36 wks pregnant

last week i had an idea for a new blog. but it never came to fruition. maybe now i’ll attempt to rekindle those thoughts from last week and have at it. roughly, the thought was boobs and belly and butt; mostly because i’ve watched mine shift and change, quite dramatically, over the past 24 months. from virgin pregnant body (is that an oxymoron?) to first time pregnancy (what the hell is happening here?) to non-prego but never quite the same (i could handle small, but small and droopy?) to hello! prego again (didn’t we just do this?) this body i call home has been through the ringer, to say the least.

i have several friends and acquaintances who are in baby baking, birthing and burping mode apparently this is what happens when you enter your mid twenties and early thirties. and a very common topic discussed amongst us triple b ladies is our bodies and the remarkable, frightening and sometimes depressing things that bringing children into the world has done to them. it does seem trivial on many levels but it’s real and it’s something that more women than not are struggling to understand, accept and live with.

of course the society we live in has much (if not all) to do with this. we watch halle berry and jennifer lopez back to their size 2 selves just weeks after the birth of their children. bikini clad jessica alba shows off her washboard abs and full, perky breasts on the hull of a speed boat in the south of france 2 months after the birth of her daughter (yes, that picture is burned into my memory).  i mean, have their uterus’ even had time to fully constrict back to their normal size? did they rub million dollar creams and lotions over their abdomen and breasts to avoid the unpleasant traces of stretch marks? are they even human? well if jessica and halle and jennifer all look like this (not to mention madona, gwen stefani, salma hayek, nicole richie, jennifer garner, the list goes on) then we non-magazine-appearing ladies should expect the same?

don’t get me wrong. i am looking forward to fitting into my clothes again (sooner than later) and it would be great if stretch marks don’t inundate my belly. obviously, i’d be extremely happy if my boobs stayed a nice plump c cup. honestly, my clothes may once again fit but they’ll always be not quite perfect (even if the weight is gone your body has been forever physically altered), my stomach will flatten but i’m certain will never be as taught as it once was, my breasts will adjust to life without hormones and milk (however far down the line) and will return to the nearly-b that they always were (sans the cute, perky pre-nursing slope).  and my butt..well to be honest i was unfortunately born with a very slight amount of butt fat so the little that gets packed on during pregnancy is welcomed…but won’t last.

when i was nearing the end of my pregnancy with jackson, a friend sent me a good luck email with some last minute advise (she had two bambinos of her own).  i remember reading it and thinking, this is sort of strange advice – as it wasn’t directed towards parenting or those early weeks with a newborn but about the physical changes that i would be going through. admittedly i thought it almost vane and hardly the most important thing to be thinking about… until one afternoon about two weeks after jackson’s birth, in the shower.

i remember looking down at the shell of my baby baking stomach. the skin loose and still extended. my breasts large and swollen, my nipples, adjusting to life in a death latch, bright red and raw. all physical reminders and proof of the miraculous transformation my body had undergone. all beautiful, natural, good things but holy shit did i loose it. sobbing uncontrollably i remembered the email my friend had written. she said something along the lines of (or at least i interpreted it on this day as), “don’t freak. you’ll look like hell and feel even worse some days. your stomach will return to normal, your boobs will catch on. even those nipples, so big you’d bet your life they’d be visible from the moon, will return to a normal diameter. it takes time. be gentle with yourself.”

ever since that afternoon in the shower, whenever a woman i know is preparing for the birth of her child i send an email with my version of this wonderful advise. because one of the main things i’ve realized going through the triple b’s is that you don’t hear the bad stuff, the hard stuff the down right scary stuff that happens when you have a child. maybe most women are too proud, too embarrassed or want to paint the surreal picture that they have no faults, no worries nor any insecurities. bull shit. let it go. my philosophy is the more ‘perfect’ you seem the more effed up you really are. come on, let your guard down. tell people about sobbing in the shower and your giggly stomach; it’s the cool new thing, i swear.

so maybe that should be the goal for all of us over extended, drooping, not-so-firm, BEAUTIFUL baby making women out there. tell it like it is. share your amazing, endearing and uplifting stories often but don’t forget about the dark, agonizing and hard ones because they’re just as important. be thankful for all you’ve been given; yes, even those massive areolas. because they are reminders of how lucky, blessed and fortunate you are to have baked, birthed and burped a healthy, radiant child.

don’t worry, alba and berry got nothing on us. and i’m willing to bet they’ve got their share of hellish, sobbing in the shower stories too. $500 says alba’s areolas took up most of the space under that tiny triangle bikini top anyway.