Post pregnancy body

Heard stories of women who are back in their pre-pregnancy jeans the day after delivery?  It's urban legend.  Always someone who knows someone who's cousin managed this impossible magic trick.

Here I am 2 months after birth and my body is still not my own.  Well, it is, but I just don't recognise it much.  My pre-pregnancy clothes remain tucked up in vacuum-sealed packs under the bed.  I survive in leggings and even still wear my maternity trousers.  The scale says I am about 15 pounds heavier than at the start of the pregnancy.  But the differences in my body are not accurately reflected in body weight alone.  My once firm leg muscles are all lazy and floppy.  So I imagine that even losing that extra 15 pounds wouldn't make me look and feel that same as before.  I am going to have to burn some fat as well as build up some muscle again.

couch potato times are not helping to shift the preggo pounds

While walking is ok in moderation, proper exercise isn't recommended for 6-8 weeks after delivery.  Longer for c-section mums like me, so I might be looking at 12 weeks before I can begin in earnest.  I am further set-back by an infection of my wound, and will have to be more cautious than I'm used to in my workouts.

out for a walk with the emerging daffodils

Post-pregnancy workouts have their own specific considerations.  Abdominals are still working their way back into alignment so any movements that use them have to be carefully selected.  Using the rectus abdominus (the muscles of the old 'six-pack') too soon can result in something called doming.  This is when the muscles do not realign, leaving a gap in the middle and a permanent disfigurement.  Also, workouts that are too intense or when calories are not replaced can negatively affect breastfeeding.

Then there are the things that only time can fix.  Swelling above the c-section incision site can take months to smooth out.  And even though it's thought that breastfeeding helps burn off fat accumulated during pregnancy, the hormones active during breastfeeding can also force the body to hold onto 5-10 pounds.  Not to mention that the average increase in breast size can account for about 2 pounds of the extra weight packed on in pregnancy.

Good news is, it's still winter.  Comfortable, baggy knitwear doesn't look out of place.  But even now the daffodils and crocus are bursting up form the soil.  Soon my snug-fitting summer wardrobe will be calling me.  I'm attempting an approach of amusement and amazement at my body.  Along with weaning myself off pregnant-lady portions of dinner and some exercise should see me right in time.

Besides, post-pregnancy body isn't just about weight and body-shape.  There's so much more going on.  I find it fascinating, a little frightening at times and all very interesting.  Hope you do, too.

1. Hair
     All the good things that happened to my hair during pregnancy are still here.  It's thicker and grew long over the 9 months.  It's a great comfort to be happy at least with my hair if nothing else.  A wonderful treat for me was to get my hair dyed, finally, after 9 long months of unsightly roots.  Before becoming pregnant, I regularly dyed my hair jet black. After 9 months of no dying, I had a good 5 inches of natural hair.  I found a colourist who embarked on the process of getting the black out of the ends with me.  After some hours of lifting, bleaching and tinting my hair is back to a natural shade, slightly umph-ed up with a few cleverly placed highlights.  So my ass is fat.  But my hair looks great.

2. Under-eye bags?  That's just an excuse for some fun eye makeup!
    It hardly bears writing about sleep-deprivation.  It is a guaranteed given for the first few months, or if my mother is right, the next 30 years.  After a night of mere minutes sleep, I remind myself of the days when sleep was happily sacrificed for fun.  Thom and I would go out, dance up a storm and waking up tired the next day just meant that it was a good night.  My eyes show the signs, though.  Puffy with dark circles.  I considered using the fab hair to hide them, but I need to see to avoid tripping over the various baby things that now litter the floors.  Next best option - eye treats.  Little potions that come as roll-ons or moisturising creams that smell nice or a new mascara all help hide those sleepy peepers.  As soon as Ethan goes down for his first nap of the day, I grab myself a few minutes of face-time to treat those tired eyes to something nice.  It's what baby naps were invented for!

3.  How little other people care
     Makes me wonder what I ever worried about.  No, I'm not the fit little chickie I was.  But who even notices?  And of those who notice, who of them care?  The answer to both is pretty much none.  Friends still have compliments for me, despite my feeling so different and out of place in my own skin.  As for Thom, I can truly say that he has seen my body at the absolute worst.  Following the c-section, and all the trauma surrounding us during that time he's had a front row seat for the horror show that was my cut-up franken-belly.  He was the one who helped me into the first shower after the operation.  He fetched the big, old lady panties for me from the store.  He has become accustomed to the sight of me attached un-glamorously to the end of an electric breast pump.  And he still says he I look nice (maybe more after my eye-treatment routine) and gives my butt a little naughty pat when the opportunity presents itself.  Getting back into shape is still the goal, but there's a little lesson to be learned here about the validity of self-obsessed body hang ups that might grab hold of me at this point.  They will only make this time of life stressful and make me dismissive of all the positive feedback about my slightly chubby frame.  Maybe those that mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind.

Bonding and breastfeeding? Bollocks.

Once you have transversed the politics of pregnancy, you might imagine that the world can finally mind its own business and leave you to your body in peace.  Or at least that was my naive expectation.  But as soon as your little bundle enters the world the question will be how you plan to feed him/her.  Yes, this will be on the final exam and here’s a hint: bottle is the wrong answer.  And the word ‘formula’ is an instant fail. 

Breast is best.  Breastfeeding is free and saves you the trouble of preparing bottles.  It’s good for baby in so many ways, both for nutrition and immunity now and to set him up for future good health.  Photos around the maternity wards instill a feeling of warmth around the whole enterprise, showing glowing mums smiling at peaceful, content infants.  And if that hasn’t sold it to you yet, they say it’ll burn that preggo fat. 

Well, I was all ready to sign on the dotted line.  When tragedy struck and the boys weren’t able to start breastfeeding straight away, I decided not give up.  I would pump and be ready for when they were ready.  The hours of driving between Colchester and Norwich were passed with Thom and I listening to the thumping, electric drone of a portable breast pump.  Had giving birth in a room filled with 20 or 30 strangers not already robbed me of any self-consciousness, motoring past white vans and lorries with a boob being sucked into a machine certainly would have. 

Formula was an essential for our boys and for all babies on the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.  And even after Ethan came home, between my stress levels and Ethan’s low weight, we needed formula, at least as a top up for my lagging milk production.  Despite the rocky road that led to the necessity of formula for us, we found that no health professional who tripped across our path would offer any advice to help us use formula.  The stock line was that breastfeeding was THE way.  Formula was shunned like the very excretion of Satan’s mother herself.  Even my Tesco Clubcard points and Boots Advantage Card points were refused against the purchase of formula.  Government policy, I was told, to encourage breastfeeding.  It was like I wasn’t buying baby SMA, but baby SMAck.  Maybe not illegal, but certainly frowned upon.  

Here’s something I didn’t realise before but is an astounding part of breastfeeding:  It is totally dependant on a calm state of mind.  I would class myself as a big believer in the link between body and mind, but I expected that being calm would merely help.  How wrong I was.  I discovered that being stressed is like turning the milk tap off.  I was advised to try and look at photos of the boys when pumping to get the milk flowing.  But seeing their little bodies all wired up to medical gear made me cry and seeing no milk at the end of pumping session made it worse.  As the days went on and Noah’s condition deteriorated, I found that thinking of Ethan allowed some milk production, but the moment my mind drifted to how Noah was doing, it stopped.  I discovered that there was only one thing for it – distraction.  So I’d set myself up with a few magazines, an array of snacks and the TV remote before settling in to battle with the boobs. 

the difficult days of hospitals and pumping

All those endless hours of pumping didn’t inspire belief that I could actually make milk.  I was told that pumping every few hours, even through the night, would soon establish a supply.  But even with distraction techniques, I was disheartened by the few measly drops that trickled into the bottles even after hours of pumping. 

But my experience is thankfully different from most new mothers, who might find that breastfeeding is easily established.  When we got Ethan home, the milk soon arrived in response to feeding him on demand.  And yet, the idyllic picture of mother and child, enveloped in mutual love and joy while breastfeeding continues to allude me. 

Ethan is a cute little boob-monster, don’t get me wrong.  We have lots of fun and cuddly times together in and around feedings.  But these are interspersed with lots of other times filled with worry, frustration and exhaustion. 

post-feed chill out face

The worry is mine.  Is he getting enough?  Have I eaten something that’s making him fussy?  Is he crying and pulling away because I’m doing something wrong?  The frustration is often his.  Maybe when he’s not getting enough.  Maybe when he’s getting too much.  Maybe when he wishes he could just suck without the bother of milk invading his mouth.  

He growls and flails his little fists at me, latched on harder than a barnacle on a bow, but pulling away in baby-rage, taking my nipple with him.   I sit in shock (and pain) at his behaviour.  Usually around 4am, I begin to think, ‘I’ve allowed you unrestricted access to my breasts, all day and all night, and you are the frustrated one?’  But that’s the tough world of being a baby, I guess.  It’s either absolute heaven, when you’re getting all you want right on time, or absolute torture, when mom just can’t fathom what the hell you’re asking for.  The tough world of being mom is about developing a tough skin, both metaphorically as well as physically.  

Even though my introduction to breastfeeding has been unusual and tougher than some, but I’ve also discovered that I might not be alone in my ambivalence about breastfeeding.  Which is handy because I was starting to feel like a bad mum.  The Internet has helped me feel like less of a monster for surviving feeds by playing tetris and online shopping (I can't even begin fathom how women ever survived the hours of breastfeeding before television).  Through the internet, I found other women who love their babies but loathe the breastfeeding.  Click here to read another tough mamma's blog about the battle of the boobies 

The idea that I might bond with anyone, baby or not, by letting him try to remove my nipple over the course of six months with hoover-like suction power is ludicrous.  If, like me, you are struggling on with it, good for you.