Category Archives: Motherhood/body image

Motherhood/body image, Otter, pregnancy

He’s going to rock that belly!!

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It has begun. Otter is now big enough to rock that belly!! Yes indeed, last night Lee and I were talking when Lee stopped and stared hard at my tummy.

“That was wierd, your whole stomach moved.”

Yes it did! He is rolling and kicking and moving around so much that I look like the first stages of alien release!! We sat back and enjoyed the show together for a bit as Otter was quite willing to put in a major performance.

At Ellen’s suggestion yesterday I checked of Shape of a Mother and submitted some of my pictures. It is an amazing site to go to. I am so angry that our image of what women should look like is impossible to acheive.

I mean, I was a thin and muscular teenager, I had an excellent body, and I remember scouring my image in the mirror for fat and “consoling” myself with the knowledge that Cindy Crawford had the same measurements as I did, so I didn’t have to be heroine thin to be cute. Come on!! How sick is it that our healthiest fit women in our culture still have to convince themselves that they are okay looking because they are not anorexic? Ugh!

My mother helped me a lot when I was younger. She told me she had always been unhappy with her appearance and then was looking back on photographs of her younger self and really felt angry that she had never enjoyed her looks then. That really stuck with me and I was able to work at being really happy with the way I looked. But it took work. I was probably 20 before I really felt that I was hot stuff, and that only lasted until I was 25 and got pregnant with Marlena. I wasted years of concern worrying about imaginary fat or a few zits, or the fact that I couldn’t wear empire waist shirts without looking pregnant. It’s sickening.

So, here I am, 31, and heading towards a true jiggly belly as soon as this baby emerges. I had better get my crap together and start learning how to be okay with my body, actually no…. I want to learn to be proud of it! I am really strong! I don’t really want to look like a model! They have teeny arms and legs lacking in muscle. They can’t lift my 5 year old and tromp around the house blowing zurberts!!! They can’t swing her around “swing kids” style until she giggles breathlessly! They can’t hoist baby, diaper bag, briefcase, and groceries into the house all at once! Or move thier own living room furniture when they want to redecorate without the immediate opinion of their spouse! (Sorry honey, sometimes a woman’s gotta do it on her own. But I am always willing to put it back if you hate it.)

So, here is another foray into the land of artistic expression and unself-concious body acceptance.

Granted, the true irony about pregnancy is that once you accept your body as is, it changes again. And again. And again. However, it is an amazing thing, this ever changing body of mine. After all, it has grown two people. One of whom is running around in Kindergarten and the other who is still waiting to pop out and say hello. I don’t really know of any other thing as amazing. It is so unreal that what starts as a little nausea and tiredness becomes another person. A whole other human, who will eventually go to college and change the world… somehow.

Anyway, check out Shape of a Mother, if you haven’t already. Then take up the banner with me and agree to try to stop longing for a shapeless American Stick Insect body. Who wants to resemble a clothing hanger? It’s Mayan Fertility Goddess for me all the way!

health, house"keeping", Motherhood/body image, pregnancy

The game’s a foot!!

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Yesterday we felt a foot! Or was it is hand?

It was definitely an appendage of one form or the other, and Lee and I each got to feel it rest right under our hands. I almost felt it in my hand at first! It had edges and definition. He becomes more and more of a little person each day.

Monkey sings Otter a lullaby at night after I sing her one, and he kicks mightily away as she sings into my tummy. He is really going to know who is sister is when he comes into this world. She is so excited that she has really spent a lot of time talking and singing to him.

I am still nesting, the instinct growing stronger and changing form as we get closer to Delivery-Day. This week it is a scrapbook of artistic images of me and my belly to commemorate this pregnancy. I wanted something to remind me of what it looks like for me to be pregnant. It is a pretty neat project so far. I am having fun with my Photoshop elements program and my pictures. Most of them I will not post on the Internet, as they involve no clothing, and once you put naked pictures out there, out there they stay. However, this one is I feel is harmless enough.

I am trying to capture the sense of quiet peace that fills me from time to time. So much of pregnancy is hard, and so many of our culturally supported memories are the hard ones. Nausea, sleeplessness, cramping, feeling fat, etc. I wanted to create memories for myself that reminded me of peace, and beauty, the internal sense of fulfillment one gets when you’re growing a baby. That way, even though I more often look sleepy, or a little rumpled, or tired and grumpy, I will remember feeling beautiful and calm, and ready for baby.

It has been an interesting project. When Monkey was in my belly I had a cast done of my torso, but I have not gotten it from the artist, and recently found out he had passed, so it is unlikely that I will have that memory, in any form other than a memory.

Of course my mom took a ton of pictures of me while I was carrying with her, so it’s not as though I have no memories of that time, they just aren’t full on belly nudes.

I am also making curtains and designing a little book and doing all the other stuff that lends itself to a sense of readiness for baby. We have our first meeting with Ellen, who is our Doula for the grand day, this weekend, and our having our tour and birthing class the following weekend.

I am still anxious about delivery, and a little sad that this is my final time doing this. It is such a complicated thing, pregnancy, I can’t imagine signing up for a life of it, but I am sad to see this part of my life slip into the past. Sometimes I wish life’s experiences were less ambivalent.

Motherhood/body image, pregnancy

There was an old lady who swallowed a fly…

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I sympathize with the old lady who swallowed a fly…

Pregnancy is such a huge change. It happens so fast and yet takes forever. I can only vaguely remember a time when I was able to run and life heavy objects, but I know it’s only been a few months. At times like this I wish we were more like the Greeks, who measured beauty by their bride’s weight in gold, and the largest most rotund women were the most sought after.

I certainly don’t fit anywhere within the definition of heroine chic, nor do I fit the definition of any chic! I feel, in this seventh month of pregnancy, as though I have swallowed my former self. I feel that I can just see her, if I squint and turn just right in front of a mirror.

I enjoy my belly, it is very round and satisfying. I can’t help but stroke it soothingly, as I will the baby when he is born. However magical and wonderous this experience is, it still lasts nine months. Nine months is a long to time to maintain a sense of wonder and awe. I fight hard against the belief that I have to be skinny to be happy, but even the healthiest of self-esteems has weak moments when one’s body is changing every day for nine months.

I have done this once before too, so I can’t even hold onto the lie that I will return quickly to my pre-pregnancy body. Ha! No one returns to their pre-pregnancy body without the assistance of a scalpel. Everything is subtly different. A little lower, a little looser, a little bulkier. So instead of holding to that illusive dream, I am left wondering what changes will stay this time. Will I ever feel comfortable in low rise jeans again? Will I ever see my toes or will my breasts remain huge forever?

And still, in the bath with the baby kicking, I say hello to my new little man and I am proud that my body can do this. I can grow another separate human being. He will, like his sister before him, emerge from my body and become his own person. My children will accomplish things that I have nothing to do with, even though there very existence was brought about by me.

Pretty amazing stuff. It blows my mind really. How complicated is the relationship we have with our children? I want them to be their own people, do their amazing things, yet there is a voice in my head that cries “come back” with each step towards independence. Is it because they grew within me, that I can’t just be joyful at thier successes? That there must always be this little touch of sorrow for the days of their babyhood?

My daughter has lost all her baby fat. You can clearly see the woman she will become even while helping her button her jeans. She is lithe and muscular and strong and lovely. Her face is delicate and her eyelashes dark. She can hula hoop, and play sports, and has experiences each day that have nothing to do with me. I am very proud of her, but oh I long for my little baby girl, with her chubby cheeks and belly, and her duck fuzz hair.

Life is too many emotions.