So this post is a hard one to write.
I was having one of those mornings when I was feeling really good. Well, what I like to call "really good, regardless". Truth is, I've been battling the flu for almost two weeks, and then Gray got it at the begining of the week, missed three days of school, and topped it off with an incredible case of pink eye. Oh, and John was away for a large chunk of all of this (he also had the flu, too). So despite feeling like a completely overtired, cranky, unappreciated piece of shit, I guess I was feeling pretty good, regardless.
While I've been fighting off all these germs, I've also been eating better. I kind of had this epiphany that it was time to make some major changes with my relationship with food. I broke up with processed flours, and in the process of letting them go, I let go of ten pounds. Not easy, but not super hard either, when coupled with the flu that killed all my taste buds.
As much as I hate to get caught up in the numbers on the scale, I know what I weighed when I started IVF with the twins, and I was pretty OK with it. I was curious if I would ever be able to "get back to that number". I wasn't sure if I'd be able to. I wasn't even sure if I would ever be able to muster up the energy to ever WANT to get back to it. Maybe last month, I made a goal that I wanted to get down to 158 lbs, and jokingly said that if I did, I would buy myself my big girl's camera (you know, jokingly but dead seriously). A big fancy expensive camera carrot dangling on a string. I never thought I'd get that carrot. But finally, I reached the goal. And then I reached my pretwin weight. And now I'm officially one pound less then a year ago, when I was just embarking on the surrogacy journey. 154 lbs.
Just like all these women, who also weigh 154 lbs.
Why am I writing about weight, and sharing it with the internet? Because I have a lot of girlfriends, and I find that absolutely none of them talk about weight and most of them are too afraid or sad or scared to talk about their relationship to their bodies. There is so much shame and embarrassment about it. Some women might be horrified to admit that they weight 150-something pounds. I feel no shame about it anymore. I feel perfectly fine in my skin, happy to be where I am. And you know what, if I weighed 250 lbs, I would hope that I would find a way to either embrace it or change it, but that I had people in my life that I could talk to about it in an honest and open way.
...And then something like this happens...
As I was sitting in the car this morning with Lulu, waiting for school drop off, she looked over at me and said "Hey Mom, you know you still kind of look pregnant. Look down at your stomach, see?" She didn't say it to be mean. She was just stating a fact. And you know what? I looked down, and my stomach really truly did look a little pregnant. But the reality is that five babies have grown in my uterus, and my core strength is shit. I can let my stomach muscles hang out and seriously look like 6 months pregnant. Then I can suck it back in and look non-pregnant. But I still feel pretty damn good, regardless. For now.
Deep breaths. So the challenge for me lies in feeling good where I'm at, even when innocent comments can challenge me and threaten to bring me down.
I still haven't bought that camera yet...I better get on that. I want to get out there and start documenting the beauty that this spring promises!
