Sugar & spice & everything’s-not-so-nice.

Part one of two.

A few weeks ago I asked my friend to write about body image specifically before, during and after pregnancy. As a fantastic writer and a deep thinker, I was anxious to pick her brain on a very real issue with women. What I, amongst many of her readers, got was an “unplugged” story, raw in honesty and heart-warming in sincerity. For a good dose of the naked truth, I highly recommend checking it out. It’s a story about a skinny girl who got pregnant, gained weight, delivered a healthy baby boy, and is now battling society’s frown on weight gain amidst fighting her own battle for her former figure.

My friend challenged me to do the same. I should have kept my big mouth shut. This has been a piece that stretches me as a writer. It’s a level of vulnerability that makes me squeamish and uncomfortable and, well, vulnerable.

Nevertheless, I must persist.

This is a story about a curvy girl who got pregnant, gained weight, delivered a healthy baby boy, and is now battling society’s frown and her own on weight gain, while also fighting to win back her former figure.

Maintaining weight has been a thorn in my side for as long as I can remember. It goes up, it goes down. There’s very little consistency about it. I’m the girl who loses weight just as fast as she can gain it back, and who loses weight not trying at all but while actually trying can’t shed one single pound. How frustrating! The one thing that has been my saving grace over the years is exercise. While running is my hobby, it’s also the key to maintaining my weight, even when the numbers aren’t ideal.

My husband and I were studying Hindi last summer at a school located high in a mountainous area of India. Back in the city, running is difficult and it’s hot. High up in the cool of the mountains though, I was free to run, so I did. I indulged. Sometimes I ran twice a day. I recall my mind playing tricks on me, making me consider the cost of getting pregnant—not running for nine months seemed like a too-big sacrifice. During those moments, I didn’t want to give running up.

Once we returned to the city, we found out we were pregnant. We were elated! My energy levels were high give or take a few weeks in the beginning and towards the end. I wasn’t sick with nausea or vomiting, so “keeping up” with most anything wasn’t difficult. All things considered, it was an easy pregnancy. I gained weight, slow and steady. My doctor actually told me I was “boring.”

There were a lot of “good things” about my first pregnancy. But there was one thing that didn’t change, that didn’t alter along with everything else in my physical body. And it was my mind. The head games continued as they have for years. My, oh my, you’re having a fat day. Or, I bet if you tried harder this baby weight wouldn’t be so thick around your thighs/butt/you name it. Or It’s okay to wear this size now, but later… It wasn’t easy for me to see the scale climb those numbers. I admit that. It was a discipline of perspective to hear, “Oh its good you’re gaining weight,” and “I can see it in your face”. Each rising number was a reminder of what I’d have to lose, of the work that was ahead of me. Would I have the discipline? What would my friends think if I don’t lose the baby weight!? I don’t want to be “the sweet lady who looks good for having a baby.”

I was and continue to be caught off-guard with the persistence of these head games. It’s a dreadful thing, like being in a haunted house with an exit door that doesn’t exist. I didn’t plan to struggle in this way during and after pregnancy. Before, well yes of course. Don’t most women want “that woman’s” figure? But throughout pregnancy and afterwards? I was certain that I’d be okay with the changes, and my insecurities would dissolve like a sugar cube in hot coffee. I’d have a reason to be bigger, a reason to look strung out and strung up. A reason to even feel unfeminine in my new body. And I’d be totally secure in that. Man alive, I made a baby. I birthed a baby.

Yet the head-games persist. Why is that? I guess it’s because there’s a battle that will always need to be fought, and this is mine. The battle, as I see it, is being fought in two different arenas.

...stayed tuned for part two...