Belly

I am thinking about my belly. How it has changed. What it has done. It held and grew two big, beautiful baby boys. With Julian, my newborn of 9 pounds, 8 ounces, it was huge! And, no stretch marks. I'm trying to hold on to this admiration for my belly for as long as I can because it's not easy to do. I gained at least 40 pounds with each pregnancy. I think I stopped counting after that, so it was probably more. After Jonah was born, it took 9 solid months to lose it all. Then, when he started pre-walking and walking, I lost another 5 or so just trying to prevent him from killing himself. I'm probably on track for that with Julian, but I'm feeling mighty impatient this time. The scale seems to barely move. Most of my clothes still don't fit. And, despite this admiration for the awesomeness of the work my body did, growing and birthing two, healthy, amazing babies, my belly still feels big to me. Big and floppy. I often don't like it. It lies next to me sometimes when I nurse Julian in bed, like another baby or a pet curled up next to me. But, I don't love it like I would a baby or pet. Sometimes, I hate it, actually. I also often have mixed feelings about it. Like when Jonah notices it, pokes it with his little finger and says, "What's that?" "My belly," I say, as cheerfully as possible. "What's in there?" he asks. "Nothing," I say. I don't say, "Fat." My mind sits here while Jonah says, "I like it," and then asks, "What used to be in there?" And, then we talk about Julian. And, then we talk about Jonah. And, then, Jonah asks, "Where was Julian when I was in your belly?" And, I am stumped. Perhaps there will be more on this later.

Back to my belly. It is soft and squishy and white. I don't know how to dress it. How to flatter it. My body is foreign to me at the moment. My sizes are all weird. I don't know how to fit my body into clothes. I don't know how to find clothes that that fit me that I like. But, I still dig into the ice cream and I rarely find the time to exercise. I never do sit ups. I never run. Almost never. Not right now, anyway.

But! But, I went to a yoga class today. By myself. By. My. Self. And the teacher asked us to think of a place on our body that we wanted to focus on. My first thought was my belly. It just popped into my head. Then, I decided I didn't want to think about that. I tried to change the subject in my mind. I spent some moments trying to talk myself out of focusing on my belly. I thought, well, my back is sore, and that idea led me back to my belly, since the back and belly are connected. Then, I thought, well my hips feel pretty tight, but something kept pushing me back to try to keep up the courage to focus on and think about my belly. My belly needs my attention. At the beginning of class, my intention was to bring energy to my belly in a way that might help me focus on getting that soft, ample belly back into shape. I thought, okay, I will focus on my belly and try to keep that going after class so that I can talk myself into doing a bit more exercise, doing some crunches or more yoga at home, or just go for a brisk walk, or maybe pass up the ice cream tonight. (Yeah, right.)

The teacher kept prompting us to bring our attention back to our spot. Back to my belly. Back and back and back again. It got a little less painful every time. I had a great class. Stretched and felt strong and sometimes wobbly and needing to practice balance. (A topic for another day, perhaps.) It was my first yoga class (without a baby in tow) since Julian was born. So, at the end, I got to lie on my back during the final relaxation and just let go. Silence. Stillness. Me and my belly. My awesome and amazing belly. I like it. ~ Nicole