I don’t know if it was the end of the day-and-night-long nausea, but sometime in August I stopped putting much effort into my appearance.
I was so grateful to get up each morning without wanting to punch a hole in the wall that anything else seemed like a bonus. It’s not as though I didn’t bathe – I did. It’s not as if I went out of the house in tattered clothes – I didn’t, although some days proved difficult as I haven’t spent much money on maternity clothes, and some pieces work better together than others.
So I was clean and somewhat put together, but I let myself go. With so many more important expenses in front of us, spending any money on myself seemed ridiculous. Frivolous. Wasteful. Stressful. Plus, the idea of spending any of my free time in a chair primping seemed silly since that was time that could be spent sleeping.
Eventually, though, something shifted in my head. Instead of not caring at all, I cared too much. Worse, I started hating what I saw in the mirror. The bigger I’ve gotten, the harder it’s been to look at myself in the mirror and know who the hell was staring back at me. And so, I just stopped looking. After all, I’ve said before I didn’t want to waste time with self-loathing, so it just made sense. And, since I wasn’t willing to do much more than bathe and put on clean clothes, I wasn’t expecting much to change.
But two weeks ago, we went to the wedding of one of my oldest friends. Scott snapped a picture of the two of us and…it was bad. Well, I think it was bad. I deleted it as soon as I looked at it. The angle was awful, and I was bent over and hunched up, plus? He didn’t zoom in. Had it not been this fetal-positioned, full-body shot, I might have been able to work with it, but lo it was not.
My husband, amazing though he is, is not intimately acquainted with the zoom button on a camera.
So I saw it and I shuddered. Actually shuddered. I felt old, old, old mantras creeping up – skip a meal, don’t eat x, y, z, etc. – and a whole lot of self-hatred creeping in. As we stood up to get in the buffet line, which only served to cause more angst, I stared back at Scott and said, “I am so, so ugly.” I don’t even think I meant to say it out loud, or was registering what it was I was saying and to whom. I just blankly, sadly, said it. His face immediately fell, and I could feel his entire body tense up and kick into “Fix This” overdrive. He tried to make me laugh, he kissed me on my cheek, tell me how beautiful I looked, but all I could think about was how I didn’t recognize who I saw in that picture.
I managed to shake off some of the drama. After all, even sans pregnancy, an unflattering picture is an unflattering picture. Not every picture is an accurate representation of how a person actually looks. Plus? When my mind starts triggering “skip a meal,” it’s a sign to nut up and get some perspective. Especially considering that skipping a meal is never an option, especially not when one is cooking a kid with three months left to go.
I can’t change the following:
1) I don’t enjoy being pregnant. I like some aspects to it – the actually being pregnant with our daughter part, the comfy pants part, the fact that a lot of people are much kinder to pregnant ladies part – but for the most part? Nope. Pass.
2) I don’t like how I look pregnant. I’m going to go ahead and be particularly un-PC here but it’s not just the fact that I closely resemble a beach ball that drives me batty, because good God I do, and I don’t want to hear about “Blah Blah pregnant lady glow blah” because no. I am a short, stubby little ball person, and some of us just look like ball people when we’re knocked up.
No, what I also hate is that my particular style is not easily adaptable when pregnant. They don’t make maternity clothes that are representative of any woman other than the sort who likes scalloped edges and ruffles and a big, fat bow tie in the back over their asses.
I think if you have a cute ass, rock that bow sister. If you’re like me? Oh dear. You resemble a parade float.
Don’t get me started on how I’ve had to stop wearing heels. And I love my heels.
The adages that I’ve always lived by – wearing clothing you love, that accentuate the things about your self that you love – are out the window for me right now.
3) I want nothing more than to take good care of my daughter. I can’t fathom doing anything to hurt her, physically or emotionally, so to get myself so wrapped up in the stress of my appearance, and not adequately provide for her care in utero, is ludicrous.
Later in the evening of the wedding, Scott turned to me and said that it hurt him to hear me talk like I was, especially since if anyone else was saying that about his wife, he’d punch them. He went to explain that it’s hard for him to see what I see because everything about me is helping to create our daughter, including these extra rolls, bad hair and exhaustion. He just sees who I am, and what I’m doing, and doesn’t at all make the same correlation that my brain is making.
God bless him.
But I’m vain. I am. I don’t have what I think are unrealistic demands of myself, and I’m not about to do anything to jeopardize my health or my daughter’s – I mean, if I wasn’t going to do anything stupid and unhealthy before, I’m certainly not now that I’m pregnant – but I care. I do.
Last week I went and bought makeup. I had my eyebrows and lip done. I had my nails polished and primped. Yesterday my sister-in-law, amazing woman she is, spent a couple of hours fixing the mess that had become my hair. Today? Today I feel like a new woman. I’ve almost broken down a few times I feel so much better.
I have no great way to end this. I felt awful about myself and now I don’t anymore. I can’t at all kid myself into thinking that some of these things don’t matter, because they clearly do.
