How Motherhood Changed Me

My body has let me down a lot.

As a child, rheumatoid arthritis and a lack of coordination left me unable to succeed at the sports I desperately wanted to play. As a teenager, my small chest, chubby thighs, and big nose left me self-conscious, uncomfortable, and unhappy with myself. In college, an eating disorder left me thin but without a period for four years. So it really came as no surprise when I didn’t get pregnant as soon as I wanted or when my doctor discovered that I don’t ovulate on my own. It was less of a surprise when, at 41 weeks pregnant, I still hadn’t gone into labor, and I didn’t even flinch when 18 hours of induced labor and two-and-a-half hours of pushing had failed. “A C-section?” I thought. “Let’s do it. Let someone capable deliver my baby, because I can’t do it.”

Nursing Molly, my oldest daughter, turned out to be much harder than I ever anticipated. My milk took five days to come in, and I was overwhelmed with feelings of helplessness when it came to feeding my baby. The feelings of incompetence, combined with the 30 extra pounds that settled around my waist and the crippling lack of sleep, made for a pretty rough three months. Eventually I emerged from the fourth trimester haze and looked at the jogging stroller I had received as a baby shower present. “Well,” I thought, “maybe I could give this a try.” I strapped Molly in and rolled out the door.

The first attempt at running with the jogging stroller wasn’t fast or pretty, but I felt better about myself afterwards. By now it’s a story I’ve told before: a short run got longer. A slow pace got faster. A lonely mom got happier.

One day is ingrained in my memory as the day I gave up obsessing over my appearance. Molly was four months old and resting in her bouncer while I got dressed and scrutinized my figure as I always did. As I cast my eyes down, away from the image in the mirror I disliked, I made eye contact with my sweet girl. I knew then that I was influencing her eventual feelings about her own body. I decided to stop gazing and scrutinizing in the mirror and focus on the things my body can do.

I grew and delivered two little girls.

I can run a mile in five minutes, 31 seconds—six minutes faster than my high school mile time!

I can do 50 real push-ups.

I can run eight miles while pushing a jogging stroller.

I’d love to be able to tell you that I never worry about my looks anymore, but in all honesty, it’s a work in progress. In fact, I disliked the way I looked in the pictures for this project and considered not participating. But I want to show my girls that we are so much more than what we look like.