The Council of People What’ve Born Babies has met, and anyone not on the council is hereby banned from making any references to a new birth parent “getting their body back,” whether they mean getting it back to the way it looked before becoming pregnant, or simply being alone in their body for the first time in forty weeks (give or take).

A throwback this week, because I was talking with someone about those first surreal weeks of new motherhood, and all the memories came flooding back about how quickly I was expected to feel like “myself” again, like a separate person from Momo.

It got asked this a lot, actually – probably because I pretty vocally hated being pregnant and they expected I’d be happy to NOT be – but, man, it was hard to answer that one with a smile. Even though I was no longer carrying Momo, my body wouldn’t feel like my own again for… probably years, honestly. Between breastfeeding and pumping and the ways Momo changed (and continued to change) my body and the endless parade of people prodding and asking questions about my body and the way that I was still, physically, attuned to her and her needs… I’m really only now beginning to feel like I’m truly on the other side of that.

(And even then! I never got my body ‘back’ – not in the physical sense, and not in the sense of being my own discrete person either. Though Momo’s independent now, my form and its needs (sleep, for example…) is subjugate to hers, still. It’s weird! It’s become part of who I am, but it’s still weird to think about!)

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