I carried a child in my womb for 10 months. I withstood the pain of labour and gave birth to my son. I appreciate that my body is strong and capable beyond my own understanding, but boy do I hate the way it looks.
My stomach is now a deflated balloon, surprisingly soft and squishy in the center. I remember the first time I felt my stomach post-partum – it felt tingly to the touch, still tender from what it had been through. Nowadays it stores fat in the most unflattering way, so I have a small pouch of blubber below my belly button that looks stubborn as fuck and irritates me to no end. I have no idea how I will get rid of it.
My skin is ravaged by stretch marks. I have earned these “tiger stripes”, like my mother before me, but that doesn’t make them any less disappointing when I undress. Not to mention that dark line that develops during pregnancy, crawling vertically down your stomach. That hasn’t faded yet and I read an article yesterday that said sometimes it never goes away. Just another thing I have to look forward to, I guess.
And my boobs. These things. At least they have a function. They help me feed and nurture my child, and that really is something, but I cannot stress enough how taxing breastfeeding is. In the beginning, it felt as if my nipples were on fire, and that’s not an exaggeration at all. When I would dry myself off after a shower, it was as if someone was rubbing sandpaper over my skin. Theodor once spat out blood, and that blood came from me. I stuffed cold cabbage leaves in my bra. How attractive is that? The sweet scent of dry breast milk and wilted cabbage leaves. I leak through my bras, I leak through my shirts. If it’s not baby spit that ruins an outfit, it’s my cow udders being a bitch. So, I’ve said goodbye to dressing nicely, because what’s the point anyway? When getting ready for my day, I ask myself, “how easily can I pop a tit out of this? Gotta feed the kid.” That’s where I’m at now.
My hips span from here to China, that’s how fucking wide they’ve gotten. You could relocate the Trans-siberian Express along my waistline, although I’m not sure it truly exists anymore because my profile looks like one massive, ugly potato (a description I recently used to illustrate my figure to my partner). I wear mom jeans now, but not in a hip or trendy way, but because they’re the only jeans that fit me anymore.
I walk around feeling like a worn out mother (I literally am that). When people stare at me, I’m afraid that’s all they see. I don’t feel young or vibrant or attractive anymore, and as an extension of that, I feel awkward when my partner touches me. I don’t want to look into the mirror and I hate seeing full-body photos. I often wonder when it is that I’ll get to be myself again and I realize, much to my dismay, that I really don’t know if I’ll ever be who I was a year ago.
There are a lot of things I’m going to have to re-learn about myself. I can’t promise that I’m going to love this body any time soon, but if it can give me a kid like Theodor, then I guess it can’t be all that bad.
Hell, this mom thing is really exhausting.
x
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