And now... The amazing, the incredible... Post baby body!

     “Your belly is still real big.” I look down at my client's little face smiling up at me sweetly while her sharp little index finger pokes at my post baby belly. “Are you sure there isn't another baby still in there?” I field these questions from her biweekly. It lost it's charm pretty quickly.

     She's not the only one to ask, however. I have been asked quite a few times since having my sweet little bundle of joy if I am expecting another. I'm not sure why people still ask this question of anyone. I don't ever ask a woman if she is pregnant. I don't care how obviously pregnant she may appear. You just never really know and I would be mortified if I asked and the answer was “no,” or a swift slap to the face (which really should be the socially acceptable answer to that question.) A woman could be wearing a baby on board t-shirt while carrying a box of baby clothes and I won't ask. No way. Yet, these people still pepper our community, out there asking you the questions that you wish you didn't have to answer.

     Over the years I have had people tell me their labor and delivery stories many, many times. Don't worry, mine's coming. Everyone loves a good labor and delivery story. A few close friends and family told me about what your body is like in the hours and days after giving birth. That post is coming as well... Maybe I'll wait for Halloween for that one. It is very, very scary.

     But I have heard very little from other women about what your body is like in the months post baby and the things that I have heard are largely negative. We allow changes to our bodies during pregnancy. We recognize that these changes are necessary to provide an environment conducive to growing a healthy, happy little one so we indulge in the extra calories and the rest and relaxation that we know we need. Yet the second that our babies are outside of our bodies the pressure is on. We expect ourselves to snap back into bikini shape immediately following delivery. Unfortunately, the media coverage of celebrity moms doesn't help. I hate to point fingers so I won't, but we are all side glancing at you Heidi Klum...

     Personally, a lot has changed south of my head over the past year and a half. Ladies and gentleman!  Step right up and get your ticket to view the 8^th wonder of the world! Watch carefully and you will see her pull a living human being from her very own belly! If you look closely you can still see the scar! Trust me folks, you won't want to miss this!

     My boobs are now dramatically, comically different sizes, especially if full of milk. I still have a dark brown line that runs from my belly button as far as the eye can see so to speak, that I'm not sure will ever go away. If I pull up my gut I can see the long, pink smiley face scar of my cesarean section incision. I have to use my hands to hold my gut up because I can no longer suck it in on my own. I am also unsure if that very useful skill will ever return. I had a pretty good run, thirty-four years but I think it's safe to say the streak is now over. And I am surprisingly okay with that.

     I was at my skinniest for our wedding and honeymoon. I kept my daily caloric intake around 1200 and alternated yoga and the treadmill every single day for the year leading up to my nuptials. I look back at pictures and it was pretty sweet. While on my honeymoon, a cruise of course Jim and I went on an excursion that included an obstacle course in a tropical forest. The course required us to climb huge, tall trees and set up our own safety equipment for zip lines, rope bridges and wooden planks placed end to end suspended by wire high above the trees. I was terrified, but my father in me would not forfeit the money we had already paid, so I sucked it up and completed all 18 obstacles. There were many times when I thought, mid task that I would have to quit, but I pushed myself physically in a way that I never had before and I completed every one. Finishing that course, I felt something that I had never felt before. A real pride in my body. Not what it looked like, but what it could do. What it could accomplish when pushed. It's strength. It felt amazing. I had never been so proud of myself.

     And then came the infertility. As someone who had always been pretty healthy and who had felt like I could count on my body to do what it was supposed to do, this felt very unexpected and foreign. All of the sudden I couldn't count on my own body. This body that I had trusted for all of these years had betrayed me. I began to feel very distant from myself. I felt sick even though I wasn't. There was something wrong with my body that had nothing to do with the lack of a proper thigh gap or boobs that were too saggy. I could no longer count on my own body. It was no longer my friend. It was my enemy. A project for me to fix. An obstacle for me to overcome. It was broken. I felt broken. All of the sudden my confidence in this body was diminished to nothing.

     Then I finally saw my big fat positive on a home pregnancy test and I had my first inklings that maybe I wasn't broken after all. But it took me a very long time to start to trust my body and see it as my friend again. I embraced the physical changes that I was seeing. I remember one day while very pregnant I was looking through a bathing suit catalog. “I guess I'll never look like this again” I remarked to Jim. The look in his eyes made me laugh. “Well, I didn't look like this before I got pregnant, so I guess there is really no chance of it after.” Over the months that I was pregnant, I very slowly started to rebuild that trust in my body again. As month after month ticked off and my little bean was still growing, I grew more and more comfortable with letting my body do what it was built to do. Slowly I stopped second guessing it all of the time. I stopped looking for warning signs that it was again failing. Then the day came when my son was born. The experience of laboring and having a child, while far from perfect demonstrated to me that this body could in fact, do amazing things. Through breastfeeding I have continued to watch my body change and adapt as it provides for my little one everything that he needs to not only survive but also thrive in this world outside of the protection of my womb. I built a stronger friendship, a camaraderie with my body.

 

     Immediately after having a baby, your body doesn't really feel like it belongs to you.  At least mine didn't.  It all seemed so strange and unreal.  Everything is swollen and crazy and I just felt like I was in someone else's body for the longest time.  All of the sudden my friend was behaving oddly and misbehaving again.  Again I began to feel like my body wasn't my own. 

     At 6 months post baby, in an effort to get Archer used to water and decrease the drowning risk as he gets older I enrolled him in a mommy and me swimming class. This meant that I would need to stuff my post baby body into a swimsuit and parade around a public pool. As I stood in the dressing room of Target, my sweet baby boy sleeping peacefully in the stroller next to me, I took a good, long look at my new shape, on display in 360 degree splendor. I saw materially more padding than before with significantly less control over where and how it now hangs, along with boob B crying out for a bigger cup while boob A seemed satisfied right where it was. I noticed my scar, more purple than pink under the store's harsh lighting and I felt a small smile creep across my mouth. I was surprised by the feeling that I got. This body is amazing.

     This body brought an entirely new life to this Earth, housing, protecting, growing and nourishing it, providing absolutely everything that this new little life needed to survive. This body continues to provide my son's only nutrition for the past seven months, the entirety of his life on this planet. The sheer chemical reactions that had to happen for all of this to occur are mind blowing. We are a universe unto ourselves. I really don't care if it has extra rolls, or odd discolorations that didn't used to be there. I don't care if the size or shape of things are different now. This body has done and is doing absolutely amazing things and while I want to be healthy and all of that, to stand here and fixate on purely cosmetic imperfections feels silly and disrespectful in the face of what this body has accomplished. After so long trying, this body gave me a wonderful little person who I love more than life itself. I gaze with respect at the scar of my cesarean section, that reminds me every time that I see it of where my baby boy first entered this world.

     My body is perfect. Not by societal standards by far, but in my own eyes. This body gave me my Archer.

     While I may make jokes about my fat ass, I no longer apologize for my body. It deserves no apology. It deserves a round of applause. All of our bodies do. We women are amazing creatures. So the next time you look in the mirror and catch a glimpse of yourself naked I encourage you to refrain from the usual, mentally picking it apart, focusing on perceived flaws, quickly averting your eyes for fear of seeing something you don't want to see routine. Instead, stand up straight and look at that amazing body, that body that gave life, protected and nourished it and embrace it. Treat it with the respect that it deserves. It truly is an incredible body.