Accepting the Postpartum Body

After 5 pregnancies and 4 babies, I am well aware of how the body changes postpartum. My body grows large babies and stretches unbelievable amounts. I know that it takes months to lose the belly. How in the days immediately proceeding birth my body feels oddly empty as my organs begin to rearrange into their usual places. The way it takes weeks for the uterus to return to prepregnancy size. How weeks and even months post birth my ligaments are still loose from the effects of relaxin. How the postpartum hormones can make the mind crazy. It still manages to surprise me each time.

3 weeks ago, I started this postpartum journey for the last time. I am well aware that I'm postpartum, but for some reason, I keep forgetting. This birth just went so much better (birth story to come soon, I promise!) and my body literally feels 100 times better than it has felt after any of my previous births. Even my postpartum belly has gone down a lot faster than previously. Instead of looking 7 months pregnant like I usually do at this point, I look 5 or 6 months pregnant. Usually, I make do with my maternity clothes for at least a month postpartum. But I'm finding that most of them just don't fit...or they're striped and stripes + a postpartum body just don't mix.

So, today I decided to try to find a couple of shirts to help bridge the gap. With a baby in the sling, I searched through two different stores, trying on shirt after shirt. Nothing fit. The current styles just don't facilitate breastfeeding very well and they definitely don't flatter a postpartum body. In previous years after my other babies, I would have given up, probably in tears, tearing down my strong body that had just brought a baby into the world. I would have blamed myself for not having the "perfect" body yet, for not being one of those women whose bodies bounce back quickly post birth. Today, I took a breath, looked at my sleeping baby that lay on the bench, and said, "oh well. These styles just don't work. I'll have to keep looking." No negative talk. No blaming myself for what some people have decided is currently in fashion. No tears.