I was squinting at the mirror today, realizing my eyes need to be checked because my glasses are more than a year old and need changing. At the same time, I also know that pregnancy changes the shape of the eyeball so my increasingly blurry vision may just be temporary. I did think of getting
cheap prescription glasses to tide me over till when I give birth in August, then I figured, what the heck, with all the changes in my body, I might as well wait out these last three months
.
Three more months and then I'll be confronted with the real damage to my body. People have been warning me about stretchmarks, varicose veins, darkened skin, saggy breasts, swollen abdomen, stubborn fat... Well, I don't really mind. Really! Stretchmarks and dark skin can be bleached away, veins can be lasered off, fat can be exercised away, etc. What really has me sad is my belly button.
I'm only vain about two things--my nose and my belly button. I think that those are the only two perfect things in my entire body. Everything else (sparse lashes, myopic eyes, huge ears, big teeth, long face, thin flat hair, flat chest, bony fingers, stubby toes, flabby everywhere) is just okay. Despite enumerating all that, don't worry--I have pretty good self-esteem because I have friends and family who love me absolutely!
So anyway, everyone warned that pregnancy will wreak havoc on the body. So far, so good. I do feel insecure sometimes when I look in the mirror and see a different body. I check for changes--and there are many already--but the ones I'm most concerned about are the enlarged nose and the protruding navel. My nose is still the same, thank the heavens, but my belly button? Well, today, it is officially the same level as my tummy. Yes, it is no longer in its perfect deeply sunken, perfectly round state. And that means in a few weeks, I'll have a nipple in the middle of my belly.
I know it's so shallow but I feel a little grief over the belly button. Mommies tell me that the belly button will recede into the tummy again when the baby's out but that it will look stretched and tired. One said, "You'll just have to work extra hard to have a flat belly so that your navel may look ugly but because your tummy's perfect, it won't look so bad." Great, that's a big comfort to me!
My husband already misses my belly button and it's upsetting me. In many ways, my belly button is a metaphor of my body-before-baby and I worry not really about what I'll look like after the baby but how my husband will react to the after-baby body. I know he'll still love me and want me but he misses the belly button already and I worry that he'll miss the pre-pregnant body, too.
