“Mom Body”

Sometimes I forget that I am a mom.  Or was a mom.  I’m still not sure which I am.  I’ve BEEN a mom.  I’ve carried, delivered and loved a baby.  The problem is, there’s nothing about my current lifestyle that says “Mom.”  I’m back to a life where I sleep through the night, eat what I want, do what I want.  I don’t have a child depending on me anymore.  Anyone on the outside just sees a married woman, not a mom.

But, I have a “mom body.”  I forget that, too, sometimes.  I’ll be in a dressing room trying on clothes and sneer at my reflection and the extra stomach “fluff” I see.  And then it hits me, You had a baby.  You’d think I would remember this, but sometimes I don’t.  I’m back to living my life like I always have.  I only got to be a mom for 3 short weeks.  I don’t have any older kids here to take care of.  I had planned for my entire life as I knew it to change.  I planned to be a mom.  And now…I’m back to just being Nicole.

You don’t think about how your body just keeps moving forward like a runaway car with no one behind the wheel.  I went to Owen’s funeral with cabbage leaves in my bra to help dry up my milk.  Even though he was gone, my body didn’t understand that.  I was powerless to fast forward all of this discomfort.  I was processing the emotional pain while dealing with a body that was out of control.  I began to feel like there was nothing I COULD control.

There’s also the other physical signs of a life that once was.  The linea nigra, that dark line that forms vertically down the middle of a woman’s stomach during pregnancy, is still fading away.  Still.  I have a physical scar from the c-section that will always be a part of me.  The place where Owen emerged into this world.  An outward scar reminding me of the inward scar on my heart.  The Owen-sized wound that will heal over time…but will forever leave a mark.

And then there’s the hair loss.  Oh…the hair loss.  This post-pregnancy reminder came a few months in.  You’d think with all I’ve gone through I could at LEAST keep my full, lustrous hair.  But, again, my body is indifferent.  My body has no idea Owen’s not here.  This is what happens after any pregnancy, regardless of what transpires.  My hair falls out by the fistful on a daily basis, and I just have to keep reminding myself to take another step.  Eventually these physical reminders won’t be as emotionally painful.

Super Bowl Sunday was about so much more than the game or the commercials.  In fact, I was consumed with something else entirely.  Something that was very close to home for me.  I heard through the Facebook grapevine that a woman in this area, a woman I’ve never met, was having a baby boy.  We were all waiting for updates.  Prayers were surrounding her and her family as they waited for her son to arrive.  What struck me the hardest about their situation was that people were not praying how they would for a “typical” delivery.  They were praying her baby boy would be born alive.

Why the unusual prayer request?  She found out her previous son, at 41 weeks, was stillborn.  A random cord accident that couldn’t have been prevented.  And here she was, less than 2 years later and she was about to give birth to another son.  This son was diagnosed with Trisomy 18…a life-threatening condition.  Family and friends were praying for time.  A chance for this family to meet their son on this side of Heaven.

Her precious angel arrived that Sunday and lived on this earth for minutes just shy of an hour.  They were able to hold him, snuggle him, and welcome him into their family.  Loving him intentionally for 58 glorious minutes.  I cried for this family as I pictured them saying their goodbyes, because I’ve been there.  My heart physically hurt as I saw photos of them getting his footprints, because I’ve been there.  I remembered the bath I gave MY son after he passed.  It was all too familiar.  While they, also, have hope knowing they will see their son again, I couldn’t help but weep.  I have empathy now in a way I’ve never had before.  Her pain was my pain.  Her loss was my loss.

I was drawn into her story for reasons more than just empathy.  Her older son, who was stillborn, was named Owen.  Her younger son who lived a legacy in his time here that Super Bowl Sunday, was named Josiah Owen.  I don’t believe this was a coincidence.  It was no accident I came upon her story, nor that both of her boys shared the name “Owen.”  This woman I’ve never met is somehow a part of me now.  Our “young fighters” are up in Heaven waiting for us.

I began to think about the physical healing of her body and the emotional healing of her heart that are both taking place.  In a few months, her hair will begin to fall out in clumps…just like mine.  Her linea nigra will take a while to fade…just like mine.  She, too, has a “mom body.”  Just like mine.

What would I say to this mother regarding her own “mom body”?  I quickly realized I need to take my own words to heart.  I need to say the same things to myself that I would say to her.  I need to tell MYSELF that my body is beautiful.  I need to focus on the blessing of the scars, the lines, the stomach “fluff.”  Instead of letting them be painful reminders of what could have been, let them stir up sweet memories of what was…if only for a short time.

Any outward physical change is ok, because my heart is changed forever.  How I view the world.  How I handle pain.  How I handle loss.  How I empathize with pregnant and new moms.  I will never have a “pre-mom body” again.  But if going back to a “pre-mom body” means I would also have a “pre-mom heart”…I wouldn’t change a thing.  My “MOM body,” scars and all, gave me Owen John.  My gracious gift of God.

 

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Click here for the very beginning of our 8 year journey through life, loss and our unexpected struggle with secondary infertility.  Starting with what we shared at our 3-week-old son’s funeral.