My Postpartum Self Takes Up *More* Space

To birth a human, to bring life into the world, is a remarkable feat. It takes both strength and flexibility to sit in the process of creation for 9 months and then walk through the birth portal to go get your baby. The physical demands on a birther’s body are all-encompassing from the day of conception to years after birthing the babe.

I know this. I know it deeply and share it with every person I speak with. And yet, I cannot for the life of me come to terms with the increasing amount of space I occupy in this world since becoming a mother.

I went into pregnancy and postpartum prepared for the physical changes of pregnancy. I was armed with the tools I had developed through years of recovering from disordered eating. I had the affirmations, the body-positive meditations, and the understanding that there is not a body to “go back to” but another Self to step into. I had anticipated the 4th trimester being the most difficult; I thought that my new body and the new softness in my center would be most shocking at the start and then begin to lessen as time went on.

The physical expansion of my body was expected. The spiritual and emotional expansion of my Self that has come along with the wider hips and softer belly since the early stages of postpartum was very unexpected.
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My journey with disordered eating began when I was nine years old. My mother, after birthing her fourth child and the older of my two younger brothers, jumped on the Special K diet fad and brought home the goodies associated with it (i.e. Special K cereals and granola bars). The basic idea was to replace a meal or two a day with a bowl of cereal or a granola bar and cut your caloric consumption down substantially. After learning of the idea, I promptly declared I would only be eating 600 calories a day. My distraught relationship to food and my body was born this day.

I think at the time I expected my parents, particularly my mother, to intercede and stop me from eating so little. I distinctly remember wanting her to ask questions about my insistence on eating only salads and cereal at 9, 10, 11 years old. Looking back through adult eyes, I can see this period in time as a call for help. I so deeply desired for my mother to see me.

The irony of the situation is that as much as I wanted to be seen by my parents, I also wanted to disappear into the walls and the furniture and never be seen again. My parents were the inconsistent type: constantly swinging from one extreme to the other and myself and my sisters never knew which version of mommy and daddy we would get.

Would it be the antagonistic mom looking to start a fight with her husband or the rage-filled dad that never feels good enough and copes with his extreme anxiety by putting holes into concrete floors? Will our mother use her sweet saccharine voice to talk to us in front of strangers and then put her hands around our neck the second we are behind closed doors? Will our father throw our small bodies into our room and lock the door behind him, closing us in for an unknown amount of time, all the while loudly expressing how “crazy” his daughter is?

For those that have grown up in a turbulent and sometimes abusive household, I would imagine this internal conflict is not uncommon. Researchers describe the phenomenon as a type of cognitive dissonance in which we internalize the belief that something must be inherently wrong with us as children because to have the person that we rely entirely upon for survival be a danger to us? That is incomprehensible for the mind.

So instead we create narratives that paint ourselves as being too much, too loud, too flawed, too unworthy of love. We become the origin of their villain story. It is a tale far easier for the brain to process.

I spent years unraveling my disordered eating, jumping from one fad diet to the next in the name of health, only to realize that my incessant need to be healthy was in fact making me anything but.

My journey to conception was the final step in truly ending the cycle of disordered eating I had found myself in. The decision to conceive a child meant deciding to think of someone else before myself. I was confronted with the reality that every choice I made, forevermore, would have some sort of impact on my baby. To eat or not to eat suddenly became to nourish and sustain or to hurt.

Funnily enough, the all day sickness I felt during my first trimester, which can really only be compared to being hungover while on a boat 24/7, was the thing to liberate me from my obsession with “health.” I could no longer beat myself up over eating a bagel or justify it with a long run because a bagel was the only thing I could stomach and a run was absolutely out of the question. Bagels, wake-up wraps from Dunkin Donuts, and sour candies were the things to get me through. Intuitive eating at its finest, I’d say.

Since having my son, intuitive eating has continued to be a muscle I’ve strengthened. It is much easier to nourish oneself with the knowledge that I am in turn nourishing my baby in the process.

The physical expansion of my body is something I am okay with most days. I can remind myself that my body was home to a beautiful baby that lights up my days (and nights…eek) and that my new hips and belly serve a purpose greater than the patriarchy because as my older sister reminded me, the female body is not a display to be admired and judged according to the male gaze.

What has utterly shaken my world and threatened the foundation of my identity has been the expansion of my Self in the process. What you don’t realize in the midst of eating less and dieting more is that by shrinking ourselves physically, we are starving our whole selves.

We limit our capacity for joy when we see food as the enemy. We minimize our importance and our worth when we reject nourishment. When you begin the process of taking in nutrients, saying yes to the world, and taking up a bit more space, it can feel quite uncomfortable to realize all the ways in which you’ve minimized yourself for the sake of others.

Taking up space in the world means being seen, heard, and valued. When we shrink ourselves, we are affirming to ourselves and the world around us that we are not worthy of any of these things. It can feel safer to not be seen, not be heard: to not draw attention to ourselves, to not voice our opinions in the face of disagreement, to not go after what we want out of fear of retaliation or being disliked.

Since saying yes to food, I’ve noticed the tendency in myself to make myself small in situations that feel “dangerous.” It is a pattern I can surely trace back to my childhood where staying small felt like a question of life or death. While I am no longer in those same dire circumstances, my body continues to react in the same way. My pattern is to say less, hunch my shoulders, smile more, and take up as little space as possible.

This pattern is not one that I intend to pass on to my children. I want to model a different way of being that is confident and compassionate, for Self and for others. For myself, that has meant finding my voice to advocate for my needs, express my desires, and be honest about the role I want to occupy in this world.

It may look different for others. Nevertheless, if we can begin the process of being more compassionate to ourselves, taking in nourishment, and saying yes to life, we may very well find ourselves taking up more space and feeling all the better for it.