I always feel bad talking about my pregnancy because I so easily wander to the negatives rather than the positives. So I will start out by saying I have thus far been blessed with the easiest pregnancy ever. I've never thrown up, I have huge stores of energy, I can still work out and I can stay out until at least 12:30 if I really mentally prepare for it. I have wanted to be pregnant more than most things in my life and I am so thankful and blessed to have such an easy go of it when we started trying. I thankfully have a partner who wants to be involved. He reads pregnancy books, gives me a massage every night, and kisses my belly every time he leaves a room we're in. So then what do I have to be negative about, right? I know this is naive because clearly we have all seen pregnant women before but I did not expect to feel the way I do about my body. Jim often asks me "what did you think was going to happen?" He is right. But the changes happening to my body, and the body of all pregnant women, is a little more than not fitting into my skinny jeans.
As my body has slipped from a place that I am proud of to the place where I'm now back to buying size 12 jeans and XL shirts in order to stay out of maternity clothes, my mind can't exactly wrap itself around what is happening. I know it's more important to be healthy than it is to worry about the weight gain but let's be honest, fitness is a numbers game. Think about it--even when we're not talking about the number on the scale or a pair of pants we are tracking how fast our mile is or how many pounds our deadlift. I don't need numbers to show me my changing body but I haven't come to the place where I find these changes beautiful. I see them as completely utilitarian.
It's hard to explain to anyone, including mothers who love their pregnant body, why it's so bothersome to wake up in the morning and find a shirt that fit in the last wash cycle no longer does. People always talk about the glow and the great boobs. My boobs have decided to stay the same while my ass seems to be receiving more of the curve than my stomach. The only glow I have is the one that last the four hours after a facial and don't even get me started on the craziness that is my curly hair. I have spent the last 18 months losing all my curve and now they are showing back up but now in unpredictable ways. When I'm eating unhealthy and not working out I know what to expect but letting go of control and surrendering to whatever unpredictable changes occur is one of the most difficult struggles I've ever gone through.
Maybe the problem is that over the last 18 months I have invested too much of my identity in fitness and nutrition. When my body tells me now that I have to spend the extra half an hour in bed rather than going for a morning jog, I find my heart breaking slightly. (On the opposite side, after not eating carbs for almost a year, when my body is begging for pasta, I probably give in a little too easily.) I will be running my first 5k with this little guy next month and I might find that key for me. To get back to some sense of normal physical activity beyond a few miles on the treadmill to give me a taste of the runners high I so love to hate. To train for a goal, no matter how short.
I have no answers on how to change my mental attitude. I can tell myself I am growing a human, that it's not about me, or to just to get over myself but I haven't been able to cross that mental plane yet. I'm not sure that I will get there during what is perhaps my one and only pregnancy but I'm okay with being one of those woman who just didn't love my pregnant body. If I have one positive thing to say about my pregnant body, it will be the most amazing little guy that I will get at the end of it.
There's always prenatal Pilates. :)
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