When my baby was first born, he had some health issues. He has severe food allergies and a reflux disease. This combination caused him extreme pain and made feeding next to impossible. Inside of me, I had created a safe and healthy environment for him where all the vitamins and nutrients he needed came in a safe and painless form. At two weeks early, he was well over 8 pounds. In short, I created a fat little baby. Once he came into the world, he had to start eating like the rest of us do--through his mouth. Eating actual food, or milk as the case may be, ended up being next to impossible for him due to the complications from his health issues. The fat little boy that I had nurtured inside of me began to lose much of the weight I had helped him put on during his development. As I watched his sweet little rolls disappear, I was so sad to be losing my fat baby. Once we got his health issues under control, he began to pudge up again. Now, he has rolls EVERYWHERE--his legs, his arms, his wrists. He has two chins and some of the chubbiest cheeks out there. And I'm sorry to say this just in case it's being taped and he'll one day hear this--but do you know what that amazing little baby boy has on his cute little baby butt? Cellulite! My baby has cellulite! And it's the cutest thing I've ever seen. It's funny that I want and love nothing more than this fat, fat baby. I look at his rotund stomach and I'm proud. I am so very proud of how well he is chunking up because I know that it means that he is healthy! On the days where he doesn't eat well, I fear that I will lose some of those rolls that we worked so hard to get back on him.
It's funny that I can recognize that it is so healthy for him to be fat. Yet the slightest bit of fat on me seems foreign and wrong. It never ceases to amaze me how much a 7 month old can teach me.
I'd like to say that I've hit a point of total recovery and that I feel wonderful about myself every single day. But that just isn't true. As a matter of fact, as I stand up here today, I am having a particularly difficult week. I feel fat and I am mad that 7 months later, my body is more like my post-baby body than it is like the Heidi Klum post-baby body that strutted down the Victoria's Secret runway just six weeks after giving birth. I hate that I can't run as far as I used to and that my pre-baby jeans are still packed away in a box and are nowhere near close to fitting me. But the difference between this girl and the girl who felt this way before is that this one knows that there are healthier ways to deal with this anger and emotion than starving myself to happiness. Because let's be honest. That wasn't really happiness. When I was asked to speak here today, I wanted to stand before you and say look at me! I went through recovery and I didn't get fat! Then I had a baby and I lost all the weight in a healthy way and I feel GREAT about myself! You, too, can have it all!
Well, part of that is true. I did go "through" recovery. And I didn't get fat. Yes, I gained weight. But I did not get fat. But guess what else? I had a baby. And I did NOT lose the weight over night. Heck, I didn't lose all the weight over 7 months. I'm still hanging onto a good portion of that weight and it honestly makes me feel like crap some days. But recovery has helped me learn something very, very important: recovery itself is a process. The girl in that story was in recovery. She was not recovered. This girl that stands before you is recovering. She is not recovered. Every single thing that happens in our life will change our recovery story. Getting pregnant years before we planned to have children put a HUGE wrench in my recovery plan. But I dealt with it. Mostly by giving into every pregnancy craving I had. Now I am dealing with the inevitable baby weight that follows carrying and providing for another human being for a full 9 months. And I am learning that I will never feel good about myself 100% of the time. But that's okay. I am able to say, "I feel fat." And be done with it. There. I feel fat. There's nothing I have to do about it. I don't have to go starve myself or wake up at 4 am to work out before I head into work. I can just feel fat until the feeling goes away. Or even better, I can focus on things that really matter. My job, my husband, my son. Yes, my recovery story may be ever changing. But the one thing that stays the same? For the rest of my life, I will probably never be the skinniest girl in the room again. And I'm okay with that.
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