Biology.

A woman’s body is amazing.

For a long time when I was first pregnant with Mila, you could not really tell.  I looked in the mirror each morning, hoping to see the first signs of a legit baby bump, but just saw a weird-looking, high-seated fat roll.  For a long time, every time I saw my friend M she would wail in disappointment that I wasn’t showing yet.  We want a baby bump now!

When things finally got going, maybe shortly before week 20, they really got going.  Each week, I didn’t think I could get any bigger; but I did get bigger, every week until she was born.  I was all belly.  I felt like a capital-W Woman.  I kind of loved it.

The day after I had Mila, I remember looking down and realizing my belly looked really, really strange.  I had been lucky not to get any stretch marks, but my belly looked stretched out.  Pouchy.  I prodded it and it felt loose to the touch.  Empty.  It was sad.

Two days after that, my boobs suddenly blew up two or three cup sizes.  They hurt.  They leaked freely.  They looked like bad fake boobs, tacked up too high on my chest wall.  They were a sad reminder of who we had lost.  I didn’t recognize them as belonging to my body.

A few days after that, the boobs were gone as quickly as they had come.  I think that was when my body decided it was time to start cleaning up shop.  My stomach started to tighten up.  The swelling in my fingers subsided.  My joints felt more stable.  I started exercising again.  Now, two and a half months out, except for a little extra padding over my belly, you’d almost never know what my body has done.  I am back to running on the treadmill, lifting weights, doing planks.  The baby weight is not melting off.  I am having to starve and exercise it off.  But it is coming off.

Even while I hated the extra weight, weird sags, and misshapen boobs, part of me grieved the loss of these changes, the last physical signs that I had once wholly carried Mila.  But my body is not letting me dwell, and is charging inexorably back towards its original state.  In the span of less than a year, I have produced and expelled many strange and foreign fluids, an extra organ, and a lovely little human; and subsequently, have very nearly reverted to normal.  Biology is wild.

We are animals.  It is gross.  It is beautiful.