by Melissa Willets posted in Pregnancy

Having a post-baby belly without the baby. Those of us who know this reality, make up a small club. We are moms who have lost a baby, but still have that flabby, deflated bump, just like the moms who are lucky enough to explain it away with a newborn.
I?ve previously written about this mush of skin growing three children created, calling it a Momfin top instead of a muffin top. I treated the topic with humor, because after all, sometimes if you don?t laugh, you?ll cry. Now that I?ve suffered loss, I don?t plan to stop finding the funny in life. Even after a loss this life-changing, this brutal, this grueling and horrific and punishing, I still look down at my spare tire ruefully.
But this time, I feel pretty attached to it. I like it there. It?s one of the only lasting connections I have to my baby, whom I must try and learn to live without. She was in there, just weeks ago. We were one, when this mound of flesh was inflated with her promise.
So no, I?m not in such a rush to shed the baby weight, like I was when I had the honor, I now understand, of cradling warm, beautiful bodies against my chunk of belly. The other three times, I exercised feverishly, eschewed carbs, and hated on my post-baby body. I even felt ashamed, and, inexplicably, tried everything to disguise the proof I?d just given birth: billowy shirts, corset-like undergarments, and strategically-placed diaper bags.
Not now. Not after loss. I don?t feel the same kind o...