Total transparency. Matthew Stafford’s wife, Kelly Stafford, shared a throwback photo of her postpartum body three months after giving birth to twins Sawyer and Chandler.
“There is no such thing as a post baby ‘snap back,’” the 32-year-old “Morning After” podcast host captioned a Tuesday, March 22, mirror selfie via Instagram.
In the social media upload, the former cheerleader wore black leggings and colorful sneakers, pulling up her black tank to show her bare stomach. The University of Georgia grad’s caption directed her followers to a podcast episode, in which she “said ‘eff it’ to the post-baby snap back.”
Kelly explained, “I naturally have an athletic build so I thought right away, I would be back to my size. I was nowhere close to my size. I never got back to my size.”
The four-time mom noted that she “started cutting calories to an extent that was so unhealthy” and “not eating enough” after becoming a parent, calling herself a “terrible wife” to Matthew, 34. “It was really hard on our marriage because of my feelings toward my own body,” she said. “I was so insecure. I was in such a bad headspace. … I did not want to get intimate because I had s–t hanging everywhere.”
Kelly, who now focuses on her family and lets her “body fall into place,” gave birth to her and the NFL player’s twin daughters in 2017. Their arrival was followed by Hunter, now 3, and Tyler, now 20 months, in August 2018 and July 2020, respectively.
Ahead of baby No. 4, Kelly had surgery to remove a brain tumor following an acoustic neuroma diagnosis, which is a condition characterized by noncancerous, slow-growing tumors along the branches of the eighth cranial nerve.
Kelly will “never be the same” post-procedure, she told her Instagram followers in October 2019.
“I have symptoms that are still lingering. In fact, they aren’t symptoms anymore. They are just a part of me,” Kelly explained at the time. “But every time I get those headaches, lose my footing or get yelled at by my girls for not listening when I really never heard them, I remind myself how much stronger I am. How much stronger my marriage is. How much stronger my family is. It was a part of God’s plan, a plan I am all in for. Grateful to be here.”
The duo welcomed their youngest child in June of the following year. In February, Kelly brought all of the little ones to the Super Bowl when her husband competed with the Los Angeles Rams against the Cincinnati Bengals.
The athlete’s team won the game, and he and Kelly attended a celebratory parade later that same week. The pair went viral when a video surfaced of Matthew walking away from a photographer falling who fell off of a platform at the event.
“We have been in communication with Kelly Smiley since yesterday’s incident and we are sorry for what happened,” he and his wife, who did help the photographer at the time, said in a joint statement. “As we told Kelly, we will be covering all her hospital bills and replacing her cameras. We wish her a speedy recovery.”
