My Body is Not Me.. Or Is It?

I still can't quite fit comfortably into my wedding dress, but I can zip up my Chinese qi-pao, suck it in and zip it up, and then glance at my own reflection, the robust body slowly ripping away at the seams as my airway tightens from lack of air, relieved only by unzipping it.  I can now button up pants from before I had kids, and because I've adapted to the tightness of my muffin top overhang, they even feel okay, just a little bit tighter than before.

I am somewhat content, maybe even a bit happy with where my body is now, and I know I should be pleased that it was able to have three kids, even if two were premature.  I happily wear a c-section scar low enough that nobody will ever see, even in a skimpy two piece swimsuit.  But I am human.  I am a woman.  I have moments of longing, of anguish, and of hopeless desire to just go on a shopping spree and have cute, new, fun, and non-Mom looking clothes.  Then the fiscally responsible and financially aware brute in me takes over.  Does it make sense?  You'll probably be pregnant in the next few months.  Your body will be going through whatever it has to do to grow another child.  That means another 8 months of pregnancy (assuming my at risk pregnancies result in a premature child again), and then likely another 15 months to normalcy, and not without lots of hard work eating better and working out, all while taking care of three kids, a new baby, and hating my post-partum body that is not itself and struggling to find things to wear everyday besides exercise gear.

I am not my body.  But I am.  I try so hard to love my body, but I have a love hate relationship with it.    I also have out of body experiences as I observe myself wondering where my body went.  It doesn't feel like my body... at least not for the next little while as I'm having kids, growing them, birthing them, nursing them, etc.

And yet it feels so pathetic to woe over something so superficial and meaningless.  But it is where I am at this very moment as sales pop up in my junk mail and I unrelentingly look at them, momentarily get excited, and then fall into a gloom of dejection.  Sacrifice is never easy.  Growing up, I never thought of the toll my body would have to take for that big family I wanted.  Now.. four kids looks like a great end game.  Sorry little Daisy.. five is just a bit much... unless you adopt or have a surrogate. HA!