(Disclaimer: yet another post from my phone under the wire of my son’s naps so it’s a little raw and unfiltered I’m so sorry!)
I’m pretty sure anyone reading this blog is too young to get what this is parodying. Because I’m too young to get this is parodying, as it’s a film from even before my parents’ time. I only know about it because I’ve seen this title in a trivia game and the name resonated with me. If you care to know where it comes from, you can look at the IMDb. It’s a classic, I should see it sometime.
Anyway, getting to the point, I know this blog has been a lot about personal issues more so than actual Mom stuff, but we Moms need to look out for ourselves and each other. We owe it to our babies to be our best selves, whatever that takes.
I took this picture before I got married. I was mad at the way I looked. I was livid with myself for not losing enough weight before my wedding and felt I didn’t deserve to get married…my self image has always been a little warped š
So, if you haven’t already guessed, this post is all about body image issues. Particularly after a baby. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that our bodies go through the ringer while we’re incubating our progeny, some more so than others. And while it’s a simple biological fact that the majority of us won’t be the same after our miraculous, awe-inspiring forms bring forth miraculous, awe-inspiring, albeit terrifying, life, somehow it feels like the pressure is on for us to fit back into those skinny jeans from college as soon as we “recover” from the ordeal our bodies have gone through.
It seems like those perfect inspo moms follow me everywhere I go. Pinterest, Instagram, YouTube, hecc, even family and friends and friends of friends seem to have it more together than I do…I know the most toxic thing you can do to yourself is compare yourself to others, but it’s easier said than done.
Working my Puff into Tuff šŖš¼ My failed attempt at inspomomming. I busted my knees for three weeks running full impact downhill shortly after my 6 week recovery period š
I have this addiction of sorts to hurting myself. I’ll get more into that in another blog post. But in a nutshell, lately my addiction is laying into myself about my body. I know I’m not alone in this.
I feel like there’s a negative message in the media about post baby bodies. In the movies, after women have babies, they just lose that prosthetic bump and just have a messy, but still attractive bun and running makeup that’s still somehow on point. But their bodies are for the most part, back to being taut, with perky boobs and although they wear mainly sweats and yoga pants because #relatable, you can tell that they could probably zip their pre-baby jeans. This could just be that they weren’t really pregnant to begin with, but I guess even after knowing real people that have gone through this before me, I guess I still had this idea that I’d breastfeed, workout, eat right and the weight would melt off. Yeah, #notsomuch.
Four months postpartum, I can now manage to button my jeans, but my loose belly skin and residual baby fat still hangs over uncomfortably. So to keep circulation going to my midsection, I need my pregnancy belly band. I know this is realistic for a lot of women, but I can’t help but be infuriated with myself for this…
Ow Ow! š Really putting myself out there…I took this picture while doing laundry at my Dad’s house today. No belly band, no push-up bra, trying to embrace my new form. My “deflated” Mom boobs, that I used to nourish my son for as long as I possibly could, my “sloppy” Mom belly, that protected my growing baby for 39 weeks and 4 days until he was ready for the real world, and my stretch marks, which I honestly kind of like. I know I’ll never be the girl in that spontaneous mirror pic again…and the more I look at myself and the more I really think about the power behind all of the flaws, I think I could be okay with it…someday.
I need to remind myself that I’m real. That I’m strong. I need to remind myself that what my body did is a beautiful thing, what God gave me via my womb is a beautiful thing. I should be grateful to my body, kind to my body, and take this love/hate relationship and make it more about love.
I know this will be an ongoing battle. I’ve been going through some mental and emotional turbulence lately, so my body image has me down. I’ll have a post on prenatal and postpartum depression at some point, because, honestly, it’s brutal.
It’s time to be kind and n o t rewind. I mean stop looking at those old pictures longingly, mourning the figure that you had before you had a baby. It’s absolutely fine to want to slim down, for health’s sake, even to fit into old clothes for the sake of not having to go out and get a new wardrobe, but we need to be okay with our new forms. Even if our stomachs never stretched out, our breasts stayed firm, and our feet never Hobbited out, the body we have in our 20’s and 30’s is not even our final form. Eventually, we will all be subject to gravity, and we will age. Physical beauty is relative, and how we take care of ourselves will reflect how we look later on, but ultimately, our figures will change in some way, our physical beauty, in the technical sense, will fade. So we may as well look at all we’ve been through and take all things into consideration, and focus on the things we like of it hurts too much to confront the things we’re still sensitive about. It will never go away, but eventually it will get easier.
Censorship. š This lil d00d’s too much! And soooo worth embracing this new form. I could learn to stop worrying and love the bod for his sake šš©āš¦I need to set an example for my son, because boys get body issues, too. Is there any better incentive for self-improvement?
Bless you for making it so far!
Tune in next time for my first trimester story and life hax for those brutal three months!
Thanks for reading! Talk soon! š
scrunchymomz 