The Beginning
I may not have mentioned it here yet, but in case you didn't know, I am pregnant. Let's get the preliminaries out of the way: I am about six months along, I am having a girl, and her name will be Evie. I plan on having a vaginal birth with as many pain-reducing drugs as they can possibly pump into my body. I have yet to do anything to the nursery.
So, with that out of the way, let's get to the real point of this post. I wasn't sure that I ever wanted to have kids. I mean, I always thought I would someday, kind of the way you always assume you will die. It was just an inevitability. But I had no intention of having children a year after getting married. That is, until I was looking into my husband's grayish-blue eyes one day and imagined them nestled under a mop of curly, dark brown hair and complimenting little pink cheeks. Then I immediately thought, I should have a baby right now. Then I quickly told myself I was crazy. I have a full time job. I am working on my master's. I am the primary meal-cooker in our house. I can't have a baby. But then I started thinking about myself, as a woman. And all the things I would want to tell my daughter. All the things I wanted to teach her to do, like read books and cook fajitas and put on eyeliner. Who would tell her that she should always use shaving cream, even though it's a pain? Who would tell her that she didn't have to kiss boys just because her friends were--that it was her choice, not anyone else's? It would have to be me--I was going to have to become a mother.
And then I looked at our life. We have a house. We have stable jobs with relatively flexible schedules. We live near both our families. And most importantly, I am young. I began to see my youth in a different light. Yes, nowadays, having a baby at 26 is pretty young. A lot of women, especially women hoping to have successful careers, are waiting until they are in their thirties and forties to have kids. But my youth is an advantage. I am strong, and I am healthy. My body is still somewhat stretchy and resilient. I still have the naive optimism to believe that being a parent will be nothing but wonderful, despite the poopy diapers and screaming baby. I can still survive on espresso and pretzels. I can manipulate my sleep schedule. These are all things that I may be physically unable to do in the next ten years. My plan is to have a baby young, and to be able to simultaneously raise my daughter while building a career and keeping body and soul together. This is a departure from the norm. Most women are forced to choose which they will focus on. And I am not sure I can, to put it in Liz Lemon parlance, "have it all." But I think I owe it to myself and my daughter to try.
So I got pregnant. It was surprisingly easy. You would be amazed at how easy it is to get pregnant. Nobody ever tells you how ridiculously easy it can be. This is a major flaw in America's sex education. It took me three months. So, basically, as soon as my birth control had worked its way out of my system, I was with child. Congratulations to me, my womb is fertile! I should mention here that I have had, up to this point, a ridiculously easy pregnancy. No morning sickness, very little dizziness; in fact, very few symptoms of pregnancy at all. But the doctor kept confirming that something was growing in there, and I continued to believe her.
I wish I could say that I was immediately enamored with the idea. I was not. After the initial hysteria of finding the a positive pregnancy had passed (with my husband and me holding hands and jumping up and down like little girls in the bathroom), I became instantly apprehensive. What had I done? I was pregnant. With a baby. I was allowing a small bit of me to literally feast upon my flesh until such time as it, not I, deemed it able to live and breathe on its own. All at once I felt invaded. Why was this my job? My husband was over the moon, and nothing but supportive. He would spend what felt like hours gazing at me with these glowy eyes, talking about how magical it was that my body was changing and our baby was growing. I felt slightly more resentful. I was getting the beginnings of stretch marks. Slowly, my beautiful pencil skirts no longer fit and I had to wear stretchy fabrics to work every day. My boobs were getting bigger and, to my eye, becoming horrible distorted. And I was victim to the whims of my emotions--emotions I knew were being dictated by the small clump of human clinging to my insides. I was disgusted by the fact that the little bloodsucker would dominate my life for the next nine months. I did not feel magical. I felt maniacal.
But in a way, feeling this way was oddly freeing. People expected me to let my big belly keep growing. Suddenly, it was magical when I couldn't wear my tight skirts and I had to get pants that all had elastic waistbands. Society praised my increase in body fat and my rounder frame. All of a sudden, my female form was being truly celebrated by those around me, in a way it never had been. I didn't have to be self-conscious about how clothes made me look. I had justification for not wearing makeup, and taking naps, and being grumpy. I was no longer expected to conform to conventional femininity. How ironic, when I was doing what is possibly the most exclusively feminine thing in the universe!
And it was this that made me a little sad, and a little angry. Why the double standard? Why was I all of a sudden freed from worrying about my size, my weight, how much I ate, how much I fixed my hair? Yes, it was nice to not worry about it. I have rarely felt so comfortable with my outward appearance. But is it fair for women to feel burdened by their beauty? Do women have to have a child to gain this kind of universal acceptance? It wasn't always this way. When shopping for maternity clothes with me, my mother talked about how different the fashions are now than when she was pregnant. How in the 80s, pregnant women hid their bulk under voluminous overalls and baggy sweatshirts, and now, women wear tight tunics and leggings to show off their shape. I think it is wonderful that women no longer feel ashamed of something their bodies are biologically made to do. It is fantastic that even the male population can now view pregnancy as beautiful. But what about the female aspects that have nothing to do with pregnancy? Are we celebrating those as well?
At 2/3 of the way through my pregnancy, I feel wonderful. My belly is swollen, as are my feet and my fingers, even my lips. But none of this bothers me. I feel pretty, even when I feel ugly and gross, which is a lot of the time. My body has purpose. And so I wonder, how can I achieve this sense of bodily purpose after I give birth and begin the rigorous process of returning to a pre-pregnancy shape? What purpose will I be working for? Right now, the only concern is that I grow a healthy baby. So who will I be shaping my body for when the baby can grow on its own?
What about you guys (pregnant and non-pregnant)? Who do you shape your body for?
So, with that out of the way, let's get to the real point of this post. I wasn't sure that I ever wanted to have kids. I mean, I always thought I would someday, kind of the way you always assume you will die. It was just an inevitability. But I had no intention of having children a year after getting married. That is, until I was looking into my husband's grayish-blue eyes one day and imagined them nestled under a mop of curly, dark brown hair and complimenting little pink cheeks. Then I immediately thought, I should have a baby right now. Then I quickly told myself I was crazy. I have a full time job. I am working on my master's. I am the primary meal-cooker in our house. I can't have a baby. But then I started thinking about myself, as a woman. And all the things I would want to tell my daughter. All the things I wanted to teach her to do, like read books and cook fajitas and put on eyeliner. Who would tell her that she should always use shaving cream, even though it's a pain? Who would tell her that she didn't have to kiss boys just because her friends were--that it was her choice, not anyone else's? It would have to be me--I was going to have to become a mother.
And then I looked at our life. We have a house. We have stable jobs with relatively flexible schedules. We live near both our families. And most importantly, I am young. I began to see my youth in a different light. Yes, nowadays, having a baby at 26 is pretty young. A lot of women, especially women hoping to have successful careers, are waiting until they are in their thirties and forties to have kids. But my youth is an advantage. I am strong, and I am healthy. My body is still somewhat stretchy and resilient. I still have the naive optimism to believe that being a parent will be nothing but wonderful, despite the poopy diapers and screaming baby. I can still survive on espresso and pretzels. I can manipulate my sleep schedule. These are all things that I may be physically unable to do in the next ten years. My plan is to have a baby young, and to be able to simultaneously raise my daughter while building a career and keeping body and soul together. This is a departure from the norm. Most women are forced to choose which they will focus on. And I am not sure I can, to put it in Liz Lemon parlance, "have it all." But I think I owe it to myself and my daughter to try.
So I got pregnant. It was surprisingly easy. You would be amazed at how easy it is to get pregnant. Nobody ever tells you how ridiculously easy it can be. This is a major flaw in America's sex education. It took me three months. So, basically, as soon as my birth control had worked its way out of my system, I was with child. Congratulations to me, my womb is fertile! I should mention here that I have had, up to this point, a ridiculously easy pregnancy. No morning sickness, very little dizziness; in fact, very few symptoms of pregnancy at all. But the doctor kept confirming that something was growing in there, and I continued to believe her.
I wish I could say that I was immediately enamored with the idea. I was not. After the initial hysteria of finding the a positive pregnancy had passed (with my husband and me holding hands and jumping up and down like little girls in the bathroom), I became instantly apprehensive. What had I done? I was pregnant. With a baby. I was allowing a small bit of me to literally feast upon my flesh until such time as it, not I, deemed it able to live and breathe on its own. All at once I felt invaded. Why was this my job? My husband was over the moon, and nothing but supportive. He would spend what felt like hours gazing at me with these glowy eyes, talking about how magical it was that my body was changing and our baby was growing. I felt slightly more resentful. I was getting the beginnings of stretch marks. Slowly, my beautiful pencil skirts no longer fit and I had to wear stretchy fabrics to work every day. My boobs were getting bigger and, to my eye, becoming horrible distorted. And I was victim to the whims of my emotions--emotions I knew were being dictated by the small clump of human clinging to my insides. I was disgusted by the fact that the little bloodsucker would dominate my life for the next nine months. I did not feel magical. I felt maniacal.
But in a way, feeling this way was oddly freeing. People expected me to let my big belly keep growing. Suddenly, it was magical when I couldn't wear my tight skirts and I had to get pants that all had elastic waistbands. Society praised my increase in body fat and my rounder frame. All of a sudden, my female form was being truly celebrated by those around me, in a way it never had been. I didn't have to be self-conscious about how clothes made me look. I had justification for not wearing makeup, and taking naps, and being grumpy. I was no longer expected to conform to conventional femininity. How ironic, when I was doing what is possibly the most exclusively feminine thing in the universe!
And it was this that made me a little sad, and a little angry. Why the double standard? Why was I all of a sudden freed from worrying about my size, my weight, how much I ate, how much I fixed my hair? Yes, it was nice to not worry about it. I have rarely felt so comfortable with my outward appearance. But is it fair for women to feel burdened by their beauty? Do women have to have a child to gain this kind of universal acceptance? It wasn't always this way. When shopping for maternity clothes with me, my mother talked about how different the fashions are now than when she was pregnant. How in the 80s, pregnant women hid their bulk under voluminous overalls and baggy sweatshirts, and now, women wear tight tunics and leggings to show off their shape. I think it is wonderful that women no longer feel ashamed of something their bodies are biologically made to do. It is fantastic that even the male population can now view pregnancy as beautiful. But what about the female aspects that have nothing to do with pregnancy? Are we celebrating those as well?
At 2/3 of the way through my pregnancy, I feel wonderful. My belly is swollen, as are my feet and my fingers, even my lips. But none of this bothers me. I feel pretty, even when I feel ugly and gross, which is a lot of the time. My body has purpose. And so I wonder, how can I achieve this sense of bodily purpose after I give birth and begin the rigorous process of returning to a pre-pregnancy shape? What purpose will I be working for? Right now, the only concern is that I grow a healthy baby. So who will I be shaping my body for when the baby can grow on its own?
What about you guys (pregnant and non-pregnant)? Who do you shape your body for?
First of all, loved this blog. I can definitely sympathize with a great deal of it!
ReplyDeleteI can say that before I got pregnant I had spent two years "shaping" my body for me. My health, well being, and sanity. It was the best feeling ever.
Now that I'm pregnant, I shape my body for my baby. It's been quite a shift in thinking. But I have truly enjoyed the challenge and like you said, my body having this incredible purpose and responsibility.
That being said, I'm also looking forward to next year and being challenged to take my body back for me! So happy for you and I can't wait to see what your little girl looks like!