After a lifetime of sucking in my stomach, it’s finally time to let it all hang out.
I’m currently at the stage of expecting where I look pregnant-ish. In the shower, my belly is obvious but I can easily hide it in a large dress or more accurately a spaghetti-stained XL t-shirt. Out in the world, I find myself justifying my body to my friends, colleagues, yoga teacher, and the mailman “I’m actually pregnant but right now I just look fat!” Despite the 10+ years in active recovery from my eating disorder and my body-positive TikTok algorithm, a part of me is still under the impression that the worst sin a woman could ever commit is gaining weight. Every time I tell a self-deprecating joke about my body a lil part of me dies. Mostly because I know my unborn daughter can hear me (her ears came in last week!)
But despite my old mental patterns, something amazing is happening to my body. As my belly grows and grows I find myself not sucking it back in. Some of you(men) may be like ‘duh.’ But as a 39-year-old woman, sucking in my stomach can feel as instinctual as breathing.
It’s embarrassing how many years I spent believing a flat stomach would solve all my problems. The false promise that the answer to life’s problems was within my control: one more salad, one more crunch and I could be as weightless as G-d herself. But perfection was always just outta reach. No matter how thin I got, I still existed and sometimes that felt too heavy. So I would suck in. Almost like a nervous tick. How can I take up less space? Have fewer needs? And even though I’ve quit most of the nasty habits from my 20s like sucking in my stomach, American Spirit Blue’s, and drummers, sometimes I still find myself in front of the mirror contorting my belly so it looks just a little bit…less. But then I got knocked up…
I was kinda worried about how my sometimes fragile body image would fair throughout pregnancy but I gotta say I’ve never felt more comfortable in my skin (despite all the puking.) A gift of all this nausea is the necessity of self-care. And I don’t mean just buying insanely overpriced shit your kid will use for 15 seconds. I mean literally putting my hands on my body and caring for it. I love rubbing my belly and watching it and the rest of me get bigger. I thank G-d (and my grandma’s!) for my big ass and meaty thighs that hold up the rest of me like the sturdiest foundation. I’m so grateful to be able to exhale with my entire body, watching my belly expand and stay that way. Letting my inner child (literally the one in my body and the therapy one) take up as much space as she needs.
I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t nervous about the postpartum period and falling prey to the pressure to ‘bounce back.’ But I’m trying to set an intention, less of a candle and more of a forest fire, to fight like hell to focus on healing my body rather than punishing it. And though I’m told I’ll be too tired to breathe, I hope that I keep exhaling and letting my belly hang free.
