Crossing into this world through your body is a miracle

How great a privilege is yours to carry this proof of giving birth.

I am determined to be naughty, to tease you, and put in a passion, so you don’t give a second to fruitless lamentations about lost smoothness and vanished firmness. Your looks, as they are, are precious. Forget all negative expressions, voicing none. You should not regret the aftereffects, which helped you become a Mother.

I was not in the least put out by these comments

These exclamations burst from strangers often, “It is huge. You’re having twins, aren’t you?” “Put me wise. Your due date is quite soon, isn’t it?”

This is my favorite, “Looks like you are going to have a bi..i..ig girl? I know it by the shape of your belly.”

“All other people seem quite dwarfish to me nowadays,” I used to say, smiling with every tooth in my head.

Although these noises were accompanying me everywhere, they could not prevent a thousand lights to play about my face. I accepted them with charming grace.

I don’t mind admitting that when I was pregnant, I felt as if I was born to have this experience. I went about with a sense of champagne in my head. Every day was mine, forever mine. The cheerful, happy smile was made for my lips.

I was the song of life and life was dancing inside my womb. My entire being shone with the glory of having created, with a sort of ecstasy which redeemed all silly comments.

One day during lunch my coworker smiled deprecatingly and whispered, “I have half a mind to have a baby. Hm… Can I ask you something?”

“Say away.”

“Now seeing you, how is it to carry such weight every day?”

How about a compliment, “You are so darned pretty with this enormous belly of yours.”

This one came from a close friend, “I’d just love to give you a hand with this baby you carry. He will get out three-year-old right away.”

It was intended to be funny, “It just tickles me to death. How are you going to get back in shape?”

I used to respond, “That remains to be seen.”

I was so skinny all my life. People saw the still slender frame, when they looked at me from the back, and couldn’t guess I was pregnant. So when they saw my lovely, rather big bump in front, they were in quite a shock.

And I felt refreshed, delighted, and invigorated. I walked, feeling as if I had wings to my feet, experiencing a sense of exhilaration. I was selfishly, shamelessly happy.

I am lost in self-love and half-delirious self-admiration

Although I used expensive lotion and reasonable moisturizer, I could see neither rhyme nor reason in it after reading scientific articles about the genes and inevitability of stretch marks if those were destined for me. I saw fit to take extra care of my honorable baby bump. It deserved the daily rubs and caresses.

I didn’t think about how I was going to fix up the ruined tummy business. I didn’t care two straws about the way it was going to look like, as long as my baby was happy there and healthy when outside.

I’m well rewarded for my pains and pleasures

The discovery of my beautiful belly being all covered with drawings of rivers, streams, cascades, tides, and torrents didn’t make my eyes gush out with water of self-pity, rather made me proud. Big happiness swelled me from inside, and every stretch mark strengthened my love for my body.

There is a stamp of heavenly poetry about my tummy, no doubt I will die without ever having known even a passing feeling of embarrassed timidity. I look at my body with an air of conscious triumph. My fortune is enormous, it has no bounds — I am a Mother.

Your body is well worth the honor of looking at and admiring.

Crossing into this world through your body is a miracle.

Say only positive about a body that felt the dancing of life from inside.