Patience

"Patience is the theme of our class today," my yoga instructor said to us this morning. (And, by the way, it's prenatal and postpartum yoga, and one of the ladies brought her 7-week-old-daughter to class and oh my God was that baby ever cute. Cute, cute, cute. Absolutely cannot wait to have actual real live babies of my own.)

Anyway, patience. Patience with our bodies, all the changes, our emotions.

Applicable to yoga class, and also life in general, especially right now.

I have, I've realized, no patience with myself. I'm not cutting myself any slack.

I'm having a hard time with how my body's changing (feeling so fat and unattractive, scared I will never be pretty again...vain, I know, but there it is. Also, who I am is so based on athletics...being essentially a couch potato these past few months has left me feeling so adrift.)

I have no patience for how sick I've been, and exhausted. I've had to make allowances for these things, but I hate it and I fight it.

I have no patience for not feeling over-the-moon-happy about my pregnancy every second, even though intellectually I know it's normal to be up and down, especially with how sick I've been feeling.

I have no patience for the depression that creeps in, especially late at night. God, I still miss my brother, and still wonder if I will ever be OK with him dead, or if I'm just going to be in pain because of it for the rest of my life (the pain's better, more manageable, than it used to be, but it's still there). And I've just been through 5 years of trying to get pregnant (the last 3 with multiple surgeries and IVFs), and I think that's affected me more than I've let on...for so long it's just been keep your chin up and move onto the next thing, stay positive, don't think about the sadness of it. And the miscarriage I had last spring...what would have been my due date's coming up and I don't know if I just brushed all the feelings surrounding that aside when it happened and now it's coming back to haunt me, but it's feeling hard, even though I am pregnant now with two beautiful babies that seem to want to stick around.

In short, I want to be this happy, glow-y, beautiful, serene, perfect pregnant woman, and I'm not.

Sigh.

Patience for all the flaws, Kristen. Patience for all the flaws.