Although I tried to be gentle with myself after I had my first child, I was fairly interested in “bouncing back” quickly. I’d worked out six days a week for nearly two decades, watched how I ate, read a lot about how to cultivate optimal health and fitness, and oh, also obsessed about maintaining a flat stomach, something that kind of makes me chuckle nowadays. I hoped, as many women do, that I would be like some kind of rubber band, stretching stretching stretching for nearly ten months but not snapping, popping back into form after the baby entered the world.
I imagine if you’re 25 having your first child, the odds of being a human rubber band are much higher, although birth still remains birth and changes our lives, bodies and minds in irrevocable ways. I was an older first-time mom, so all things considered, I can’t complain; the weight came off pretty quickly, and when I was ready to add in exercise and had more of my bearings when it came to cooking and watching what I ate, a bit more of it peeled off. But no matter how close I got to that pre-baby number on the scale, a lot was just…different. Things had stretched and not, in fact, bounced back into place. Pieces of me had shifted; what was up was down and some things migrated, like melted wax pouring from one spot to harden in another. It felt like humpty dumpty—the pieces were there, but all the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put them back as they were again.
Not only did many of my shoes no longer fit physically (pregnancy can stretch your ligaments, causing your feet to go up half a size or more), they soon no longer fit spiritually. Who was this woman who wore these four-inch heels on a daily basis? And to where was she going? I remember often receiving compliments on my shoe collection, yet as the months passed my shoe rack seemed more and more like a museum installation, relics of a young woman on the go, taking calls while pounding a New York City sidewalk, attending galas, meeting with ambassadors and governors, having her picture taken, rushing to make the 6:15 am bus. But me? I was home, holding a little human being, trying to breastfeed, trying to sleep, trying to be present despite not sleeping and the steep learning curve. It wasn’t just that the clothes in my closet no longer fit me as they had less than a year before, they no longer suited me.
I’d been a maiden. Now, I was a mother. There was no “bouncing back,” because there was no back. That life slid off a cliff, a home I’d once lived in, earth-quaked into the sea.
This pregnancy, even my maternity clothes fit differently. Many of the maternity dresses and such I stored away I didn’t even wear once. My life was different then, and so was my body. The tight dresses that expertly displayed my burgeoning belly not only no longer looked as cute as they had, I had nowhere to wear them to. I put them aside and bought a few more loose jumpsuits, some cute flowy dresses, and was okay with no longer being that body. Mine had twisted and pulled and pushed, expanded in mind-bending ways, and I was going to be grateful for that. Somewhere along the way these past four years I decided that instead of beating my body into submission, forcing it to be the gal it once was, I would simply change how I dressed her. I had a new life, and a new wardrobe was in order to mark that transformation. I still have the heels for special occasions (those that fit!), but most of that famed shoe collection had been replaced with duck boots and Hunter boots and Birkenstocks, which suit a life of mothering, crafting, cooking, gardening and taking care of chickens much better than heels.
The mythologist Joseph Campbell talked about how when he was young, boys hit a certain age, and they would finally be allowed to go from wearing knickers to pants, or be given a new type of hat that older boys wore, signifying they were no longer a child. Boys used to look forward to this. Now, boys wear hats and pants from a very young age, and little girls wear clothing inappropriate for their age, no longer patient to pass a threshold, because these rites of passage no longer interest us. But they were (and are, spiritually speaking) important moments in a human life. They physically mark that we’re leaving one part of our lives and entering another.
The wedding sacrament, for instance, is a ritualization of a pass through a threshold, symbolizing that where we lived as two, now we’re to live as one. I’m not passing judgement, let everyone marry as they want to, but we can clearly see where the erosion of that ritual harms marriages. We have the big party, the great dress, the hair and the makeup, the gifts, and then we go into marriage trying to still be who we were, trying to find satisfaction as we once did, pleasing ourselves first, as opposed to acknowledging the next phase, which is that there really is, in some sense, no self anymore. There’s the union of two becoming one. We’re now meant to please our spouse before ourselves, to give to them before ourselves; a kind of eerie sentiment in this day and age.
Today, we don’t know when one life phase ends and another begins, so we look to hold onto our single days, or our pre-pregnancy bodies and minds, as if nothing transformative had happened to us at all. Be new, be as you were, have a partner, live your best life, change your body, then make sure it didn’t change at all. God help us.
This time, after the baby arrives, while I always want to look my best, I’m not even going to worry about how “good” my body looks, per se. I’m going to take care of it, and stay focused on how good it feels. On whether or not I’m at optimal energy, health and wholeness. I’m going to respect my ever-changing body—this miracle that tightens into a small size, expands to carry an eight-pound baby, contracts again to sleekness, and then, by God’s grace, swells and expands yet again, to create another child. It’s a wonder, really; a phenomenon that’s mind boggling if we pause to consider it. What magic is this gift we women have to crescendo and create, lull back down and reassemble, a shapeshifting, really, marking the different seasons of our lives. How can we expect to come out the other side of that threshold unmarked, or unchanged, or same as it ever was?
I doubt I’ll be wearing bodysuits and skinny jeans again in my lifetime. At least not in public. That was hard to accept for a while, because it required letting go of who I’d once been. Motherhood, or really so many of the great transitions in our lives, asks us to do just that; to let go of the person we were, and begin anew.
In any case, life is moving so quickly, and the demands are so intense, that it’s hard to have the time and energy to care that much about something so trivial. Those were the accoutrement of a maiden, a lifetime ago, who crossed a threshold to pick up a child on the other side, whose breasts became something other than a cup size beneath a fitted shirt, and whose stomach became a holy place, so much more than a flattened mark of a physique of which society approves. When I turn back and look over that bridge, the young woman standing there is no longer me. Like a snake, I shed her skin, and here I am, poised on the precipice once more, one child on my hip, getting ready to lift another into my arms, and I know enough to know there is no back to return to. I’m entering the next phase. Mother of two. Twice pregnant twice having given birth. The landscape, the wardrobe, the experience, all will be new. I will not be the same.
Thanks for being here with me, truly.
Beautifully written. This really hits home as a mother of two young ones and often struggling with body image. Wishing you all the best on this next chapter. Thank you.
So beautiful! I wish more people would remember that it isn’t about bouncing back but moving forward... mothers are so hard on themselves and it’s refreshing to hear you speak positively about your experience with a changing body after having a baby.
PS: Great back muscles in that wedding pic btw!
God bless your family! ♥️♥️♥️