Photo: Courtesy of Jessi Cruickshank
At the start of my second trimester, my husband came home from work one day to find me crying in my underpants, lying spread-eagle on the bedroom floor. He dropped to his knees in a blind panic. ?Honey!"? he exclaimed, ?Are you OK" Are the babies OK"""? I just lay there, tears streaming down my cheeks. ?WHAT IS GOING ON,? he implored, reaching for his phone to call the emergency room.
?I? I? I?,? I replied though convulsive sobs,?I can?t fit into my jeans.?
I?m not sure who or what was raging more, my husband or my hormones. This was NOT a medical emergency. This was me, placing all of my prenatal anxiety onto the one thing I couldn?t control: my body.
I have never felt 100 percent confident with my body, but I have always felt 100 percent in control of it. I have learned how to take care of it and how to appreciate it and how to block out any external judgment of it. Gradually, I?ve learned how to love every pasty, freckly inch of it. And yet, the moment I got pregnant, I turned on it. Like a vicious internet troll, I started to body shame? myself. I hated how I suddenly couldn?t zip dresses over my rib cage, how I could barely squeeze into my yoga pants, how my belly was busting through the buttons of my shirts. After a lifetime of praying for bigger boobs, I even hated it when they started to grow?from all directions, spilling out the sides of my bra into what can only be described as a lower-armpit muffin-t...