Bottle Scars

Pregnancy ages you faster than real life. There’s the fat. There’s the scarring from the exit wound. There’s the psychological feeling like you’ll never be free to do whatever you want ever again. But the worse part for me has been the skin stretching. I know that skin is the most flexible and healable part of your body, but I can still tell that mine will never be the same again. It’s horrible. My stretch marks look like bright magenta tiger stripes along my waistline, down my thighs, and radiating out like melon markings on my breasts. They shimmer in the sunlight. Everyone says they will fade, but I know that the texture is permanent.

Getting back in shape is triply difficult because of this. Yes, vanity plays a role in the trauma. Go ahead and hate me for being a weak-minded narcissist. But, who wants to put on a swim suit and go out in public when she has 19 extra pounds around her middle with colorful stretch-mark racing stripes advertising the new real estate? As someone who has always been thin (and clueless), I have the added hurdle of suddenly having to figure out how to get over what everyone else has been complaining about for years. No one every told me that jiggling fat actually hurts.

And, then there’s the bra issue. Before pregnancy I was a tidy-and-lovely B cup. During pregnancy a voluptuous-yet-manageable C cup. Now that I’m nursing, I’m a gimongous-and-ridonculous D cup. I clearly need to get some professional help in the underwear department, because this morning I went for my first jog this year and had to actually support my boobs with my own hands the whole way. Ow.

Is it all worth it? You decide: