belly up

I brought two sizes of jeans into the fitting room with me yesterday. Size 8 and size 10. I figured one of them was probably the right fit, but in the end, I walked out with a 12. How would I know? It was an experiment in trial and error. I used to be a size 4, sometimes 6, but I haven't worn regular (i.e. non-maternity) pants since January, when I was 10 weeks pregnant. That was when my largest pair of H&M stretch cords finally got too tight and I went to Motherhood Maternity for the first time. I remember that night, how shy I felt, not quite showing a bump and feeling as if somehow I didn't deserve to be there. Roxy met me at the store, all eight months pregnant of her, like the older sister who knows the ropes, and we oohed and aahed over my round little tummy in the stretch-to-fit jeans and all the cute empire-waist tops. Shopping for clothes was fun back then. I used to tuck the little pillow they leave for you into the pants and under the tops and stand sideways in front of the dressing room mirror, dreaming about the big belly yet to come.

But yesterday I was alone. Alone with my shriveled skin; my brown, misshapen navel; my stretchmarks; the droopy pooch that still makes me look more pregnant than I did that day in January. I grew very big when I was pregnant with Daniel — and it was all in the tummy. My skin stretched like a balloon, bigger than a basketball, and when Daniel came out, it all collapsed into a jiggly mass, covering the aftermath of child-carrying: the odd shape of organs pushed aside, the abdominal muscles spread apart, not yet joined together again. The sagging skin, like an old woman's, that I can grab with my fists when I lie in the tub. The aches I still feel when I sit up too quickly or overwork myself. I didn't know. It's one of those things moms don't talk about much, those details you somehow miss along the way, like how much you will bleed after you have a baby. Two weeks after Daniel was born, I walked into a doctor's waiting room, and one of the women in the lobby asked me how far along I was. I used to smile when people asked me that question, but at that moment, I wanted to slap her. And then, when I got called back into the exam room, the nurse asked me the same thing. She did a double-take when she looked at my chart and saw I was there to have a post-partum issue checked out. "You shouldn't be that big," she said, but when I jumped down her throat, she apologized. No one told me things like that would happen.

I'm not used to this new tummy yet, and I'm not sure whether to hold out hope that in a few more months it will flatten out, smooth over, go back to the way it was when I had a size 4 dancer's body. I don't think it will, though. I might eventually fit back into my old clothes, but I think I will need to make peace with the body that having a baby has given me, to wear it like a badge of honor, to feel comfortable in it. I used to feel comfortable in my body, but (in retrospect) that was easy. Now, I feel self-conscious. When I see older women, or any women with children, I find myself glancing at their bellies to see how they shaped up in the long haul. I look at women's bellies the way other women might size up their handbags or shoes or hairstyles. I watched the TV clip of Brittany Spears walking onto the David Letterman set. She had her baby in September, and her stomach is already flat. I hate her. It's kind of pathetic, but I can't help it.