Me, myself & I

Well, in at the deep end! Body image is a big thing, particularly if you're body is, in itself, a big thing! ‌‌

I went to a family wedding last month, and this weekend we all got to look at the photos. They were beautiful, and there are so many stunning shots of my recently enlarged family. Sadly, even though I adore these new photos of my family of four, I still fell victim to focusing on the size of my body in the photos. I was three weeks postpartum at the time, but apparently that wasn't enough of an excuse for me to cut myself some slack. ‌‌

Having just had my second child, my body has (naturally) changed in many ways in the last year. My boobs have grown and shrunk back down; my stomach has stretched and sprung back; my feet swelled as I carried my daughter through heat waves and gave birth in the middle of summer. In spite of knowing that these changes were coming (because this is not my first rodeo), I've still really struggled with them. My body has provided for and grown two beautiful children and I still can't find it in my heart to let the appreciation of that fact overwhelm the lack of confidence that I suffer with.‌‌

Not being able to read my body's cues as normal, because my body was different, has meant that I have a heightened sense of health anxiety. Every little niggle and ache is NOT to be trusted, or so says my fight or flight response anyway. Everything is cancer. It's illogical and exhausting and really impacts my confidence in my body's ability and appearance. ‌‌

Even with all of the progress that has been made around how society expects a woman to bounce back after childbirth, I still felt disappointed when it took a mere 6 weeks for me to get back into my pre-maternity jeans. I was impatient to feel "normal" again, without processing that actually that normal may be gone forever. My shape is different now, so even though I'm the same size (a 14, just for context), my clothes are a bit more snug than they were because the fit has changed. My boobs have grown full with milk and shrunk back down twice now, and they have finally rested at a point where I think their size has been permanently altered (having to buy all new lingerie is a real shame 😉)‌‌‌‌.

My newborn is a daughter, and having her here has bought home a new awareness of how I speak about my body. I tend to be quite openly hard on myself when I look in the mirror, often asking my patient husband banal questions around, and seeking reassurance about, my kangaroo pouch, or my saggy boobs, my pockmarked and scarred skin, etc. I do not want my daughter, or my son for that matter (in today's world he's just as likely to suffer with poor body image), to grow up thinking that underappreciating their bodies is a normal thing. I want them to be grateful for what their bodies can do for them, and to be confident in the knowledge that as long as they are happy and healthy, what the outer shell looks like is irrelevant. ‌‌

For me, this awareness means I'm now trying really hard not to demonstrate my warped thinking in front of my kids. I know I'm not always going to get it right, but if my kids see my appreciating my body more often than they see me hating on it, hopefully that will be enough for us to have played our part in ridding the next generation of this ludicrous problem. And maybe the added bonus will be that if I stop doing it so openly, I'll do it less often internally too! Fingers crossed eh?!