An Ode to Pregnancy

I always suspected I would enjoy pregnancy. I’d heard plenty of horror stories - uncontrollable vomiting, nonstop nausea, stretch marks criss-crossing bellies galore. My own mother points accusingly at the deceptively delicate-looking roadmap of spider veins running over her calves, my gift to her at birth.

Yes, I’d heard the tales of woe, but they never phased me. I wanted it all.

Bring on the bloating, the aches, the flatulence! Welcome, morning sickness, fatigue, constipation! Come one, come all! After all, at long last, this is what my body is meant to do. To hell with the countable ribs, jutting hipbones and dissatisfied sneers labeled as glamorous in the glossy pages of US Magazine. There is a greater goal for my own collection of lanky limbs - a mission that resists the siren song of the scale-worshippers and surpasses the cult of thinness. My parts are no longer the subject of residual scrutiny from my critical eye - the ghosts of eating disorders past, the small remnant of adolescent dysmorphia gone awry. Youthful insecurities pale in comparison to my current task.

I am making a person, and I have never felt so beautiful.