Thursday, August 16, 2012

Pregnancy & Body Image (by Sarah)

Every pregnancy is different...or so you hear about 2,000 times when you're pregnant with a baby who's not your first:) This pregnancy has definitely thrown me for a loop in at least one area: body image. I just don't remember struggling this much with Ava's pregnancy. I think that's because I knew I was doing everything 'to a T' with hers. I ate exactly what the medical world says to eat. I exercised. So I felt that it didn't quite matter as much, or factor in as much, how my body looked. I knew I was doing exactly what I should, so I was healthy.
This pregnancy, though, has been quite different. I didn't start out with my lists and charts of what I should eat. I didn't make sure I had a certain amount of 'yellow or orange vegetables' or 'leafy greens' or to the ounce right amount of protein each day. I just ate what I felt like eating and tried to fit in veggies and fruit. I'm finding out that what I thought would be a blast--lack of structure and discipline--opens a whole other realm of difficulty. I've found myself stressing about how much weight I've gained. To the point that as I've tried to work through it, one motivating factor was thinking, "I don't want to look back on this pregnancy and only be able to remember being afraid of gaining too much weight."
So I've worried alot about how I look this time around. And I've delved into the depths of working out issues of beauty and body image again.
Some of the things that have helped me this time around are:
  • I already mentioned that I don't want to look back on this pregnancy and only remember obsessing about weight fears
  • I've tried to take on a mentality of sacrificial love. My struggle mostly comes that I want to eat foods that are comforting, instead of disciplining myself to eat what's the very best for development of our baby. So then I worry that because I didn't eat the very best, that I'm gaining too much, or I look 'fat.' One principle that has helped me in this battle between comforting and loving, is to realize this idea that love is sacrificial. So instead of indulging in a momentary pleasure, I can sacrificially love my unborn baby by eating what would be best for her development.
  • I have to keep reminding myself to operate in love when I eat, though...because that 'eating what's right for the baby' mentality can easily slip into a 'eating to keep my body skinny' mentality. It's a slippery slope for me because it's about discipline. So I've been trying to eat not to glorify my own self, but to glorify God. I eat disciplined to honor God and the gift He's given me, not to live up to the world's standards.
  • Speaking of the world's standards, One train of thought that has meant alot to me is the idea that there is a physical beauty that is displayed in pregnancy that's not able to be displayed in a non-pregnant woman. I'm not saying a pregnant woman is more beautiful per se, or that women who aren't pregnant or can't get pregnant aren't beautiful. I'm saying that God Himself designed pregnancy. He also designed femininity. And one essential part of femininity is beauty. Pregnant or not, I might not feel pretty, but I just am, because God made the femininity of women to be that way. So since God made femininity with innate beauty, and He made pregnancy, I can pretty much conclude that there's something beautiful about being pregnant! Moreover, if you just look at a pregnant woman, you can visibly see that there's something uniquely beautiful about pregnancy because the beauty doesn't have to do with the world's rules about beauty. It doesn't have to do with striving or perfection, if that makes sense. It is there in extra weight, in swollen ankles, in a rounded face, in a distended tummy, and not even in spite of these things. It's almost because of these things. You can see it if you look closely. Sadly though, it's really hard for me to see it in myself because the world, with all it's rules and definitions of beauty, has trained my mind to believe that beauty is only found in being skinny. But it's not! There's a unique beauty in the pregnant body.

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