Post baby body image

     I don’t fully know how other mothers feel about their post baby bodies, so these thoughts come from my personal experience and discussions with my friends.  We do not claim to be “normal” or “average”, so we do not claim to share the views of the average woman.  I do, however, feel that most women will relate to my/our feelings in general.  I’ve been pretty open so far about my personal struggles with self-image, but I'll briefly recap for those who need it.  I was a chubby kid until I was about 13 and slimmed down, so I was faced with image issues at a pretty young age.  While I’m at the age now where I’ve been considered thin or average sized for more of my life than I was considered chunky, in my mind, I’ll always be the fat kid.  These demons have always hovered around the outer perimeters of my mind, attacking when possible; sadly they have, at times, almost destroyed me.

            I wish I could figure out why some of us are more susceptible to feeling badly about our bodies than others.  Is it a personality trait, something taught to us by the world, or a spiritual issue that we could learn to control?  I’ve explored all of these options.  While I don’t really think that I have the answer to this completely, I have decided that there are a few things I am certain of:  1. I do believe that my Type A, control freak personality adds to my body issues.  It just makes sense to me that if I strive for perfection in every other area of my life, I would strive for perfection in this one too.  2. When I am not spiritually focused, it is more of an issue.  I constantly remind myself that I am “fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalms 139), and that if my God is perfect, and He is, then he made me look the way I do on purpose.  Therefore, if God thinks I am good enough just the way I am, I should learn to feel that way also.  After all, how I look is not all that I am as a person.  (Though I do struggle to keep this statement in mind constantly.)  3. I do think that past experiences can have a lasting effect on someone’s self-perception; however, I do not think this is an underlying issue for me.  I was not made fun of excessively for my weight by my peers.  My parents never EVER made me feel inadequate or less than beautiful because of my weight; they were always my biggest supporters and worked very hard to build my confidence in a world they knew would tear it down if possible.  Bubby worried the most about my weight probably, because he didn’t like the idea of others making fun of me.  He was probably the hardest on me about it, but never made me feel badly about myself; rather, he encouraged me by showing me his football work out.  (Kind of cute now that I think about it.) 

My overeating stemmed from being an extremely nervous child.  While I had plenty of security at home, I changed schools a lot when I was young and constantly felt like the “new kid”.  I was pretty shy, so I made one or two friends and stayed in the background.  This all changed eventually, right around the time I started dropping weight.    When talking with a former pastor, Rfitz, after having Princess, I sort of realized for the first time what my major problem is with my weight:  I am either losing it or gaining it.  I LOVE to eat.  I will eat almost anything and like it.  Therefore, I am either obsessing over eating wonderful, wonderful food, or I am obsessing over losing weight.  There is no middle ground.  I get this from my dad.  When he decides to do something, he goes at it full force.  What makes him good at everything he does leaks into all areas of his life, and this is probably the one way that I am more like him than Bubby.  I’m not saying this is a rollercoaster in big blocks of time, either.  Sometimes, it is a day-to-day thing.  I know that this is not a healthy way to be, so I am striving to focus on being as healthy as I can, and relying on God to show me my beauty. 

I felt like I had to give this rather lengthy background in order to make you understand how having a baby (or 3) affected my self-perception.  When I got pregnant with Princess, I was at a pretty comfortable weight.  I was wearing about a size 6.  This was definitely larger than my end of high school/most of college weight, but not bad in my opinion, nonetheless.  I gained about 40 pounds during my pregnancy.  At my nine-day check up, I had lost all but 10 pounds of that weight.  Unfortunately, I gained another ten over the next few months.  I was too obsessed with Princess to be very obsessed about my own personal appearance for a while.  As you would expect, that fact eventually changed and I began to worry once again about my physique.  I began dieting and exercising.  In the past, I could lose weight rather easily when I wanted, but something had changed.  Losing weight was hard.  After battling the weight off over a much longer period of time than expected, I felt pretty normal again.  I did achieve my pre-Princess weight, but I couldn’t hold that weight easily.  When I went in for my first prenatal doctors visit with the twins, I was 14 pounds heavier than I was for my first prenatal visit with Princess.  Yikes!  This was especially unsettling when I found out there were two kiddos in there to nourish.  I gained 48 pounds while pregnant with my duo, but the physical change was much grater than the number difference lends itself to make one assume.  The stretch marks I avoided the first time, made an appearance the second.  The shape of my body changed a little as well, and all of a sudden, the body I had strived to love for 27 years had been replaced by one I liked even less.  Now what?  I spoke to a well-meaning nurse practitioner about it who suggested, in a surprisingly unoffending way, that if I wanted my old body back, I might want to consider surgery.  HMMM…  Please don’t let me elicit any sympathy from you, because that is not my intention.  My stomach is not horribly deformed.  In fact, I can look at myself and know that I was genetically blessed as far as my skin’s ability to stretch and retract is concerned.  At the same time, please don’t discredit my struggle.  Yes, I know I am wonderfully blessed to have my babies and a tight, normal looking tummy is a small sacrifice for the miracle of life.  I happily and knowingly made that sacrifice.  I would give an arm, leg, or even my life for my children, so I do not begrudge them my figure (or blame them for the change).  That doesn’t change how I felt the first time I looked in a full-length mirror after having the twins.  Being someone who has battled the body demon for so long, he took advantage of my weak moment and plagued me with feelings of freakishness.  I may not have thought my previous body perfect, but this one looked like a stranger’s body, not my own.  I knew that I could not put off working on my physique for 8 months like I did with Princess.  My mind couldn’t handle it this time around.  SO, I started trying to diet.  The first step of this process was learning to not eat like I was carrying two growing babies around inside of me.  Then, I had to try to actually be aware of calories.  It took me a while physically to be ready to exercise, but I knew that it was important to begin when I could.  Losing weight isn’t any easier this time around (I switched to present tense here, because it has only been 5 months next week since their birth.)  It is a huge struggle, and just when the scales start to move and old clothes seem in the near future, I get stuck and camp out at a certain weight for a while.  Carrying the twins was pretty hard on my body also, so exercising is more of a challenge.  My knees and ankles hurt when I exercise, and my stomach muscles are still pretty far apart as well as some muscle soreness around my scar, making abdominal exercises (which I sincerely want to do) more painful.  I am happy to say that I have met my first goal.  I am within a few pounds of my pre-twin pregnancy weight.  I’m proud that it didn’t take me as long as it did last time to get here, but my ultimate goal is to get to and maintain (in a healthy way) my pre-Princess weight.  We’ll see if it happens.

Now, let’s go back to the nurse practitioner’s advice of plastic surgery.  From now on, we’ll call her Barbie.  It will give you a better visual of her appearance.  She was beautiful, skinny, and blonde.  Not exactly who you want checking your new Frankenstein figure after delivering, but she was a better option than sitting there waiting until Dr. Wonderful finished delivering a baby.  As I said before, she did not mean any meanness at all with our conversation.  She was sincere, and I get the feeling that if she does ever have children, she would personally take her own advice.  She first complimented my scar and healing.  Then she asked if I had any questions about it while still looking at my bare belly.  Stupid me, I did.  You see, I knew that my six week post check up after Princess wasn’t when I felt like my stomach had gone back to normal, but I couldn’t/can’t for the life of me remember when it was.  SO, I figured she, who looked at post baby bellies everyday, would know.  Silly me.  Her response was, as best I can remember, “Umm, well, I guess some of it will go down a little more, but it isn’t all going to go away.  How do you feel about plastic surgery? “ Me:  “stammering incoherently and saying something that prompted a response.”  Barbie: “ Well, if you decide you want to look more like you did before, the scar would go from here (pointing to one side of my lower belly) to here (pointing to the opposite end).”  Me:  “Wow, that’s a lot bigger than my C-section scar.”  Barbie:  “Yes, it is a pretty big scar.”  The appointment went on, and she was wonderfully sweet and knowledgeable, which I knew from the other times I had seen her.  I liked her then, and I still do.  It was an innocent statement, but effecting nonetheless, because, like most women I would think, I then began to wonder if the thought I needed a tummy tuck, or if she just thought that I thought that I needed a tummy tuck.  When I related the situation to Dean, his reaction was:  “Wow, even I know not to say something like that to a woman who just had a baby.”  The insinuation was that if even a man knew not to say something, then surely Barbie should have.  I don’t know.  I appreciate that she was trying her best to be completely honest.  What if she had promised me that with hard work, things would go back to their previous state?  I would have gone home with a false hope.  I would rather know the truth and begin my workouts with a realistic expectation of knowing it will get better, but it won’t be perfect.  As a strange counter feeling, everywhere I went people complimented me on how great I looked.  I live in a small town, so I know a lot of people who work in my regularly frequented stores and restaurants.  Others gave so many wonderful compliments to me, but there were two things that always made me want to discredit the compliment.  1.  It was the last phrase of the compliment when people said, “You look so great to have had twins.”  I want to just look great.  Now I know that people didn’t mean it in a mean way, but our crazy minds do crazy things, and I felt like people who didn’t know I had just had twins wouldn’t think I looked especially remarkable.  2.  They were judging my appearance in clothing, and I knew what I looked like underneath.  I might have been around the same size as before (just a few clothes sizes larger), but  “naked truth” was huge.  For some reason, it made me feel like a fraud.  Underneath the baggy tank tops and maternity jeans (which I wore for months and months post delivery), things just weren’t what they used to be.  So I began to ask myself, “How DO I feel about a tummy tuck?”  When it comes to plastic surgery in general, I feel like if others want to do it, I wish them great luck, and I will be jealous of their courage.  However, I have the double standard for myself that I shouldn’t want it.  I should learn to love myself the way I am, because that makes me spiritually superior in some way.  (I say this not because I feel it true, but because that is what the crazy girl in my head says.)  So, I have this tug of war between wanting to be repaired and not wanting to want to be repaired.  I don’t yet know which side will win.  My husband assures me that he still loves me with my new body just that same as he always did, and I guess that is enough for now.  I don’t want to rush into getting anything “fixed”, but I don’t know if I want to leave it broken forever either.  (I mean, what would the mortician say?)  So what do I do until I do decide?

I guess my current plan of action is to continue to attempt to love my new body.  After all, I did earn those stretch marks.  My stomach muscles did some hard work, not to mention the area that lies between my stomach and chin, which took some pretty bad hits as well.  I can’t expect things to go back to the way they were, but I can strive to make the best of what I do have for now.  At the end of the day, I look at God and praise Him for the good things He has given me.  I push down the feelings of inadequacy that are not of God, and I look at the promises He gives me through His word.  For all the other mommies dealing with post baby body issues, I’m with you.  I understand, and I support whatever decisions you make about how to deal with it , whether it be a journey to acceptance, reparative surgery, or working out to make the best of what you have.  I pray for happiness for the other mommies out there that sometimes look longingly in the mirror and wish they saw something just a little different.