, and she knew she had to get rid of it. As soon as she started breastfeeding her weight started to come down – and fast! The singer had been breastfeeding for 10 weeks and recommends it to all moms as the thing best for both women and babies.

After about a month had passed, the 30-year-old mom turned to workouts and diet to drop the rest of the lbs, grading up from walking to running and then to three-four workout sessions a week. A relentless counting of calories was initiated, all things delicious were rigidly excluded without exceptions and cheating… And then Beyoncé was back into her pre-baby waist.

She professed to be happy and proud of herself for that achievement that she mostly ascribes to breastfeeding – although she did own up to being some four pounds away from her previous weight. Nevertheless, she acquired a new feeling about her body, an unaccustomed softness that she thinks is due to hormones that “are still in my body.” It is a kind of unexplainable magic, shares Beyoncé, and it leaves her with sheer pride for being a woman.