Shrinking, or at least, rearranging.

Hannah's sick and not coming over today, making this the first day I'm home all day with 4 kids and no other adult.  I pondered calling up one of my friends who has offered a play date, but I have to drive out to the midwife's house this afternoon and I don't want to add another drive in the other direction.  So we're going to have a light-school day -- I'll teach reading and history, and assign a few pieces of independent work, and read aloud.  Then I'll spend some of my work time doing planning instead.

I hope to spend a little bit of that time working on the next installment of the birth story, to be released this evening after I return to the internet.  For my Lenten discipline, cheesy as it may sound to you, is to ban myself from the Internet, and as much as possible from the computer, between 8 AM and 4 PM and then again for a couple of hours after dinner.  I just don't see a total ban being feasible or charitable in this day and age.

Last week sometime I posted a photo of my (clothed) postpartum belly.  I was thinking about how rare it is to read birth stories that extend into postpartum and then I realized that the belly photos rarely do either.  Time has made a difference.  Here's that photo reposted, and then a more recent one.

     
 You see? Definitely a change over the course of a week or so, and incidentally, there wasn't any meaningful weight loss between these two photos.

Pregnancy is crazy weird.

Comments

[Barbara C.]

People don't want to see pictures of my belly post-partum...they would hate me even more. At least with the last three, my belly just looked like a deflated balloon right after birth.

That is cool to see the difference a week can make all by itself.

[Rebekka]

You look good!

[Christy P.]

I think that the difference is your abs re-engaging.

[Amy F]

Thanks for posting the afterwards belly pics! So fascinating (easy to say when mine is still growing)

[Celeste]

Yes, thanks for posting your postpartum shots! I have always found my postpartum belly to be a kind of mystery--who knows what it will do next?! :)

[bearing]

I think my favorite description of the postpartum belly was in the book _Operating Instructions: A Journal of my Son's First Year_ by Anne Lamott. She's 3 weeks postpartum.

"People kept trying to prepare me for how soft and mushy my stomach would be after I gave birth, but I secretly thought, Not this old buckerina. I think most people undergoing chemo secretly believe they won't lose their hair.

"Oh, but my stomach, she is like a waterbed covered with flannel now. When I lie on my side in bed, my stomach lies politely beside me, like a puppy."

That "like a puppy" always gets me. Love it.