The Changing Body

     At the time that I conceived my first child, I was a twenty year old girl/woman with a petite frame, size 2 pants, weighing in around 105 lbs. I often thought I had a little too much pudge around my belly button, criticizing my body for not being as in shape as it was six years prior when I had a short stint as a high school athlete. As my body grew to hold a baby inside, I focused hard on gaining enough weight with the right foods. I took me until my fourth month of pregnancy to gain 5 pounds, and most people couldn’t really tell I was expecting until 6 months. I remarked at times how my legs were filling out, as well as my cheeks and upper arms. I usually found my fullness utterly delicious, sporting it in cute maternity clothes- and a bathing suit when ever possible. In all I managed to put on 43 pounds by my two week post due date labor, which was a number I was happy with because it was only slightly above the recommended weight gain but a big enough number to prove that I was a healthy mama who was eating for a growing boy inside. I only cringed when I noticed the deep, purple tears that ran down both hips and the back of my upper legs. I remarked that I looked like an old stuffed animal that was just literally ripping at the seams. I lovingly, and hatefully, coined them “my war wounds.” I had simply not realized how important the constant cocoa and Shea butter was for my hips and legs. My tummy came away from the entire process with only the tiniest, nearly invisible, white line of a stretch mark. When I got home from the hospital three days after labor, I had lost 25 lbs already. The constant nursing did not work like a charm for me, I kept around that weight for a good three months. I felt great, though. I remember being a little bit preoccupied with this strangely shaped figure. I had never once in my life really been so full looking. My engorged boobs probably helped balance things out a bit, and let’s face it, my stomach had been blocking the view on my own toes for several months, so anything less and I felt like the Abs of Steel workout coach! I wore my nursing gowns a lot and my husband told me how beautiful I was, how sexy I was as a mother, and I soaked it all up. I was feminine, with a deep, matriarchal complex that kept my normal bustling, insecure personality at bay. I was too tired to argue like I used to, too tired to be overly sensitive or emotional, and with the perspective that I had just survived the “trauma” of giving birth with no pain meds, there were only a few things in life worth thinking much about: do not forget to change my infant’s diaper (as all new mothers know, in those first few weeks this is NOT second nature yet), try to get out of the house, if even to check the mail, and try to stay showered so I don’t repulse my husband with the smell of sour milk. That’s about it. I avoided the phone, the tv, books, etc. In fact, I can hardly remember what I did do in those weeks. Loving, wonderful people stopped by to bring us warm soup and meals, to keep us company, to pray with us. I’ve never known such support. The whole time I was not very concerned that I carried such a heavy figure for my frame, or that my war wounds were still very purple. I simply placed my palms lovingly on my belly, admired it for all its work, for bouncing back into something that almost resembled flat again, (at least compared to the playboy bunny chest hovering above it.) After a while, my extra 5, then 10, then 15 pounds did find a way to keep some one else’s butt company, but with their departure my insecurities returned. I began to complain again, to grumble about my fat, my sag, and woah-is-me that I am only 21 years old and have the body of a mother. I didn’t have the money to join a gym, though I did do my best to stay active, walk the lake on a schedule every few weeks. I had a hard time with portion control because the nursing kept me very hungry, but eventually things began to even out. A year later, I weigh about 110, and wear a size 5 comfortably. Sometimes I roll my eyes at that lovely fold of slightly stretched skin and fat that sleepily dangles over my jeans when I bend over or sit. The good news is that a child keeps you pretty busy, so you don’t have much time to stand backwards in a mirror and count the spider veins, cottage cheese dimples, a couple bruises from life with a toddler, and chastise yourself for giving your bum unspoken permission to creep down the back of your legs. Instead, I have tried to remember that quiet, inner grace and beauty which enveloped me after the birth of my son. I try to take bubble baths when I can, to enjoy the way my silk night gown feels after a long cup of wine, without idling before a mirror to critique the reflection. I am grateful that, with clothes on, I have come together well enough to pass as a normal 22 year old. Even my war wounds have become white and in time I hope the scarring will look less menacing when I at last tone up and get some tan on my booty.

No one else has to see what motherhood has worn into my fabrics, except for my husband and me, in the dim lighting of romantic nights. I am blessed to have some one desire the comfort of my body; I am blessed that I have been able to produce and give of it, even though the giving creates fatigue, or back pain, or flabby nursing boobs. I know that my body will fill out again in the future, with each new pregnancy, with middle age, and so on, and I might as well get used to it. To strive for outward beauty only seems to make me a little shallower, a little less creative, because I simply don’t want to be vulnerable. To put on several imperfections, that is what beauty is about: humbling, rewarding, graceful. It takes you one more step away from yourself, into this place where poetry and art begin to speak to you, where you aren’t afraid to get up and dance to the nearby music, with a one year old on your hip gazing and smiling at you as though you are the very definition of lovely.