A Surprisingly Sane Blog

Here’s the part where I get a bit gross and happy, so you may just want to pass over this post unless you wanna barf a little and throw junk food at me.

Yesterday I did something I swore I would never be able to do again after having April.

I wore an itsy-bitsy bikini.  Not with yellow polka-dots, though.

And you know what?  I didn’t feel horribly self-conscious.  In fact, I felt almost confident at first.  Which is a good thing, considering the fact that I like to wear really trashy swimsuits.

Then my sister’s comment pushed me over the line to full-out-confident.  “You look great, Tam.  Really fit and in shape.”  And Kathryn’s not a liar.  She’ll just say it like it is, so I knew she wasn’t just trying to make me feel good.

Let me back up a second, because this is not one of those snotty bragging “look how great I am moments”.  I’m most definitely not that kind of person.  Usually, I’m consistently pointing out all my flaws and agonizing over them more than any single human ever should.  So the fact that I was willing to step into a swimsuit in front of people, particularly a little black bikini, marks a huge improvement in my overall psyche.

Truthfully, after having baby number two, I thought my body was ruined for good.  Birthing an almost-9-pound baby out of my not-very-big self was pretty damaging.  I ended up with three types of pelvic-organ prolapse (rectocele, cystocele, and uterine), severe postpartum depression, anxiety, and obsessive-compulsive disorder, and a slew of stretch marks and loose skin that I thought would never shrink back.

Both times I was pregnant, I gained a whopping 47 pounds.  No one would have guessed it because I stayed in great shape and was groovin’ to the beat until my baby was practically falling out of me onto the dance floor.  But no, the fact that I gained almost 50 pounds was my dirty little secret.  My midwife explained to me once that because I weighed less than “average” to begin with, it was natural that I would gain more than average.  It was a healthy amount.  But hell, it sure didn’t make me feel any better that the scale almost broke when I stepped on it, or that I weighed more than my skinny-ass husband when I finally popped.

I hated myself after giving birth.  I was in such a bad place that I wouldn’t even let James see me naked for months on end because I loathed how I looked.  I was embarrassed to have sex with him because of all the problems I was having.  I couldn’t look in the mirror without feeling utter disgust.  I felt dirty and ashamed.

Most of those problems were in my head.  Part of the my horrific battle with the depression and my obsessive-compulsive thoughts.  No matter what I did, I couldn’t get away from them.

Now, after months of treatment including physical therapy for the prolapse, medication, mental-health therapy, marriage counseling, one very bad run-in with a support group, and intensive exercise and weights classes… well, I finally let myself be seen in a bikini.  (Oh, and I can have sex without freaking out again.  But that’s a whole different story.)

My body will never be back to its pre-baby state, of course, but both it and my mind are doing a heck of a lot better, thank God.

I still have bad days.  There are still things I dislike about myself.  I will always have some prolapse issues.  I will probably always struggle with the mental problems I’ve dealt with.

But that’s all just part of who I am.

My physical therapist said my results for the prolapse therapy have been about the best she has ever seen.  The biofeedback she hooked me up to confirmed it.  I never would have thought that it could have helped so much, but it has done amazing things for keeping my insides where they belong and lessening the other problems the prolapse was creating.

While that is an issue that no one else sees, though, the bathing-suit-body is.

You know what prompted me to even put that little skanky swimsuit on in the first place?

I had to buy a new pair of jeans this weekend to replace my favorite pair that *sniffle* finally developed a too-big hole in the knee to wear comfortably.  I’d avoided trying on any pants since I could remember.

But holy cow, the size 6 were too big.  So I tried on the size 4.  And they fit! Like, extremely well.  I am officially back into the same size I wore in freaking high school!

That’s when I finally had the nerve to really look at myself in the mirror.  All those weights and exercise classes have whipped my exterior shell into some pretty good shape.  Good enough to actually *gasp* wear something I knew I’d never be able to wear again 7 months ago.

I was wrong.

I’m slightly embarrassed to admit this, but I felt like throwing a party when I saw myself in that thing.  While the stretchmarks will never disappear, the muscle tone far overshadowed the fact that they even exist.  The extra skin melted away with the baby fat.

I am so proud of myself.  To be honest, it was kind of overwhelming for me (in a good way) when I realized that here I am, 7-and-a-half months later, and I am finally doing pretty well both mentally and physically.

There was a point when I didn’t think this was possible, which is why it is so significant to me.

I am just so proud of myself.  For once.

Now it’s time to go bake some cookies.  Fattening ones full of carbs.  Yummy.

Current Mood: Happy

Tags: Anxiety, Depression, Physical Therapy, Prolapse, Therapy

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 19th, 2009 at 11:06 pm and is filed under Confessions, Insecurities, Make Me Smile, Therapy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.