To Taking Our Bodies Forward

You’d think maybe I’d have­ trusted the history of a clear pattern repeating itself. But, no. I started every single one of my pregnancies with the same sparkly gusto regarding my weight.

The first time: “I mean, of course I’ll be the queen of prenatal yoga and look so adorably like I swallowed a beach ball!!!” The second: “Well, last time got a little off the rails, but THIS time, guys. I will definitely gain not one single ounce above the recommended amount. My OB will be so proud!” And the third, this time with enough of an age gap to ensure a full-on reset to blind ambition: “I will work out every day! I will snack only on watermelon! Ew, I cannot believe I gained so much weight before. I’m so much more… mature now, you know? Seasoned. Not my first rodeo, y’all! Watch me do this! Maybe I’ll be on the cover of Fit Pregnancy magazine!”

I gained 45 pounds the first time. 55 pounds the second. And went out with one final bang clocking 62 pounds of weight gain. It was a hard season, refusing all the offers for maternity modeling, but I was just soooo busy barfing and gaining three pounds every week!

Things always started off fairly well for me. The first five weeks of pregnancy were amazing! So hopeful! So new! I think maybe I glowed for 10 minutes! The remaining 245 days, however, were my personal fire and brimstone, and this last time was the worst. The nausea threatened to kill me and I’ll let you guess where I shoved that watermelon. And salad. And all the lean proteins and “eggs.” Eggs gets quotes because they were dead to me. People called them “eggs” but I called them Ipecac syrup, which I remember from Anne of Green Gables is something that makes you throw up.

Despite my unpleasant pregnancy past, I had, somehow, held onto a spark of hope, like a firefly in my fist, that maybe I could have a better experience. I was determined to tough-and-clench my way through it, if at all womanly possible. Be less nauseous. Eat fewer crackers. Spring up from the couch, Steph, gosh! I couldn’t believe it was happening to me, seriously happening, all over again. The unmistakable beige fog fell. My precious little firefly fizzled, my last hidden dreams of pregnancy gone, the ones I never really talked about, but had possessed in quiet since I was a little girl. Surely, I’d be somebody who adored pregnancy. Surely! Not somebody who could only eat toast by the bread-loaf, pasta by the bowl, and bagels by whoever would make me one.

Not somebody who wished the whole process away, even as the miracle flourished.

Not somebody who couldn’t move.

Not somebody whose body grew unrecognizably huge.

Not somebody like me.

I wasn’t a pregnancy model. I wasn’t the one you would envy. I wasn’t the girl in my skinny jeans two weeks after labor.

But I was something different, and better, and perfect.

I was me.

And this is the part where I wish I could reach through the screen to you, sister, wherever you are in your body’s journey and wherever you might be reading this, and hold you in the biggest hug possible.

And tell you: I know.

I know what it’s like to schedule your OB appointments first thing in the morning at all costs, so that you’ll weigh the least, and avoid another hand slap that will lower your head.

I know what it’s like to gasp in shocked shame when you learn you gained 10 pounds in one month, because one time, I gained 13.

I know what it’s like to grow out of jeans, and then sweats, and then, the unthinkable: leggings. People can do that?! Oh, yes. I have grown out of dozens.

I know what it’s like to track celebrity pregnancy weight gains to make you feel better, because I have done this, obvi, and you know what? It kind of did! Blake Lively: 61 pounds. Kim Kardashian: 70 pounds. Kate Hudson: 70 pounds. Kelly Ripa: 70 pounds. Isla Fischer: 70 pounds. My mom: 70 pounds, for her Harvard baby. Outrageously strong and stunning, every last one of them.

I know what it’s like to Google: “Gained 15 pounds in first trimester” and “Gained 50 pounds at 30 weeks” and “How long did it take you to lose 65 pregnancy pounds?” Alone, in the dark, just you, and your sweet belly, and your insomnia.

I also know that nothing is wasted, not one extra pound or regrettable rabbit hole.

I really tipped the scales this last time, you guys. Even in my second trimester when I went through spurts of trying, at least, to make healthier choices, the pounds layered on me like frosting on cupcakes.

This was so incredibly tough at times, there is no doubt. And it might seem that my hugest gain would be the hardest one for me. But surprisingly? You know what? In this third and final showdown, once I got past the initial blow that, fine, God, I was never going to be a pregnancy goddess, something happened to me that felt a little like freedom, and a lot like a whole new firefly.

I climbed out of my own miserable mind, and I stopped caring so much.

Maybe because I had lost the weight twice before, maybe because I prayed so desperately for this dragon to finally leave me alone, or maybe because it was all just so darn inevitable.

But that which once towered so vastly as my greatest nemesis, began to crumble like sand. And we all know you can’t build your house there, so I just started walking away.

And away.

And away.

Onto new, solid ground.

And one thickly-ankled but never-lighter step at a time, I began to rebuild the framework for the way I spoke to and saw myself.

Can I tell you some things that deeply helped me, to the core of my being?

• I removed certain words from my vocabulary in how I described myself. Gross. Fat. Embarrassing. Beast. These words: they are so tired. They are so toxic. It hurts my heart that I ever dared, and even more that they still try to creep up. The words we speak to ourselves become our personal truth; this cannot be avoided. “So a (wo)man thinketh in his (her) heart, so is (s)he.”
• I pictured somebody speaking those destructive words over my daughters. And then this Mama Bear murdered them in cold blood. JK (kinda) but you better believe I would come to their fighting defense. So why, on earth, should I be any less kind to myself? Reese was inside of me, part of me, so when the self-hate tried so hard to surface, I remembered this critical fact. Hating on me was, in essence, hating on my miracle rainbow angel, which made clearer to me the toxic blasphemy.
• I stopped looking in the mirror so much. Wasted time. Wasted tears. I still haven’t looked at the back of my thighs, or butt, (or birth area), once, because what on earth would that profit me? Instead of dwelling on my own reflection, I looked to God’s words, to the sky, to the open faces of my beautiful girls. I know it’s a shocker, but there is much more in those places to show me than in my full-length office mirror with low-budget-film lighting.
• I began a new habit of affirming my body in positive ways. Thank you, God, for this body. Thank you, body, for sustaining this pregnancy. Boobs: You look awesome. Hair: You’re a mermaid! Like I said: The words we speak to ourselves become our personal truth. I also spoke often to Reese, which in such a picture of grace, was also speaking to me: “You are perfect. You are loved. You are held. There is nothing you ever could do or say or look like or act like to make me not obsess over you with every ounce of my being.”
• I filtered my social media feeds. Was I gaining weight at the speed of a drive-thru? Yes. So, did I need to be bombarded daily with images of stick-thin pregnancy beauties I’d never met, who I’m sure are just lovely humans, but whom I didn’t need to be dwelling on in my vulnerable state? No. The truth is: Nothing on social media ever bombards us. We choose what we like. We choose whom we follow. We choose when we even sign on, or if we want to participate in the first place! I had to become (much) more socially conscious of what I was ingesting online.
• I stopped comparing myself to my friends. Have you noticed, as a woman, that if you start to feed even the smallest of little green envy monsters, an ugly wall will slowly but surely begin to grow up between you and your friend—and you can then only blame yourself for laying the bricks? Some of my most wonderful friends gained around 20 pounds in their pregnancies, instead of 700 like me. It would have felt easy to distance myself from these friends, in my own invisible shame. And I did have to fight my own jealousy over their lean-and-mean baby-body machines. But you know what? That fight was so worth it. I know for a fact that these friends never once saw me any differently when I gained all that weight. If anything, some of those girls are the angels who took care of me best. God made me to be me, and He made them to be them.

Today, I am proud to say that I have lost 40 pounds of the baby weight. I feel strong. I feel happy. I feel confident. And the final thing that is helping me more than I can express is a subtle shift in my thinking about my body’s future. Rather than obsessing over getting my body back, I’m choosing to focus instead on “taking my body forward.” To its strongest self, to its best self, to a self I haven’t even yet known.

I tend to constantly look back to some elusive time—or OK, FINE, to super specific pics of myself age 24 in a bathing suit, before all this baby biz happened!!!!—a time where I look back and think, YES. I need to get my body back there.

But, two things. First, that girl looked freaking amazing, but she wasn’t very kind to herself. Her abs were basically steel and she didn’t even ENJOY it!

But secondly: How could she? She hadn’t walked through the fires yet, and she didn’t yet know that the fires are where it would happen for her.

Where she would learn, when it burned, to finally, fully: love herself.

Where she would learn to beat the deepest, most bold insecurities, with the most abundant, pure grace.

Where she would learn to shame the repetitive lies back to where they belong.

Where she would learn how to rise up, at last, from true pain.

I look back on my pregnant self already, and I want to hold her in all of her pillowy softness and iron strength, and give her a standing ovation. Her stomach stretching, her nausea heaving, her body failing her twice with the pain of miscarriage, but much more importantly, giving her everything she ever wanted, a perfect three times. True love. True strength. True womanhood. The mama that three daughters need.

And, also. That fit 24-year-old girl? She’s gonna be fine, and I will applaud her too. She is a fighter, and nothing less. She just doesn’t quite know it yet.

Why, I wonder, is it so much easier to be kind to ourselves in the misty past, than in the glassy clear of right now? Is it just new perspective? Hindsight? A shadow of discontentment that ever-follows us? Fear of feeling braggy or proud? I don’t know, but I’m done with it. All of the kindness, for all of the Me’s God created.

I’m in the middle place now, but one last important note from my journey is this:

Many years ago, as a teenager with a serious eating disorder, I weighed 105 at my lowest. I was lost, sad, unhealthy, and quite honestly, killing my own body, one day at a time. On the day I gave birth to Reese, I weighed almost 200 pounds. I was free. I was whole. I was healed. Completely bursting with clear-hearted joy. I literally gave birth to new life, and it was one of the best days of mine.

When I look at my daughters, do I want nothing more than to be a perfect picture of self-love for them? Yes.

Am I, instead, super imperfect? Am I forever in progress? Did I cry real tears at the checkout counter when I had no choice but to buy these post-birth summer shorts, in my personal biggest size ever, which were quite honestly a little too tight?

Yes, yes. Very much, YES.

It’s all OK, though. It’s more than OK. “It’s a cold and it’s a broken hallelujah.”

I’ve got the hardest 20 pounds ahead of me until I reach my personal goal, my healthiest place, but I’m gonna get there, in time. With all the scars and marks and strength of the mom and woman I’ll be when I do.

And so:

To YOU, ladies.

To being you, in all your phases.

To laughing out loud, in all of your glory.

To applauding each other, at every size.

To taking our bodies forward.

I’m here for you, and I love you, with my size Extra, Beyoncé goals and holiday treats cravings.

(Beyoncé’s also been through the fire. Don’t ever forget that. She’s gold, and she’s lemonade.)

Grace and discipline, rest and hard work, transitional clothing and total humility.

I know.

And I know we’ve got this, together.

*****Afterword*****

I sat down to write about baby weight, and the above words poured out of my heart, from exactly where I sit right now. Then, I remembered, “Huh! I’ve written about this before. Several times. I wonder what I said, what I felt, in the past?” And I read this from my post more than three years ago, after Hadley was born:

I’m definitely not sharing this from a place of triumph, of overcoming, a lesson learned. My dealing with this issue is pretty mid-storm and vulnerable. I haven’t learned to love my post-partum body. I’m not crazy about my huge thighs, umpteen dress size or unwelcome cellulite. I know intellectually that my baby battle wounds are the most beautiful things—but practically, in this age, in our culture, in my very own tainted mindset, it’s hard to believe that’s true.

What a gift, that we grow, that we learn, that we expand right into ourselves, if we don’t give up in the fight. I DO offer this essay to you from the difficult lessons I’ve learned. I DO love my post-partum body, even if that love is imperfect at times. I haven’t really given my thighs much thought lately, but squats make me feel strong. I adore some of my recent dresses in size XL. I don’t personally know a woman my age without any cellulite. Now, “culture” is one tough opponent, and I won’t minimize that; and my own mind, yikes, even tougher. But on my best days, I can see that so much of culture is smoke and mirrors and filters, that we’re all a little crazy and broken. And that while the human mind is forever a battlefield, small victories add up to change.

I cherish that old essay, for its openness and vulnerability; my deepest truths at the time. But I’m not the same girl today as I was when I wrote those words.

And to you, Lord, for that: I say thank you, for your grace, for your power made perfect in my biggest weakness. For wearing me down with your wide open arms, for wiping my tears and smashing my scales, for never once letting me go.

And onward, and forward.

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For all of you, sisters.

And all of our daughters.