I can honestly say, the days of my life on which I have felt truly pretty {think Heidi Klum, JLo, Sandra Bullock}, have been few and far between.
Like the majority of the population, I’ve long felt fairly normal. I was never the hottie in my high school class. I was the girl who matured late {if at all}. The one who had an average face. Average build. And my friends were the ones with the curves in all the right places. The ones all the boys wanted to date. So, it is only fitting that on most days, I don’t fancy myself anything outside of ordinary.
I can pinpoint exactly 4 occasions where I felt pretty. The day I got my braces removed. My senior prom. Formal sorority recruitment. My wedding day. On each of the aforementioned occasions, I felt pretty…oh so pretty. Like swirl-around-in-a-circle-and-wear-a-princess-crown pretty. It’s a hard thing to recognize but every so often, you just feel like you’ve got it. Outside of the day I got my braces removed (I was an almost-freshman in high school and had worn them since I was an almost-5th-grader), while each of the days were spectacular, they all required effort…work…hoopla…fanfare…and sometimes, well-placed undergarments.
Once all of the makeup had washed away and the spray tan had faded, in each instance the pretty passed as well. And pretty is like that. It is fleeting. But beauty holds on a bit longer. As narcissistic as it sounds, I will admit, there was a period of time in my 29 years, when I feltbeautiful. When, no matter what the mirror reflected back at me, I felt radiant and glowing. My belly stuck out further than it had ever done so before. The scale showed a number I would generally never want to share with a single soul but instead, broadcasted monthly on my blog. My pant size surpassed my shoe size and my body was no longer my own.
And yet, it was at about 4 months along in my first pregnancy that I felt it. Beauty that was so much more than pretty. So much more than movie star.
So … fantastic.
My skin looked dewy {like Mandy Moore-perfect-makeup-application dewy}. My belly {for likely the first time in my life} felt rock hard. And I had boobs…real ones … not formed by Victoria or anyone else for that matter. Oh yes… and the hair. My hair grew like a weed, shined like a gem and good hair days seemed to be that of the norm. But the very best morsel of harboring a human is the calm that you feel within and this feeling is actually what makes everything seem to glisten on the outside. The connection to something bigger than you. The knowledge that somewhere among all of life’s chaos, there lives simplistic perfection.
What a gift. A redeeming gift amidst the barfing, the nausea, the weight gain, the cricks and creaks and the insomnia that come with pregnancy.
Then, I had my son. A 4 pound 9 ounce, 36-week, baby boy. Not ready to come into the world quite yet, our pre-prime peanut was an itty bitty bundle of nerves. Tummy troubles, screaming fits, and spit-up galore filled our first four months. The form-fitting fashions I wore while I carried our cutie were forgotten in the corner of my closet and I could generally be found in mama’s milk-soaked shirts and expandapants. Where was the beauty I’d felt on my gestational journey? The taut tummy, the plump and perkies, the shiny skin … but most importantly, the calm. I needed the calm.
Over time (and as the screaming ceased), I felt more me again. Although the feeling of beauty stayed at bay, I felt less frazzled and more fresh. I remembering thinking that perhaps, when you care for someone more than you could ever care for yourself, maybe the beauty goes away. So what’s a girl to do? Why, get pregnant again, of course.
Twenty-three weeks into my second pregnancy (it took a bit longer this time around), after the exhaustion subsided, the barfies went bye-bye and following several months of feeling like I may never want to be pregnant again, the beauty seems to be back.
I can sense it once again. Yes. The boobs are back and bigger than before. The bump is beginning to firm up and out. But really, it is evident this time (because things are not as in place as they once were) that all the outer glow is only a product of the inner bliss. The best part … the piece of perfection that comes with carrying a peanut … has arrived. The c a l m. And this time, I am hoping to keep it around a little longer.
