The Momoir Project

“What is that?” my husband asked, as a look of disgust crossed his face.

We were standing in our bedroom and I was dressing for the day.

“What’s what?” I asked in my most casual voice.

I knew full well what he meant.  Hair. That’s what’s what. Not just any hair. Armpit hair. Lots of it. Under my arms.

“Aren’t you going to shave?”

“Nope. I’m not shaving my legs either.”

 

Not a big surprise. As a mother of six young children, I shaved my legs on rare occasions and Sundays if I remembered. And I was prepared for this moment. So, I began my spiel. If God had wanted me to have silky smooth pits and legs, hair would not grow there. It’s the way nature intended me to look. Women all over the world don’t shave. They’re regarded for their natural beauty. It’s a sign of respect to age naturally.

 

He looked a bit puzzled so I quickly turned to my backup argument - the money we would save. I chose my words carefully beginning by reminding him how lucky he was to have a low-maintenance wife. He had agreed on past occasions that he had it easy compared to other husbands. I didn’t wear make-up, didn’t enjoy shopping, didn’t wear jewelry and didn’t like him to waste cash on flowers. This made his life simpler and most of all saved him money. Now, we wouldn’t have to buy razors.

 

“Besides,” I stated with haughty confidence, “I don’t get sweaty pits as often when I don’t shave. I’ve been experimenting for awhile.”

 

This caught my husband by surprise but only for a moment. He shrugged and a look passed between us that caused us to chuckle. With six children under the age of eight, our days of frolicking in the nude were on hold. It’s no wonder he hadn’t noticed my little experiment.

 

“So is it going to bother you if I don’t shave anymore?”

“I guess as long as I don’t have to see it,” he replied, reluctantly.

 

A countenance suggesting superiority over other mothers continued its growth within me. I was a mother who didn’t need all that “stuff” to feel beautiful. I was beautiful just the way I was, hairy pits and all. With the matter resolved and a smirk of pride, I continued dressing in my no hassle jeans and T-shirt.

 

For 17 years, I embodied the crunchy granola mom. I was co-sleeping before it was cool and experienced in the art of attachment parenting before it was branded. Cloth diapering was a way of life. Breast is best was my mantra. I had given birth at home twice. This was who I was. For years, I had been comfortable living in my mother body. By the time my husband and I had the hairy pits conversation, I was deep in my role of the self-righteous earth mama.

 

But my self-righteous attitude was a cover. After nearly two decades, I began to realize I’d been living a lie. I wasn’t embracing the scars borne from the christening of motherhood eight times over. Truth be told: I hated my mother body. And I hated it more and more as it began to fall apart. Gone was the flat tummy - seven pregnancies resulting in eight children had warped it into an unrecognizable mass of wrinkled skin and deep craters which lacked a belly button for identification purposes. My size 32C breasts and all their perky goodness had long ago made their exit. As they exclusively fed those eight babies, they grew larger and longer and began resting atop that mess called my stomach.

 

Before I had children, my body was a source of self-esteem. When I was 20 years old, I was basking in the sunlight streaming through the windows of my boyfriend’s home. Lounging on the couch reading magazines, I thumbed to an article addressing the perceptions teenage girls had towards their breasts.

“What are you reading?” my boyfriend asked as he entered the room.

“About boobs,” I said.

“What about boobs?” he quickly took a seat next to me.

“Oh, that it’s okay if they’re lopsided, pointing in different directions and stuff. That they all look different and that you shouldn’t be upset when yours aren’t perfect.”

“So what about yours?” he asked, as if he didn’t already know.

“Mine are perfect. Perfectly matched, perfectly sized,” I said with a tinge of pride.

 

I was in love with my breasts. They were exquisite. Their symmetry was perfect. The areolas and nipples were centered just so and were the perfect color so they contrasted against my skin without being too dark. They stood straight at attention. I adored my breasts. Three years later, my body began the natural changes motherhood brings. It continued to change with each new life I carried and birthed and nursed. I no longer recognized its shape. My breasts and stomach were out of proportion with my stick thin legs and arms. Luckily, I had the needs of my large brood of young children to keep my mind off my looks.

 

Sometime after giving birth to most of my children, I happened upon a blog called The Shape of a Mother. I sat transfixed at my computer screen unaware of the chaos of my children running and playing just behind me. Here were dozens of incredible photos of mamas showing their stomachs and breasts to the world and the photos alone were a powerful statement. I had been attempting to accept my changed body for years. As I began to read the stories of these women who embraced their bodies – wrinkles, sag and flab – I gained a testimony of the importance of loving my mother body. They wanted the world to witness the body of real mothers. With the birth of each child, we gained a few more stretch marks, our skin tone became soft, and our breasts lost that youthful exuberance. These women were strong and I wanted to be one of them. After that day, I committed to become a mother who rejoiced in the changes her body had endured.

 

But more than three years after stumbling across that blog, I came to the end of an era in motherhood. I was finished birthing, nursing, and diapering babies. I was forty years old and my youngest child was weaned and toilet-trained. My oldest child was headed to college. Instead of feelings of sadness as this chapter in my life drew to a close, I was excited about the opportunities that awaited me. But I also felt unsettled. My earth mama body

and ideals seemed less important as I envisioned the second half of my life. As these thoughts of freedom began to permeate my consciousness, an awakening occurred.

 

On a visit to my parent’s home, I was confronted by the image I had invented for myself. As I yanked the shower curtain open, I saw reflected in the large bathroom mirror my nude brutalized body. I no longer wanted to embrace this body. It taunted me, disgusted me. My sagging breasts were swinging and pointing at the floor. I stared at my huge dark areolas with thick nipples that always choked my babies when they nursed. My eyes were drawn to my stomach. It had expanded and molded to each life it carried and after delivering those babies into my arms it retracted lifeless and empty not remembering its former self. I hated the way I looked. I was ugly. Voices of my children playing in the next room lulled me back to reality. Guilt exploded and reminded me that this body was a small price to pay for the unconditional love that was their gift to me on a daily basis.

 

The voice of shame began uttering its objections to thoughts about altering my appearance. A nip here. A tuck there. What I felt seemed almost sacrilegious,but vanity was creeping into my thoughts and I was imagining myself as a sexy hot mama – one with eight kids. I craved the possibility of having my body back like an alcoholic craves a drink, and that craving began to encompass my whole being. I felt driven to see what could be done to reverse what motherhood had done to my body.

 

I entered the plastic surgeon’s office for my consultation feeling a bit shameful. Luckily, there weren’t any other patients in the waiting room. My palms were sweating as I filled out the paperwork. The bubbling of the rather obtrusive saltwater fish tank filled the empty space in the room. Pamphlets surrounded me regarding every possible alteration one could imagine concerning their appearance.

“Stephanie,” a rather friendly nurse called my name and led me back to a small exam room.

“And what can Dr. Yates help you with today?” she asked.

“Um, I’m here to see about a breast reduction and a tummy tuck,” I answered.

“Great!” she seemed excited for me. “Remove all your clothing except your panties and put this gown on with the opening in the front. The doctor will be in shortly.”

 

She closed the door behind me and I quickly changed into the gown. I sat nearly naked and sweating under the paper thin gown awaiting the doctor’s arrival. The anticipation was grueling. Voices whispered that I was a traitor to who I was, who I had become over the years. I hushed them into the recesses of my mind. A slight knock on the door startled me back to reality.

“Come in,” I said timidly.

An extremely handsome doctor entered the room, causing me to perspire even more. He was followed by the nurse.

“Hello Stephanie. I’m Dr. Yates,” he said, shaking my hand.

I couldn’t believe I was going to show my mother body to this man.

“The nurse tells me you’re here to find out about a breast reduction and a tummy tuck.”

“Uh-huh,” was all I could utter. As he began his spiel about the two procedures, I forced myself to come to my senses.

“Hop up here on the table and let me examine you,” he said. The sweating increased once again.

“Open your gown and just drop it off your shoulders so I can see what we’ve got here.”

I could have told him what we had here – gargantuan boobs with pockets of sweat nestled under them.

 

He studied my breasts like a painter studies his canvas. He then took each breast individually in his hands and molded and twisted it while ticking off numbers of grams to the nurse who recorded them in my chart.

“The smallest I can probably get you in is a C cup while maintaining proper blood flow,” Dr. Yates explained.

A smile crossed my face. I was thrilled.

“Okay, now stand up here so we can take a look at that stomach,” he said. “Pull your underwear down a bit, there that’s good. Now, let me see here,” he said, pushing and stretching my flabby skin. He explained that I had diastasis recti which was a separation of my abdominal wall.

“I’ll stitch those muscles back together and we’ll pull this skin down and build you a new belly button,” he said.

“You mean you can really and truly get rid of this?” I questioned while grabbing the hunk of protruding skin and muscle just under my sternum – the part of my stomach I detested the most.

“Oh yeah,” he said confidently.

I was astounded. Those voices in my head preaching their opposition to my vain ambitions were forever silenced. I walked out of his office as if sailing on the wind. I suddenly understood that it was okay to want a version of that old body back. I didn’t have to have visible scars on my body to prove what kind of mother I was. My children and I knew what kind of mother I was and that was all that mattered. All the wrinkles, sag, and flab could be removed and I would still be the same mother – loving and carefree, only now with the addition of a confidence generated by feeling good about the way I looked. As I walked through the parking lot to my car, I made my decision – surgery would literally open me up to a new chapter in my life.