Imperfectly, wonderfully visible

This post should dovetail fairly nicely with my last post in which I talk about the fact that we need to quit using the word fat as an insult. Today, I am posting pictures. I am not posting just any pictures. These are pictures of my abs. In some they are covered, and in others they aren’t. They were all taken today, and will be posted for comparison purposes. I have not edited any of them. You’ll even get to see a doorknob because I am such a rocking photographer.

Why am I posting pictures of my midsection? Well, it is far from perfect by current standards. As a matter of fact, I could model for before pictures in a Photoshop class or in a plastic surgeon’s notebook. I am going to lay bare a few facts and feelings before I get to the pictures. I am at a healthy weight and body fat percentage. I workout very regularly, and before anyone thinks they have any useful tips, I don’t need them. I lift and I do cardio. I enjoy both. I have had three children who were all born via c-section. I did not put on more weight than my OB recommended during my pregnancies, but because I am short, the babies had nowhere to go but out while I was growing them, and because of genetics, amongst other things, my skin chose not to bounce back once it was stretched to capacity three times in the space of four-and-a-half years. After the birth of my first child, the weight peeled off and I looked pretty good. I was the poster girl for breastfeeding for weight loss. After number two, most, but not all, of it came off, and after number three, I had the dickens of a time getting the last ten off, plus the five to ten I hadn’t dropped between numbers two and three. I sat there on the high side of a healthy weight, nudging over into overweight, unhappy with myself for about a year-and-a-half. Then, my youngest weaned, and my body was truly my own for the first time in nearly seven years! Between pregnancy and breastfeeding, someone else had always needed something from my body. I could really take it back, so I set to work.

Now, I would love to say that my motivation was purely my health. Heart disease runs rampant in my family, and it likes to take us young. I have Lupus, which, while it is in remission, is going to prefer a healthier, fitter body to stay that way, and I have three young children for whom I am responsible, but I really did it at least as much for the fact that I wasn’t going to buy the next size up in pants, and I wanted all the baby weight gone by my 35^th birthday, which was in November of 2012. I wanted to not feel invisible, so I set about doing something for myself so that I would want to be visible. I joined My Fitness Pal, set up a good routine for myself at the Y, and then I stuck to it. I am now within a few pounds of what I weighed in high school, and I met my original goal before my birthday. I am currently working on maintaining.

All that said, what I have discovered along the way is that I was constantly finding new things about myself to dislike. I would have surges of confidence, and then I would back off of them. My current bugaboo has been my abs. I would look at myself critically, and think, “Gross!” I would joke about them with others, but I really, really hated them. My doctor had already told me that I don’t really have anything left to lose. It’s loose skin from the way my body reacted to pregnancy, and can only be repaired via surgery. I hate being cut open, so I likely won’t get plastic surgery, thus I will always have wrinkled, scarred, puckered abs. Then, just yesterday after reading (and pinning) this quotation, “I am obsessed with becoming a woman comfortable in her own skin,” I realized that I was never, ever going to be comfortable with myself if I felt my own body was gross. I have nothing to be ashamed of. I have survived an illness that nearly killed me. I have borne three children. I have chosen to be healthy by building muscle and losing fat, and even when I least liked it, my body was NEVER gross. It has done everything I needed it to do, albeit with an occasional assist from the medical community. I want everyone to hear that, go look in the mirror, and understand the same is true for you. You are NOT gross, awful, horrible, or anything else you can think to say about yourself. Your body is wonderful. It isn’t perfect. No one’s body is perfect, and the “perfection” that is currently sold to us via photoshopped spreads of celebrities in magazines and models in ads, is a particular vision of beauty that no one can attain. For goodness’ sake, they even photoshop out the natural wrinkles and puckers that occur when you bend. They remove muscle definition from women with muscular arms, and they remove visible ribs from very thin models. I will one day do a whole blog about PS, and how some of the “little” stuff is the most insidious. Standards of beauty change, but the beauty that is you with whatever you hone in on when you are being critical of yourself, is amazing, and we need to see more real beauty. I want to be very clear that I am not body shaming those we hold up as beautiful or saying that they aren’t lovely to behold. They are. We just need more than that paradigm. We need to see that there is more than just different versions of flawless to be had. There is the deeply, gorgeously flawed. We are all imperfect, inside and out. If you look at yourself, and think “Gross!” as I have been, you are rejecting part of what is wonderfully human about yourself. Embrace the imperfect. It is that which ultimately makes you unique, interesting, and fully human. With all that in mind, here are photos of some of my imperfections. It's real. It's me, and I'm not ashamed of it anymore.    

Here you can see all the wrinkles and my c-section flap

This one gives a better view of the stretch marks and what I refer to as my second bellybutton  on top of the original

Front view in a flattering dress

Side view in the same dress

Bare side view- you can see a mosquito bite and  a kidney biopsy scar

The Reason I Can Celebrate Mother's Day as a Mother

I first wrote the essay/post below on Mother's Day two years ago. I won’t be peeling potatoes today; my then-four-year-old is now six and getting his first adult tooth. My then-toddler is now three and is full of life and sparkle. The fluttering fetus in the story is now a lovely little toddler who brightens our days. What remains the same is that none of this beauty would be possible were it not for earlier pain. The rarest of gems are formed through the application of pressure over time, and as difficult as things can sometimes be, the wonder that awaits us is worth struggle. I hope those of you who have read this before don’t mind the repeat, and those who find it new enjoy it. Happy Mother’s Day to all.

This Mother’s Day (May 2010) I had the great pleasure of peeling fourteen potatoes while my four-year-old chopped them and put them in a pan of water so we could boil them. Now, I don’t normally love peeling potatoes. It would generally be a perfect punishment, but the company was excellent and the conversation delightful. In the midst of it, I was struck by how very lovely my life is. My husband was outside in our yard playing with the toddler, I was happily engaged in conversation and work with the pre-schooler, and I could feel the fetus fluttering away inside of me.

The thing is, this day could very easily not have happened, or at least not like this. I was diagnosed with Lupus when I was ten years old. It took them three long years to figure out why my kidneys and joints seemed to not want to function properly. When I was younger, I hated the Lupus. I felt like it took me from me. I wasn’t allowed to run and play as often; I spent over half the year in hospitals away from my friends and siblings. I took medications that made me feel awful, stunted my growth, and made me fat. I wasn’t healthy enough to be medication-free until close to the end of my freshman year in high school. I felt like the Lupus had robbed me of my childhood and early adolescence. As I grew older and the remission lasted, I came to terms with the Lupus. It had helped mold me into the person I was, and I liked that person, so it was what it was. Then, in March of 2006, something happened that I never would have thought possible. I became eternally grateful for the Lupus.

Despite the fact that I have been in remission my entire adult life, my pregnancies are considered high-risk. With the first, I was very carefully monitored, which I didn’t really mind. I received extra ultrasounds, and the non-stress tests were comforting, if a bit boring. I was able to hear my baby’s heart galloping along while I waited for movement, so I could press the button to record it. The pregnancy itself was perfectly routine and healthy. I was healthier and happier than ever. The baby seemed to be perfect. There were no problems. Without the Lupus hanging over my medical history, I never would have needed the non-stress tests, and things would have gone horribly, horribly wrong.

For those of you who don’t know my oldest child’s birth story, my husband was on his spring break and came along to my 37 week appointment. We were planning on going out to lunch followed by a movie. I knew the baby was transverse and/or breech (he was flipping between the two), so I wasn’t going into labor that day. As a matter of fact, the plan was to schedule a version for my 38 week appointment. . .

After the visit with the doctor, who was awesome, we went back for the NST. It seemed to be taking longer than usual. They had me drink some juice to get things moving. Then the doctor came in to chat with my husband and me. They wanted to send us over to Labor & Delivery triage for monitoring. The baby’s heart rate was decreasing when it should be increasing. I’d need an ultrasound. We walked across the bridge to the hospital. It seemed the umbilical cord was pooled under his head and any time he tried to move he compressed it, which is what was causing the decrease in heart rate. Since I was already considered full-term, and while the situation was not emergent in that I didn’t need to be rushed to the OR posthaste, it was time, for the good of the baby, to deliver him.

I had really wanted an all-natural birth, but I was pretty philosophical about not having one if it meant better things for the baby. We called our friends and family to tell them that today was the day and to beg assistance from them/impose upon them: Could they get into our house and finish packing the suitcase that was on the bed (we had planned on finishing that after our date)? Could someone bring a camera? etc. etc. I was wheeled into the OR and had a very routine c-section. As we had chosen not to find out the sex of the baby until birth, the doctor delivered our breech son and held up the proof of his sex while asking my spouse if he knew what those were. My husband told me we had a son, and we immediately named him. Then, he didn’t cry. They whisked him away while I was stitched up, with the doctor doing her best to calm us while looking a bit anxious herself. Soon enough we heard the cry we had been awaiting. Relief flooded the room and joking commenced. My husband went back to see our son and then returned. They briefly brought the baby to us. He needed to go to the NICU. He needed CPAP and a blood transfusion. He had aspirated meconium and was severely anemic. That brief little hug was the closest I was to get to holding my son for a day and a half. I could touch him, but not hold him. It was agonizing. I do not know how mothers who have children who are in incubators do it.

To this day, there is no diagnosis behind the acute anemia my eldest suffered at birth. We do know that it was not related to my Lupus, and that he is perfectly healthy and as normal as any child of ours has a hope of being. What I also know is that without the Lupus I would not have been receiving the non-stress tests. My sweet boy could not have survived without a blood transfusion much longer due to the severity of his anemia. Would I have listened to my mommy instincts telling me that his movements had changed, which they had, and called my OB in time to save him? I don’t know. What I do know is that it didn’t come to that. My Lupus saved my baby. I would give my childhood a million times over so I could be a part of his. For this gift, I am eternally grateful. My Lupus may have made so many things so much harder than they needed to be, but it gave me today. It gave me this life, and I couldn’t ask for anything sweeter.