Mom Body

Last night my eldest daughter was laying on the ground and she held her arms up for me to help her up. She was being silly. I stood over her and I leaned over to grab her arms and my shirt came up. You could see my loose belly skin just hanging loose. She looked at me and declared, "Your stomach is disgusting." Wow. That's mean. I said very matter of factly, "Well, it looked good until you were born." She gave me a look and began to cry. I didn't say it to be mean. I was just being honest. I was stating a fact. That doesn't mean that I am not happy she was born. It just means that the skin on my stomach is so stretched out that I can pull it out, smoosh it together and it looks like a butt. I bet you wanted to know that about me. That I can pull out the skin at the bottom of my stomach and use it to carry in my groceries.

I really did have a flat stomach before I had kids. I was a tiny, skinny girl. I weighed less than 100 pounds when I got married. Then I got pregnant. The night before I gave birth, they weighed me at the hospital. On one of those scales that you see at the zoo. You know, the ones that they use to weigh the rhinos. I stood on the scale and it flashed 172. Yeah, I wasn't 97 pounds anymore. I didn't even care. I hadn't seen my toes in 2 months and my ankles had completely disappeared. I had bigger problems then the number on that scale. I don't know how I gained THAT much weight. A lot of it was water weight. I ate lots of fruits and veggies and lean protein throughout my pregnancy...and then I would eat like a pint of ice cream.

I remember the day that I realized that my body would never be the same. Our daughter was maybe 2 weeks old and I finally had enough confidence to go out in public. I needed to buy a pair of pants that didn't have an elastic band. I needed to feel normal again. So we packed up the baby and headed to Target. I browsed the shorts. I had always been a very thin, petite girl so until I got pregnant, I always wore a size 0, 1 or 2. Tiny. So I picked up a size 6 pair of short and they seemed HUGE to me. I went to the dressing room -and I kid you not - I couldn't pull them over my knees. I was horrified. I sent my husband back for a size 8. Same thing. Then I told him to just get all the sizes. I tried a 10, a 12, a 14. Finally, I fit into a size 16. I stood and looked at myself in the mirror. At the red stretch marks on my thighs - and my calves! I expanded so much my calves had stretch marks. How did this even happen? I hung my head. I walked out of the dressing room with my size 16 shorts. Not 2 minutes later my sweet newborn had an explosive poop - up the back and into her hair. It was massive. I went into the Target bathroom to change her and I did the best I could to clean her up but my mind was pre-occupied by those size 16 shorts.

We got home and I knew that life was different. I had bags under my eyes, my hair was unkempt, I had no make up on, I was wearing sweat pants because they were the only things that fit me, I had a huge maxi pad that went from my chin to the back of my neck, there was milk literally spraying out of my body, and red stretch marks covered my empty belly that shook like a jelly jiggler as I leaned over the bathtub and gently wiped the poop from my new baby daughter's hair. I had made it to womanhood and motherhood. I dried her off and put her in her little sleeper and I sat in the rocking chair to nurse her to sleep. She was so sweet and warm. Her poop-free hair so silky. Her tiny little hands curled up on my chest. I decided to just let it go. I decided that I wouldn't be mad about the way things were - my body, that I wouldn't hate myself about it. That I had plenty of time to care what I look like and work on myself and at that time all I really wanted to do is just hold and rock and watch my baby sleep for as long as I could. So I did. I had enough foresight to know that she would only be tiny for a minute.

I ate healthy and the weight started to come off, but my body had changed. My skin was looser, it was a different shape. Then I did it all over again and oddly enough the day before my youngest was born I again weighed 172 pounds. It's like the threshold I must hit before I give birth. I was so much more laid back about it the second time around. I did not care how big I was. I was a mama-warrior.

Again, the weight melted off but over the years it fluctuates. It took me about 18 months to get back to normal weight but I'll gain and lose within a 10 pound range. Whatever. My skin might not be tight but who cares. The hubby still thinks I look okay (I think, I mean he has to say that) and the stretch marks now are like silvery lightning bolts all over my body. You can't see them unless you look really close. I can feel them, the ridges on my legs and belly. It's been almost a decade since my oldest daughter was born and my body stopped being the standard of beauty. I work with what I've got. I wear jeans that come up to my belly button so that I can tuck in the bottom part. I wear very modest bathing suits. I don't hate my body or think it's disgusting. It's got history and character. It's broken in. Like a good baseball mitt. I want John Mayer to write a song about my mom body, "Your body is a like an old baseball mitt....."

I am sad that my daughter thinks my stomach is disgusting, but I hope that one day she'll have children of her own that bring her as much joy as my girls have given me and she'll have a change of heart. I don't miss my old body that much anyway, but my brain....that's a different story!!!!