The Purple Statue of Liberty

So how has it been going with six? 

Well let’s see. I got a call from the counselors of my girls in day camp informing me that both daughters are very sad and crying a lot. My oldest daughter Gabby came home from sleep away camp without any sneakers, so I gave her my Zappos username and password and told her to get herself some. My second daughter Caroline came home with a big smile but a horrible case of impetigo all over her nose. I sent her straight from the bus to the pediatrician with my husband. I couldn’t take her, or really say more than hello, because I had to run home to feed my twins.

But this is nothing. This is just my new normal.

Without a doubt, the biggest challenge I’ve had so far was getting me and my breasts, together with my four older girls, ready and dressed for my sister in law’s wedding this past Sunday. Yes, a wedding, as in I needed to walk down an aisle in a gown, less than six weeks after giving birth.

As much as I love my sister-in-law, and as happy as I was she was getting married, I’d been dreading this day since the moment I gave birth and looked down at my still very distended uterus and knew then that things were gonna get ugly. How am I going to be able to put on a gown six weeks from now? Or what kind of gown will be able to get over me?

Every pregnancy I somehow delude myself into imagining a scenario in which I give birth and imminently return to my pre-pregnancy weight. All of us mothers have been there. I remember my first pregnancy I even brought a pair of non-maternity jeans in my hospital bag as a going home outfit for myself. Needless to say, I didn’t wear them home, or even once I was home for about a year.

That is how it’s worked for me in the past, and it is certainly how things seem to be playing out this fifth time around following a natural delivery of twins born at 6’7 and 5’14 pounds respectively. When the nurses announced those numbers in the delivery room, rather high numbers for twins, I got my hopes up—maybe I really was “all baby” this time. I love that expression. “All baby.” And I actually got it a lot this pregnancy, together with the other compliments like it. “You’re all in front” or “I’d never know you were pregnant from behind” or “you must be having a boy.”

Unfortunately, I was clearly not all baby, or babies. I was about 1/3 babies, and 2/3 I don’t know what, but it’s some undefined jiggly mass that seems really happy staying put for a while.  I’m continuing to be “all in front” which is not where you want it all to be at this point. And it’s not just in my head. At my joint bris and baby naming (we had one boy and one girl), my three-year-old nephew looked up at me from under his baseball cap and with the innocent eyes of a child, pointing at my stomach, said “uh oh, Aunt Eri, I think they forgot one.”

I know what you’re thinking. That’s how every woman looks at the bris, one week after delivery, but I can assure you things haven’t gotten any better. They actually seem to have gotten worse. At a sock store this past Friday, the salesperson looked at my stomach and said, “aw, I just saw the baby move.”

“I don’t think you did,” I was forced to tell her.

“Really?” she asked, digging herself into a deeper hole. “It really looked like it moved.”

“No, I had twins five weeks ago,” I told her.

“Oh,” she said, turning bright red, “wow twins. You look great.”

I know I sound shallow and vain focusing on something like baby weight after something so miraculous like the birth of a healthy baby, or babies, takes place. And it’s true. A little weight is a small price to pay for the gift of a healthy child. But I’m human, and unfortunately I can’t help it. It is hard walking around looking pregnant when you’re not, especially in an age of thinness, and in an Upper East Side culture with an interpretation of thinness all its own. On top of the fatigue and sleep deprivation and engorged breasts and varicose veins, it is hard to walk around not feeling good about yourself.

And men don’t seem to get it. One guy I know asked me if while I still look pregnant I enjoy going to bars and getting a rise out of the bartenders by smoking a cigarette and ordering a lot to drink.  Hello?????

So what did I wear to the wedding? I chose a dress from a store in Long Island that sells all kinds of formal gowns but specializes in clothing for an ultra-Orthodox, very modestly dressed Jewish clientele. Modest was certainly the way I wanted to go—very drapey, very layered, in eggplant, the color of the wedding party. I had my measurements taken in my eighth month, when I was so big, but cute big, funny big, and we said then, we’d “take it in” after I gave birth. (It unfortunately did not need to be taken in too much.) I also asked them to make sure the gown was nursing or pumping friendly, easy to lower the top so I would not have to undress each time I needed to feed.  If you’re having trouble visualizing it, picture a purple Statue of Liberty. (Sorry, a mental picture is all you’re going to get.) That is what I looked like. Luckily I didn’t have to hold the bouquet up over my head with one arm.

But the fact is I made it. And I even had a great time. Even with all my dread. Even as a purple Statue of Liberty, and even though over the course of the wedding, two people walked in on me in the bridal room pumping, with the top of my dress unbuttoned to my waist and nothing but two translucent breast shields in hand. I couldn’t even cover myself quickly because the milk was pouring out and I was afraid to get milk drops on the gown.

I missed my twins though. I was never away from any of my infants for such a long day, but I guess in large families, life cycle events are bound to intersect. With six children I would imagine and hope that one day I too have one child getting married after another just gave birth.

In the meantime though, I just had my six-week follow up appointment today with my OB, and got the green light to start exercising again. I certainly have my work cut out for me. Next summer, I told the dressmaker, I am coming back and getting a form-fitting gown made for my next life-cycle event, Gabby’s bat mitzvah.