10-13-11

I don’t feel like there’s a lot going on right now besides being pregnant so I guess that’s why my blog is mainly about pregnancy these days. Tomorrow is the big day! Hopefully baby cooperates and lets us have a look at what’s going on between it’s legs. I’m hoping for a girl, but I don’t want to be disappointed if it’s a boy. I will be, but I don’t want to be. Here I am at 15 weeks. What a sight.

So much of me wished this was twins so that I could be done or only have one more left. Then all the comments about looking like I’m having twins wouldn’t be so offensive. Those comments haven’t started yet, but they will. I have felt pretty good for over a week now, which makes me frightened that my nurse midwife will not tell me that I lost weight at my next appointment. Not that I hope to lose weight, but to not gain weight would be dandy. I went running again Wednesday but I only did 2 miles and felt quite good afterwards. I would like to keep exercising just for the peace of mind that I’m doing what I can to keep my weight gain to a minimum.  I know, I know – weight shouldn’t matter so much to me, but it just honestly does and I don’t know that it ever won’t. I had one of those I’m-so-large-that-I-can’t-even-look-at-myself days yesterday. I really hate how I look pregnant. I hate how I look not pregnant so add being pregnant to that and it’s just a mess. I wish I could actually internalize that belief that I have that our worth is not dependent on what we look like or what we can and can’t do. I believe that, and I see worth in others, but to find worth in myself is just a never-ending pursuit. I was thinking tonight about when I was 20 and weighed 116 lbs - which I am far from at this point in my life - and sometimes, all I can think of is how I will finally feel like I’m “good enough” in the event that I can ever get back there. But I’ll be honest and tell you that at 116 lbs I felt just as fat and just as large as I feel now. I wasn’t enough then. I was so skinny, but I didn’t FEEL like I was. I felt uncomfortable and frumpy and always so self-conscious of my body, the exact same way I feel today and in all the days since then.

Enough – thin enough, pretty enough, talented enough, smart enough, cool enough. I hate enough because enough is an elusive concept, that goal that I am always chasing after. I am constantly redefining it when I get closer to what I thought enough was and then realize that for some reason I still feel as far from it as I was before I started.  Enough will always be beyond my reach if being enough is determined by checking off items on my list of Things That Make Me Good Enough because that list is constantly growing, and new or revised goals seem to be added to it daily.

Most of the time,  I’m the only one that has such unrealistic expectations of myself. Neal A. Maxwell said, “Some of us stand before no more harsh a judge than ourselves, a judge who stubbornly refuses to admit much happy evidence and who cares nothing for due process.” I believe that I’m enough to Heavenly Father, but being enough to myself is much harder.

I tell ya, being a woman is hard work. And being a pregnant woman is even harder.