Dear Body,
Whew! You've had quite a year haven't you? You briefly, ever so fleetingly experienced the best fitness of your life while going to the gym several days a week and working out for sixty minutes at a time! plus weights! Sixty minutes! Wow ... I mean, you can do anything you put your mind to, as long as a good Reality TV show is on the television in front of you. Eleven months ago today you got knocked up got pregnant conceived your first child. Two months ago you gave birth to a beautiful coo-ing baby who is totally fabulous even though he doesn't sleep for longer than two and a half hours at a time. It's been a year of extremes, no?
You made it through a few months of vague and constant nausea only to roll right into eat-everything-in-sight mode. You put on fifty pounds, quite a lot for your five foot four inch frame and topped out at exactly two hundred pounds the day you gave birth via Cesarean, nonetheless. Cesarean is code for can't exercise for the full six weeks post birth.
Is it a strange turn of events or just sick irony that in a matter of days you went from loving your widely voluptuous baby belly to cursing your soft, flabby stomach that rivaled the kitchen chair seat cushions for Pillsbury-dough-boy poke-ability. I know you are still hating yourself for hours on end and you really must stop that negative talk. Yes, you have friends who have bodies that are unscathed by the monsoon of pregnancy and yes, you have friends whose bodies are ravaged by the years of carrying babies. You fall loosely in the middle of what a woman should look like. And that is okay.
You have to stop comparing. You are more than a body. You are more than shapeless thighs, more than flabby arms, more than a stomach with rolls and a misshapen belly-button. You are more than a size. You are more than a number. I know the double digit number you are wearing right now is tearing you apart, but, why is that? You are not that far from your normal pre-pregnancy weight. Although the shape does need some work.
And, now, while you dutifully lactate, so sufficiently that your newborn doubled his weight in two months, you should carry your head high with pride because you giving to another human being a gift that not only a mother can give, but one that has sustained the human race since the beginning of time. You are part of something larger than yourself. At some point, the three nightly feedings will cease and you may actually sleep again, with both eyes closed. Until then, you need to know that I am actually quite grateful for all of the work you have done, the weight you have carried, you gave me my son, a gift too great for words. I am sorry for hating you and cursing you. I know that I never really liked you much better at one hundred and fifty pounds and now, ... I am ashamed of that. I've never liked you. But you have some amazing qualities, you have great health, strength, and now look at what you have produced and are sustaining. You are giving life. I promise to think of you more positively. I promise to take better care of you. I promise to be thankful for what I have.
You must stop scornfully reliving every bite of chocolate "muffin" and every mid-morning bagel (with two
cream cheese packets!) that you ate while pregnant. You were pregnant, and while that wasn't a get-out-of-jail-free experience, you were allowed to binge a bit, you also worked a stressful job with a motherfucker of a commute and you did it all while gestating a perfectly kissable and lovable squishy little son. So you came out a few pounds over what you should have gained. Really, the remaining twenty pounds is only about one or two sizes and you will lose it. Eventually. Hopefully.
And if you don't you are going to have to find a way to love what you have created, Noah, for one. The strength you have, physically and mentally. You are going to have to realize that life is more than a little bit of post-baby fat and if people are looking at you with scorn or pity or even for their own comparison, they are the one with the problem, not you.
From this moment forward I will be more thankful for my life and my strength and I will work to take better care of the damn good body that you are. Although, I can't promise much sleep in your future.
Love Always,
Stacy
This entry was inspired by Suzanne at Blogher. You can follow the link to read more Letter to My Body entries.
