post baby body

I have had a different experience with my "post baby body" than most people.  My recovery after I delivered Eli was incredibly quick and easy.  I don' think I realized how sick I felt during my pregnancy until it was over.  I felt like a million bucks the day after I had him.  Even when my milk came in... and all the interesting pain that comes with that.... I felt way, WAY better than I had while I was pregnant. I hardly felt any pain and my body shrunk down a lot faster than is usual for me.  I was surprised by this.  I thought I would feel guilty about feeling good again. I haven't, but I am sad.  Sad how fast everything seemed to heal and feel better.  Feeling like I had just had a baby made me feel connected to Eli. The post baby body was proof that I did, indeed, have a child.  Usually you have your child to validate this.  I don't have that right now.  So, I felt like my body was a way to connect with the idea that I was still his mother and he was my child.  It is such an interesting irony that things have gone back so quickly.  People have asked me how I feel, and I just stare at them until I realize that they are asking about my recovery.  I feel like my recovery only lasted 45 seconds.  

The whole time I was pregnant with Eli my heart would pound so hard.  I felt like it was incredibly stressful on my body to sustain his life and this pregnancy.  It made it hard to sleep at times.  My body felt so taxed.  The night we came home from the hospital, I laid down and didn't feel my heart beating anymore.  I know it still was, but it was soft and quiet now. No reminder of what had happened.  My blood pressure was normal just an hour after I delivered him even though it had been elevated for several weeks while he was inside me.  I couldn't believe how quickly my body wanted to get back to normal.  I resisted it. Most people want their body back right away after they have a baby.  I think its a little overrated and unreasonable to think that creating something that takes 9 months, will  return to normal in 9 days.  It felt like that this time.  I look at myself in the mirror and wonder where he went.  It was too quick.  My pregnancy body left almost as quickly as he did... making me feel like it never happened.

I was in a department store last week (which is a whole different story).  I looked up and say a big poster of a woman in some workout clothing. I looked at it and wondered why they had someone like that on a big poster.  I wondered why they didn't have a pregnant woman. It was such a quick, unconscious thought.  I realized that I connected pregnancy with beauty.  I felt beautiful while I was pregnant with Eli.  Not just beautiful on the outside, but a REAL beauty.  It was complete...so much different than an outward, worldly beauty.  I was a creator.  I looked at the poster again and thought what a sad imitation of beauty that the world has tried to make us buy into.  I have never understood or felt beauty that way, until I carried Eli.