Many women during pregnancy struggle with image and other women embrace what their body is capable of doing, create a little life.
There are many things we learn along the way and as a women pregnancy can definitely bring many surprises to anyone but one of the main things we learn as women during pregnancy is how to embrace it, mind body and soul. This is where Alicia's journey began.
One of the first things that surprised me along the way of my pregnancy
journey, was not the inability of fitting into my jeans within the two weeks of finding out I was
pregnant, it was how my body changed and adapted during this time and how my mind had some catching up to do.
In those first two weeks of finding out I was indeed pregnant, I had already poured over countless pregnancy
articles online and read many tips on how to dress with success during
pregnancy and they included wearing your jeans for as long as possible, and
then covering them over with a bellybelt once your belly got too big for the
jeans. Erm, not me.
I had always dreamed of having that beautiful round pregnant
belly that you see in the beautiful pictures taken during that time and I had always dreamed
of having these beautiful photographs taken, especially half-naked, to show off my baby belly.
But the reality could not have been further from this dreamy expectation than I
could have imagined.
Although I was never tall, blonde and skinny, I had grown up
fairly body-confident throughout my life. I’d had the hourglass figure that
apparently many people like. However, I had also learnt from a very young age,
thanks to my mother’s wonderful teaching, that it is what we are like on the
inside that matters the most, not what we look like on the outside. So although
I had been comfortable in my body, I had also taken it a little for granted.
After all, who cares what you look like when what matters is what’s on the
inside, right?
Until I lost the figure that I had taken for granted.
To my
horror, I had my personal self-image completely deteriorate in a matter of
weeks. I could no longer fit into my jeans and I was not sporting a figure that
would allow me to just simply buy a bellybelt and throw around my middle. Not
to mention the queasiness that I was feeling from morning to night and the fact
that all I could do was sleep! In fact, the last thing I wanted or was remotely
capable of doing was to go shopping any time soon. I felt angry at the articles and at the magazines because
they like to portray pregnancy as something pretty, something with a hazy halo
surrounding it at every turn. I realised very quickly that nobody tells you to expect that the changes pregnancy may bring, are going hard. They break down the defences you’ve known your entire
life, one by one.
I had to grapple with the idea that I had always thought of
myself as humble and down to earth about my figure. I had always dressed
conservatively and despite some well-meant advice to “flaunt what you’ve got”,
I had never succumbed to that advice, but suddenly I was uncomfortably
questioning my so-called humility. Well, if I had been so humble, why was I so
angry now? Why did it matter that my body had changed? Why was I thinking, ‘If
only I had flaunted what I had cos I certainly don’t have it now.’ Where was
that supposedly humble girl who cared only about what was on the inside?
A few weeks into my pregnancy, my husband and I got together
with our usual group of friends for dinner. One friend in the group had been
overseas and he hadn’t seen me in awhile. When he greeted me, the first thing
he said with a concerned tone of voice was, “You’ve gotten fat.” So I never did obtain that beautiful pregnant body until about
one week before I gave birth where I was less bloated and more pregnant with a harder bump. During the third trimester I had a photograph taken of me, with big round belly
sticking out in front of me and of the entire pregnancy journey this is my
favourite photograph. This is what I had hoped for but just for a little while longer.
Another scenario that plays in my head about this was we were heading out to dinner, as we had family visiting
from interstate and I did not have the energy to travel 45 minutes into the
city and walk around looking for a glitzy restaurant, much less put make-up on.
I was tired, with swollen feet. Yet somehow I managed to do it and looking back I’m glad I did, because
despite the way I was feeling on the inside, I had grown a lot in the previous
9 months. I had grown into my new role as Mother and by then it certainly
didn’t matter what I looked like, and it didn’t matter whether I could fit into
my jeans anymore. I had grown to love my new body for the pure fact that it was
carrying Life, sustaining life and that life belonged to my little baby girl
who was ever so quietly trusting of my body’s ability to keep her warm and safe.
"That this body was going to do something amazing and give me an even more amazing
journey ahead yet."
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