Presently, I am a 24-, almost 25-, weeks pregnant woman who is both marveled and disgusted by my own body. I know, of course, many wonderful mothers who have gone through 1, 2, or even 3+ pregnancies, and I am not sure if I failed to ask or if I failed to listen to the myriad changes your body
It's not like I felt great about my body before becoming an incubator for my son (my son. I don't know if I've ever called him that before. It's so weird. Inexplicably weird). One of the things I remember most clearly about third grade was the day I went to put some lotion on my legs, and some kid in my class said, "Wow. That sure is a lot of lotion," to which my other classmate, Rafa, responded, "That's because there's a lot of surface to cover." Or sixth grade, when I took three weeks off from school to go to Spain, and when I returned, Jennifer A. asked if I'd brought home a lot of souvenirs, and JD Palmer, the bane of my middle school existence, said, "Yeah, rolls of fat." These comments still sting a little, some twenty-five or thirty years later, and as my body grows along with the baby inside of me, a lot of these insecurities are brought right back up to the surface.
I think the world is a more body-positive place than it was when I was a kid, or even a teenager. While we're still surrounded by images of impossibly thin women, there are also other body types in the mainstream media and on social media, which I think is a great thing. Still, it's difficult to look at myself in the mirror and fully appreciate what my body is doing right now, because of the years of shame I've associated with bellies and cellulite and any sort of jiggle. I know there are people out there that would say that makes me selfish, or shitty, or unaware, because there are so many women in the world who want to bear children and simply can't. And I would never want to diminish this experience, because as shocking as I still find it to believe that I will be someone's mother (soon!), I fully appreciate the experience and wouldn't give it away for anything, even if it meant not having another day of heartburn, backaches, sciatica, or having to pee every thirty minutes. But despite the fact that pregnancy is, in such a cliched term, a miracle (I mean, come on. The placenta alone is a mind-fuck. I grew a whole new organ out of nothing to sustain this kid), I still don't feel attractive or desirable in any way. And let's not forget: I am an old mom. I'm thirty-eight years old. My fat is so stubborn at this age, I'm not sure a plastic surgeon's lipo vacuum could coax it out. At least I'm not famous. I don't know if I could deal with that sort of scrutiny (although, is the scrutiny of teenagers less toxic than the scrutiny of paparazzi? Who's to say?). At least I don't live in France, where women are regularly harassed by their OBs for gaining too much weight.
I feel like blog posts are supposed to end with some marvelous insight gleaned from whatever topic was being written about, but I don't think further pondering of my gravid body has led me to any fuzzy warm feelings about the fact that my arms, never the supple willow branches I've always longed for, are now so jiggly, I can't tolerate the idea of writing on the Smartboard when school starts in a few weeks for fear of starting a hurricane with their massive vibrations. I don't feel better about the extra layer of flab that now hangs off my butt, or my steadily growing second chin. I know I am not the only woman to "gain weight all over," as they say, as opposed to just the belly. And like I said earlier, I was kind of a chubby child, so maybe I should have known pregnancy would lead me here. I mean, I thought I was permanently past the fat stage of my life. It doesn't make it any easier when expectations for the female body are already set preposterously high. Ah, well. And "so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past," as Fitzgerald so aptly put it.
