Trapped in my Post-Partum Body

It was horrifying. Those were words I texted to another Mom about my first clothes shopping experience 11 weeks post-partum with my second baby. Maybe I was being dramatic, but that’s how it felt. Two weeks shy of returning to work, I was hoping to find some clothes that would usher me from spandex and sweatshirts into clothes with waistbands. I went into it knowing that some things wouldn’t fit right. I knew I might have to go up a pants size since my twice-expanded belly wasn’t deflating nearly as quickly as I had hoped.

But, knowing my body has changed isn’t the same as accepting it. And, accepting is even further away from liking it. Logically, I know my body has done important things. I know it took nine months to grow and I should be patient with myself, but in practice – it’s so much more complicated.

When you’re pregnant, people pretty much shove food down your throat. Celebrating you for letting it all go, saying “you deserve it!” and “of course you should eat that, you’re growing a baby!” My husband came home with ice cream and chocolates because it made me happy. And everyone likes a happy pregnant lady. Your face gets cutely chubby, and everything is so swollen you can’t tell if it’s water, all that extra blood, or the fact that all you want to eat is simple carbohydrates. You suspend reality for a little while, seeing your reflection, watching the scale creep, but only really focusing on that cute belly that fills clothes out so nicely. Round and firm.

For me, pregnancy was one of the only times in my life I felt confident in form-fitting dresses. To go nine months without sucking it. Without Spanx. Without adjusting your jeans so your belly fat stays hidden away. Nine months without shame - what a luxury and what a sad truth.

Then the baby vacates the house it has stretched to its liking. And just like that, round and firm is replaced with a rather large Jell-O Jiggler. This squishy bulge goes largely unnoticed in those first few weeks, when surviving is more important than analyzing how your body looks. You’re generally in sweatpants, often with your shirt off, and you’re too busy for much more than a passing glance in the mirror.

And then, one day, something changes. Maybe it starts at the 6-week appointment when, after a brief questionnaire and a once-over from your doctor, you’re cleared to become sexually and otherwise active. You can suddenly get back in the sack and work on that six pack, as it were. Your grace period has come to an abrupt end. Your glances in the mirror turn into minutes. You start to imagine what you might look like without the yoga pants and sweatshirt you’ve had on for far too many days – or gasp, without anything on at all. You become self-conscious of the rolls your stomach folds into as you lift your shirt to nurse your baby. You no longer feel entitled to that daily ice cream, yet you’re addicted to it all the same.

Though this isn’t an opinion based in science, I’m convinced that the swelling of pregnancy and the hormones that relax and prepare your muscles for birth also fill and disguise your imperfections – un-dimpling your cellulite and making everything look smooth and shapely. A pregnant body glow-up. But by a few weeks post-partum, as the hormones abruptly leave your body through tears and night sweat, everything begins to sag in a way that it didn’t before. Your cellulite comes back with a vengeance, your hips suddenly have strange dips, and the skin on your belly starts to crinkle up like crepe paper. Your glow becomes dull, and your thoughts become sharp.

And then, you try to put on a pair of jeans. Not your tightest pair, but the ones that have room. Yet, there is no longer any room. The abdominal Jell-O does not abide. Though in the short-term you can rip the jeans off and flee for the comfort of your spandex yoga pants, you know that you’ll soon be headed for the office, reintegrated into the world, and subject to the scrutiny of people who haven’t seen you since you were a cute, acceptably round and smooth pregnant person. The idea that it’s hard for a woman to return to work post-partum is not lost on most. But it’s more than that, it’s a re-entry into a world as a new person, with a new body, and a new relationship with yourself. The reality of re-entry feels like living in an onion with endless layers of shame and love and acceptance and hate that only those who have experienced it will peel back. And peeling it stings.

Sometimes I blame other people, society, social media, (etc. etc. etc.) for the way I feel in my body right now. But having truly bad vibes means most of all, I blame myself. With hindsight firmly in place, it seems like staying active while pregnant should have been easy. It seems like a healthy and reasonable diet should have been a priority. And, as comparison comes in to steal joy once again, I look around at new moms who look different than me and add this to the mental stack of ways I failed myself.

And when you feel you’ve failed, it makes you want to hide. So in an attempt to mask my truth (and as a direct reaction to the plethora of ads I was being served on Instagram), I resorted to ordering some shapewear that promised it could squeeze my belly into submission. It came in a beautiful bag that said, of all things, “Step Into Your Power.” I gasped. How ridiculous, I thought. How dare they suggest I need to wear shapewear to be powerful. I felt the opposite, like I was weak, admitting that I cared what people thought of me, and conforming to the body type the world has made me think I should have, even mere months after giving birth.

And then I put it on, and I got dressed, and I felt…better. I looked in the mirror and felt a little more confident. Powerful is a stretch, but OK was an improvement. I couldn’t decide whether I was madder at myself or at the ridiculous expectations I was caving to. I wanted to send it back, call the purchase a lapse of judgment and an affront to the body positivity I wished I could embrace. I should love myself the way I am because it created the children I love so much.

But, as my therapist would say, the phrase “I should” is a sham. I supposed that just as my body has softened, my bad self-vibes needed to soften, too. I couldn’t be both immensely uncomfortable in my own skin and completely against the idea of conforming to societal norms. It’s ok to accept that my body has done amazing things, and yet also wish I looked different. Motherhood is nothing if not fierce and painful dichotomies, and I might as well get used to having my foot in two worlds on the best of days while embracing the things that make it just a little easier. So, I wore that shapewear. I put on a dress (not jeans, never jeans), and moved on with my life. Not happily, but “ok-ily” – and that’s just fine for now.