Hopefully, this explains my silence over the last couple of months. Call it shock, call it a fear of miscarriage... whatever it may be, I was unable to write or communicate for the better part of three months. I am returning to the land of the living now, and I am returning with unexpected lessons learned.
In all of my angst-ridden twenties, all of the years I spent deeply fearing pregnancy, fearing the implications on my body, how much weight I would gain, how I would never get my body back... in all of those years, it never occurred to me that pregnancy might teach me once and for all not to give a flying fuck what people think about my body. In fact, I never considered that it would teach me anything about much of anything, except how to endure seemingly eternal pain, suffering, and exhaustion.
I don't have any interest in being a pregnancy blogger. However, I can't help but share what this strange and bizarrely natural process is teaching me about nutrition and overall health. So far, aside from not giving a flying fuck what people think, which is lovely by the way, I have learned three extremely valuable things that I hope I can carry with me for the rest of my life.
1) Food is for growth and nourishment. I have always understood in theory that food is fuel and should be utilized and valued as such. But somehow it always came back to being about boredom and control, self-medicating and quelling loneliness, a sugar rush and a nice satisfying Serotonin bath. In pregnancy, there is constant awareness of exactly what is needed at the moment, and there are immediate results if I have fed my body the wrong or the right thing. Food is fuel, powerful and necessary, and the body is going to use that fuel down to its most minuscule resource.
2) There is a time for rest, a time to give yourself a break. I am a trainer. It is my job to push people to the limits, to help them break through their boundaries to reach a higher level of strength and endurance. But when the workout is done, in order to build muscle, recovery time is needed. Rest is a crucial part of the equation. In pregnancy, there is no option. A pregnant woman is called upon to rest, and there is no negotiating . She must lie down and close her eyes or people will die: car accidents will happen and baby-daddies will be destroyed. Rest is an imperative for health, pregnant or not. I have learned to take heed, to pay attention when rest is needed and to make time for it. I have learned to let go of the guilt of taking a few moments for rest and to enjoy it, fully and apologetically. The remainder of the day will be so much more productive for having taken it.
3) If you listen hard enough, your body will tell you when the resting time is over. After days or weeks of down time, you will begin to twitch and ache for movement. You will find yourself squirming in your office chair and unable to sleep at night for all of the tossing and turning. If you ignore the call for motion, you will slowly grow lethargic and immovable. This is the moment you must get up and go for a walk, head to the gym, or call a friend to go out dancing. The longer you wait, the harder it will be to get going. Give your body what it needs, and it will ask for it again the following day. The first twelve weeks I was pregnant, I needed rest, plain and simple. Now my body is telling me to move, and I am slowly, tentatively venturing back to the gym and back to the sidewalks with Elvin leading the charge.
I won't call pregnancy beautiful. It still seems kind of bizarre and freaky to me, but I will call it miraculous. It is miraculous that the body knows how to create another human being when called upon (no matter how freaked out the mother). And it is miraculous for me, a lifelong body image cripple, to be free, finally, from trying to fit the mold... instead finding beauty in the urgency of hunger and the clarity of purpose, in the body doing its job: eating and breathing and moving.
I look forward to taking this knowledge with me back to the world of the non-pregnant because the human body is no less miraculous when it is not making a baby. It just took this massive, life-altering event for me to finally not give a shit what the haters in my own mind have to say and put the focus squarely and intently on the wondrous inner workings of my physical body, loving it exactly as it is and allowing it to do its thing.
