“There could never be a more beautiful you.. You were made to fill a purpose that only you could do / So there could never be a more beautiful you” -Jonny Diaz
There’s nothing quite like pregnancy to make you confront any body image issues you may have had. You become heavier, and even though you know it’s supposed to happen, it can feel ugh-gy all the same. It would be lovely if I could stay slim and simply sport a cute little watermelony bump, but instead I’ve spent most of the past seven months diffusely and vaguely heavier. It wasn’t until last week that I started to get questions from patients about when I’m due. “Oh, in seven weeks,” and then I brace myself for the incredulous “but you’re so small!” I really have gained twenty pounds! I want to say. My face isn’t usually this round! My hips and thighs aren’t usually this wide!
There was a time earlier in life when I was heavier than I have been recently, and struggled with liking my body. Around the fourth and fifth month it felt like that old body was returning in some ways, and learning to love it was an odd way of redeeming the ways I had thought about my body in the past. I think about the health that I have. I think about the purpose my body is serving. I think about how my husband’s affection is unchanged.
I think about what I would hope to teach my daughter about body image. It’s strange how much of a child’s self-esteem from the very start is built on how they look; it drives the way the world responds to them. Sometimes in my superficial moments I catch myself hoping the baby is naturally cute (would anyone tell me if she were actually pretty ugly-looking? probably not). I think about how much she will be affected by how I feel about my own body. I guess the most powerful and genuine sort of parenting in the end comes from within, from how I am and live myself, not from play-acting principles.
So this is as good a time to learn as any—now and in four months when I wonder why my old pants still don’t fit . . .
Week Thirty-Two
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Unknowns
The mornings are the times when my body shocks me the most. During the day things equilibrate; I become used to how I move and look with fondness upon the bump. But in those first still morning moments I am a stranger to myself. The mornings are when my belly is most its native self, not yet shaped by food or clothing. It used to be a familiar, soft hollow between poking hipbones, smooth and flat. Now it rises high, immune to gravity, having long ago swallowed any trace of a hipbone. It’s surprisingly hard, my skin stretched impossibly tight over a firmness that is frightening.
At those times it feels like an alien is taking over my body. I wonder if things will ever be the same again; I liked my old body a lot more than I admitted. I miss feeling lithe, cinching my scrubs in tight, feeling the looseness of my jeans.
Parenting and the becoming of it is a scary thing. Through everything D and I do runs an undercurrent of awareness that things will never be the same again. We take our time going to bed together; we take naps when we want. We go on dates together nearly every free night; dates to the grocery store, to the park, to the library. We eat out at a whim. Sometimes we just sit quietly for hours in the house.
I like to fantasize that having a baby around will not be all that different, that it will be business as usual with the exception of something adorable strapped to my chest. I will be efficient, calm, capable. But I know in reality it is all one big unknown, a step of faith not unlike others I’ve taken in my life. Going into medicine. Getting married. Giving up a habit. Going through a trial.
And in the end that is what is oddly reassuring. Parenting is not something I am meant to do of my own cognition or ability any more than those other things. This person will be who he or she is, someone God has placed in my life for this ministry I can offer. For what my body is offering it now. They are not here for my convenience, or solely for my satisfaction, or to suit my needs. This is the first big ministry D and I will do together in our lives, and all the way God will lead us, and that is okay.
Week Twenty-Nine
At those times it feels like an alien is taking over my body. I wonder if things will ever be the same again; I liked my old body a lot more than I admitted. I miss feeling lithe, cinching my scrubs in tight, feeling the looseness of my jeans.
Parenting and the becoming of it is a scary thing. Through everything D and I do runs an undercurrent of awareness that things will never be the same again. We take our time going to bed together; we take naps when we want. We go on dates together nearly every free night; dates to the grocery store, to the park, to the library. We eat out at a whim. Sometimes we just sit quietly for hours in the house.
I like to fantasize that having a baby around will not be all that different, that it will be business as usual with the exception of something adorable strapped to my chest. I will be efficient, calm, capable. But I know in reality it is all one big unknown, a step of faith not unlike others I’ve taken in my life. Going into medicine. Getting married. Giving up a habit. Going through a trial.
And in the end that is what is oddly reassuring. Parenting is not something I am meant to do of my own cognition or ability any more than those other things. This person will be who he or she is, someone God has placed in my life for this ministry I can offer. For what my body is offering it now. They are not here for my convenience, or solely for my satisfaction, or to suit my needs. This is the first big ministry D and I will do together in our lives, and all the way God will lead us, and that is okay.
Week Twenty-Nine
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Ramblings
I’ve realized that pregnancy is a philosophical endeavor, sort of like treating ocular hypertension. Yesterday I had a patient come for a second opinion about whether she should be on eyedrops for her mildly elevated eye pressures. I explained the whole situation and basically told her each doctor has their own philosophy of approach, and she’d probably get a different answer from every person she asked.
That’s how pregnancy is; everyone seems to have their own constructs on what should and shouldn’t be done. I know one person who drinks occasional alcohol, another who has sworn off artificial sweeteners. I used to want to know what all the other pregnant women were doing, but now I sort of don’t—it’s like being around your classmates while studying for exams; a little interaction can be helpful but too much is stressful.
I’ve pretty much been naturally laid-back about the whole thing. Short of avoiding proven toxins and popping a prenatal vitamin every morning, life hasn’t changed all that much. I read occasionally from pregnancy books but not obsessively; I chew sugar-free gum without guilt and still go for light jogs.
The only thing that’s been remotely unusual about this pregnancy has been how little I’ve been showing, and this I hear about endlessly. That’s how I looked at two months.. you’re due August of this year?.. do you do lots of ab exercises? (ha, ha). Up until this past week or two I wasn’t comment-ably pregnant, much less obviously in my third trimester.
But the baby is moving all the time, as if she’s telling me there’s really something in there, and this is all okay. There will be plenty of lumbering around with sore backs and heavy ankles later. It’s nice to be pleasantly round but not encumbered. I feel grateful for the simplicity of this all. Is it just my personality? Have I changed? Who knows, but simple is good.
Week Twenty-Nine
That’s how pregnancy is; everyone seems to have their own constructs on what should and shouldn’t be done. I know one person who drinks occasional alcohol, another who has sworn off artificial sweeteners. I used to want to know what all the other pregnant women were doing, but now I sort of don’t—it’s like being around your classmates while studying for exams; a little interaction can be helpful but too much is stressful.
I’ve pretty much been naturally laid-back about the whole thing. Short of avoiding proven toxins and popping a prenatal vitamin every morning, life hasn’t changed all that much. I read occasionally from pregnancy books but not obsessively; I chew sugar-free gum without guilt and still go for light jogs.
The only thing that’s been remotely unusual about this pregnancy has been how little I’ve been showing, and this I hear about endlessly. That’s how I looked at two months.. you’re due August of this year?.. do you do lots of ab exercises? (ha, ha). Up until this past week or two I wasn’t comment-ably pregnant, much less obviously in my third trimester.
But the baby is moving all the time, as if she’s telling me there’s really something in there, and this is all okay. There will be plenty of lumbering around with sore backs and heavy ankles later. It’s nice to be pleasantly round but not encumbered. I feel grateful for the simplicity of this all. Is it just my personality? Have I changed? Who knows, but simple is good.
Week Twenty-Nine
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Home
There are many things about home that make me happy. I like the exact shade of pale green on our living room walls. I like lying in bed with one cat curled up against either side. I like the confused look Winnie gets when she has to clamber over my bump to sit on my chest. The way Chloe head-butts my hand and meows in my face as soon as the alarm goes off in the morning. I like reading on our plushy cream couch; lying there with D’s hand on my belly.
There’s been a subtle shift in what I look forward to the most in the future: it centers around home, not work. I think sometimes that medicine has consumed enough of my life: I want to be an excellent surgeon, clinician, and teacher, but I don’t feel the drive to run pell-mell to the next best training program. I want to make a happy, safe, and healthy home, with lots of children. I want D to feel free to pursue his career wherever it takes him.
I’m not sure how this change happened, but I see it for what it is: a desire for greater balance in my life, and the willingness to make the choices that would lead me there. I’m grateful for the sense that this is okay, for all the people and experiences that have laid the groundwork. I feel the baby kicking and I think, I am the only one in this world who can be her mother. I look at D and think, I am the only one who can be his wife. There are other doctors, and students, and daughters.
I used to be afraid of whether I’d be able to make the choices when the time came. I still struggle with the pressures at work a bit, but somehow it seems like relatively little to give up, when I think about the things that truly bring me joy in life. I know difficult moments are still ahead, but that’s mostly why I’m writing this down now. For the future.
Week Twenty-Seven
There’s been a subtle shift in what I look forward to the most in the future: it centers around home, not work. I think sometimes that medicine has consumed enough of my life: I want to be an excellent surgeon, clinician, and teacher, but I don’t feel the drive to run pell-mell to the next best training program. I want to make a happy, safe, and healthy home, with lots of children. I want D to feel free to pursue his career wherever it takes him.
I’m not sure how this change happened, but I see it for what it is: a desire for greater balance in my life, and the willingness to make the choices that would lead me there. I’m grateful for the sense that this is okay, for all the people and experiences that have laid the groundwork. I feel the baby kicking and I think, I am the only one in this world who can be her mother. I look at D and think, I am the only one who can be his wife. There are other doctors, and students, and daughters.
I used to be afraid of whether I’d be able to make the choices when the time came. I still struggle with the pressures at work a bit, but somehow it seems like relatively little to give up, when I think about the things that truly bring me joy in life. I know difficult moments are still ahead, but that’s mostly why I’m writing this down now. For the future.
Week Twenty-Seven
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Labor
“I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception; in pain you shall bring forth children.” – Genesis 3:16
The only thing about having something growing inside you is that you know at some point it will have to come out. I used to think about the potential space that is the cervical canal and vagina, the nine-pound babies I’d hold in the NICU, and wonder how one exactly gets from point A to B. When I was a med student on the labor and delivery floor, I’d ask women in labor what it felt like, with little success. One woman in between contractions managed to tell me it felt like a train was running her over, which has scared me ever since.
It’s interesting that labor is one of the few divine mandates of suffering. I think about that phrase “greatly multiply”—what would labor have been like before the fall? Not comfortable, but maybe more manageable. Imagine that.
Somehow labor is tied up in the fall, a fundamental part of the female experience that, while being about good, reflects our separation from God. I think about how we are meant to experience it. How life can only come about through great pain.
I occasionally think about whether I’d have the resolve to try giving birth without an epidural. There are the physical benefits, and I think part of me wants to push against the modern medical tendency to medicate away suffering. At the same time, I’ve spoken with enough women to know that labor is painful no matter whether you get an epidural or not, and there seems to be a point reached where the pain becomes almost impossible to rationally tolerate.
Regardless, by proof of the fact that women have multiple children, the price is worth the pain. In that way labor is in a sense a condensed, physical enactment of the spiritual life, a foreshadowing of what Christ came to do, a reflection of the chronic struggles we walk through day-by-day. Great joy as a result of great pain, perhaps pain we would not have chosen had we known what it was. Pregnancy is a nine-month anticipation of and inner preparation for that process. Here we go.
Week Twenty-Seven
The only thing about having something growing inside you is that you know at some point it will have to come out. I used to think about the potential space that is the cervical canal and vagina, the nine-pound babies I’d hold in the NICU, and wonder how one exactly gets from point A to B. When I was a med student on the labor and delivery floor, I’d ask women in labor what it felt like, with little success. One woman in between contractions managed to tell me it felt like a train was running her over, which has scared me ever since.
It’s interesting that labor is one of the few divine mandates of suffering. I think about that phrase “greatly multiply”—what would labor have been like before the fall? Not comfortable, but maybe more manageable. Imagine that.
Somehow labor is tied up in the fall, a fundamental part of the female experience that, while being about good, reflects our separation from God. I think about how we are meant to experience it. How life can only come about through great pain.
I occasionally think about whether I’d have the resolve to try giving birth without an epidural. There are the physical benefits, and I think part of me wants to push against the modern medical tendency to medicate away suffering. At the same time, I’ve spoken with enough women to know that labor is painful no matter whether you get an epidural or not, and there seems to be a point reached where the pain becomes almost impossible to rationally tolerate.
Regardless, by proof of the fact that women have multiple children, the price is worth the pain. In that way labor is in a sense a condensed, physical enactment of the spiritual life, a foreshadowing of what Christ came to do, a reflection of the chronic struggles we walk through day-by-day. Great joy as a result of great pain, perhaps pain we would not have chosen had we known what it was. Pregnancy is a nine-month anticipation of and inner preparation for that process. Here we go.
Week Twenty-Seven
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