My baby daughter is one month old today. Like most new moms, I was anxious to get my body back, since the magazines at the checkout told me how important it is to do so.
There was only one problem: I didn’t lose my body while I was pregnant. Did I do something wrong?
Here I am at almost 13 weeks pregnant. I still have arms, and a butt, and a face, which I’m pretty sure are all parts of a body.
And here I am at about 19 weeks pregnant. Looks like my soul is still inhabiting some sort of carbon life form.
And at 30 weeks pregnant. Yup, I still see lots of things in this picture that make me think I had not lost my body by this point.
37 weeks pregnant. Am I missing something? It really, really looks like I still had a body here.
Here I am earlier this week. Huh, I see a hand, and a head, and arms, and indications that there are some lower extremities that aren’t in the picture. It really seems like I still have a body. Wouldn’t my husband have told me if my body had gone missing? Or my parents? How do I get my body back if I haven’t lost it?
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Can you tell that I do not like the way that new moms (or women in general) are treated in the media? I do not have to get my body “back” and I don’t appreciate the notion that women lose their bodies while carrying a child. My body did some incredible work and created my beautiful and healthy daughter. It labored for over 12 hours to bring her into the world. It produces nature’s perfect food for her. It gets up in the middle of the night (and the beginning of the night, and the end of the night) to comfort, change, and feed her. I most definitely still have a body.
That being said, I’m not going to pretend like I don’t want to fit into the clothes that I used to wear. I got pregnant in August, so I never bought any summer maternity clothes, and now I’m stuck wearing the same two pairs of workout pants and one dress over and over again around the house. But I’m not willing to do anything crazy to get into the shorts I could wear last year. I live in a super hilly neighborhood and for the last week or ten days I’ve been putting Baby Girl in the Moby Wrap and walking for about 30 minutes a day. I’m breastfeeding. I’m making fun yet gentle goals, such as challenging myself to get at least three servings of fruits and three servings of vegetables every day (which is not as easy as it was before I had a baby attached to me 20 hours a day).
That’s it. That’s all I’m doing. I’ll fit into my shorts when I fit into them. There is nothing I need to “get back” because I didn’t lose anything. In fact, I gained much more than I lost: a child, love and appreciation for what I’m capable of, and a new way of seeing my husband now that he’s a dad, among other things.
What about you, did you lose your body when you were pregnant? What is it about the media’s treatment of women that ticks you off the most?