An Anti-MILF (cocktail napkin) Manifesto
Feb. 15th, 2008 11:18 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
feldman"You don't have mittelschmerz, you've got Messerschmitts." --Mr. F
Woke up just after midnight on the holiday of love to the pain of ovulation. I remember the quaint little "ping!' I'd feel pre-pill, pre-kid, with nostalgia. This was no faint snap, but a stabbing throb that pulled me out of sleep frantically diagramming the appendix in my mind's eye. Then counting backwards on the calendar as I poked at the hollow between achey hip and pillowed belly.
The thing They Don't Tell You about having a kid is that it changes your body in the same way that puberty did. There's this cultural ideal of 'getting your old body back', but I doubt it's possible in the way it's usually meant and I'm starting to get skeeved by the oblivious denial inherent in the goal. Let me tell you right now--you don't get your old body back, even if it sooner or later fits into the same amount and dimensions of space. Completely aside from the sleep deprivation and emotional bootcamp of becoming a parent, there are always differences after something as physically demanding and altering as pregnancy and labor--good, bad and weird--and they can be profound even when they are subtle.
You may carry on same as before, or you may have to rebuild your strength, ability, endurance, posture, flexibility, sexuality and grace from the bottom up. You may fit into the same pants, or your very skeleton may be altered in function and shape. You may loathe the scars and slack, or the damage to your sense of bodily integrity, or you may find that you are a lot fucking stronger inside and out than you ever suspected and that you finally own your frame and the space around it. You may grow a harder spine and a taste for risk, or you may learn to multitask crying with getting the job done. All of these things can be true at the same time.
Your body will be different, if only because you know what it's like not to be alone in it.
Woke up just after midnight on the holiday of love to the pain of ovulation. I remember the quaint little "ping!' I'd feel pre-pill, pre-kid, with nostalgia. This was no faint snap, but a stabbing throb that pulled me out of sleep frantically diagramming the appendix in my mind's eye. Then counting backwards on the calendar as I poked at the hollow between achey hip and pillowed belly.
The thing They Don't Tell You about having a kid is that it changes your body in the same way that puberty did. There's this cultural ideal of 'getting your old body back', but I doubt it's possible in the way it's usually meant and I'm starting to get skeeved by the oblivious denial inherent in the goal. Let me tell you right now--you don't get your old body back, even if it sooner or later fits into the same amount and dimensions of space. Completely aside from the sleep deprivation and emotional bootcamp of becoming a parent, there are always differences after something as physically demanding and altering as pregnancy and labor--good, bad and weird--and they can be profound even when they are subtle.
You may carry on same as before, or you may have to rebuild your strength, ability, endurance, posture, flexibility, sexuality and grace from the bottom up. You may fit into the same pants, or your very skeleton may be altered in function and shape. You may loathe the scars and slack, or the damage to your sense of bodily integrity, or you may find that you are a lot fucking stronger inside and out than you ever suspected and that you finally own your frame and the space around it. You may grow a harder spine and a taste for risk, or you may learn to multitask crying with getting the job done. All of these things can be true at the same time.
Your body will be different, if only because you know what it's like not to be alone in it.
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no subject
Date: 2008-02-18 05:55 am (UTC)After kids, the old body never comes back quite the same as it was. I'm not complaining really, but the shoe thing - yeah, no one told me I'd have to pitch my old shoes, dammit. Weaned my second in October and I still produce a nominal amount of milk. The breasts are not as perky, but I knew about that one. But my hair changed, my skin changed and the light periods I've been enjoying post pregnancy and breastfeeding appear to be a thing of the past.
I'll always miss the way a baby feels when it moves inside you. When you can identify a tiny fist or a foot stretching your abdomen, that's pretty cool.
no subject
Date: 2008-02-18 02:46 pm (UTC)But yes, "Feeling the baby move" never seems to encompass, for example, being able to grab the kid's foot through one's skin. Or the fact that a year and a half later I still have a sideways slope to my belly from her preferring to lay towards my left.
Even now we have a symbiosis going as she nurses and grows--I live in here alone now but we're still tied through the milk. I think my recent wisdom tooth problem is not coincidental to her current molar teething, and she now gets the same back and shoulder PMS acne that poor Mr. F does.