Everything's Different

I got pretty obsessed over the extra post-partum weight quickly after we came home.  Friends and family were bringing meals and I didn’t care whether I ate them or not, but I was calculating weight watcher points and reading labels like nobody’s business.  It gave me something to fixate my attention upon and something (I thought) I could control.  And after the first week and a few pounds lost, the number on the scale stopped moving.  I got back in the gym, we started Couch to 5K, and I didn’t lose an ounce.  My OB wasn’t concerned and everyone that I mentioned it to told me the same thing they told me about my grief, “give it time.”  For someone like me who has always been in total control of herself and almost every facet of her life, this was yet another thing that I had lost control over. 

The numbers on the scales are finally moving in the right direction again, and I went to my 4^th Weight Watcher meeting tonight.  While I enjoy the meeting as much as I enjoy anything these days, they (like everything else) are not like they used to be.  I used to speak up in the meeting about what worked for me that week.  I used to offer advice to others about their weight loss struggles.  Now, I sit pretty quietly and rarely speak up. I am thankful that no one in the meeting knows that I’m there to lose the baby weight that is here even though the baby is gone.  And, I’m mostly glad I don’t have to worry about talking to virtual strangers and having a total meltdown.

But, I also have this desire to scream, “this is not my fault!  I didn’t get to breast feed!” (Everyone assured me that the weight would just fall off if I would only breast feed.)  I want to tell perfect strangers that I did not just get fat, but that I was so deliriously happy during my pregnancy that I ate whatever I wanted.  And, it would’ve been totally worth having 25 pounds to lose if only I had Levi in my arms.  If the weight was coming off slowly because I’d rather snuggle a powder scented newborn than go to the gym.  If I didn’t have to buy pants two sizes bigger to wear to work because I wasn’t back at work yet.  If my reality was not the train wreck that it is, everything, EVERYTHING would be different.  The meeting tonight was yet another reminder that nothing in my life will ever be the same.  Even when things get easier to bear, and I am clinging to the hope that they do, nothing will ever be the same as it was before I lost my baby.