It’s weird, I always feel the narrative of a “postpartum body” is loose skin or carrying extra weight (and maybe that’s just me) but a postpartum body is just that, a body, postpartum.
Despite your exterior, it’s changed regardless.
After Harry I was trying to zip up jeans that made me feel like I was salami stuffed into casing, and this time it’s missing my curves.
The other day I heard, “oh you’ve got nothing to complain about, you’ve bounced back”. It’s not complaining coming to terms with the new you and it’s not a lack of gratitude for sometimes missing familiarity.
It’s getting used to those granny panties that hang off the bum I once had or the maternity bra that I once bust out of that now I could shove socks into, possibly multiple.
The term “bouncing back” is crap anyway, but it has me feeling weird when people say it to me, because no gym got me into smaller clothes.
It was the marathon of motherhood, exhaustion, not eating properly, forgetting the “self care” and possibly shedding pounds due to the stress that two under two life throws at me some days.
These reasons aren’t worth celebrating weight loss.
I want to be told I’m capable and resilient. Because those are the things I work on daily. I want to admire and have regard for the depths my body has traveled, to bring me my babies. To put it first sometimes, move it more than the tracks I burn in the carpet from room to room. Because of how much better it will make me feel.
No ones outer layer should be celebrated more than their inner workings anyway and scales should be breaking under the weight of our worth.
Whatever shape, whatever size.
In a perfect world.
But I’ll start small, to be more gentle with myself, to be patient and appreciative of my new body and all it’s given me.