Post-partum Issues

I’m having a hard time with body-image issues right now. I’m surprised at how much I think about it, and I am ashamed to admit it because I’ve never liked to be a “typical” woman, and I have always hated to hear women, especially attractive women, complain about their bodies, especially their weight. Aside from when I was actually pregnant, this is the largest I have ever been, which makes sense, but it also makes things hard for me mentally. My mind’s eye sees me as how I looked last summer, probably the best I have ever looked in my life (IMHO), and then I look in the mirror and, damn, what happened? Obviously my gorgeous daughter happened, and while she is more than worth it, I have to remind myself over and over, This is temporary (though I fear that it is not). You just had a baby 9 weeks ago. The right-away-skinny people are the freaks. Heck, lots of women look like you who have never even had children! But I think about it all the time. Way too often, and in too great a quantity. I am also embarrassed at how vain it shows me to be. It also doesn’t help that the two things that were the most affected, my skin/face, and my stomach, are the two areas of my body that I am most self-conscious of. My stomach, which for the first time in my life I was okay with last summer, now resembles a bizarre squishy cantaloupe. Emily even asked me why it was stripy, which it is, a big red and white cantaloupe. My face, on the other hand, which looked horrific at Christmas time but was cleared up by what seemed to be a miracle, Murad, is now just as bad as ever. My only consolation is that I apparently the motherhood “glow” is able to shine through several layers of makeup. But again, I hate being so heavily made up. I find it embarrassing. Not as embarrassing as going anywhere without it, which I haven’t been brave enough to do yet. By the comments people make about my “nice skin” either they are unobservant or lying. I look like the “before” picture of zit-cream ads. All this I am obsessed with. Tiger says this obsession is just a part of the hormone shift, which has hit me quite hard in the last two weeks or so, and perhaps he is right. The truly sad part is that even with all of my self-absorbed whining, I still receive attention from my looks, and I am occasionally reminded that in the grand scheme of things, I am quite well off aesthetically, despite falling short of my ridiculous standards for myself.
I was at the post office the other day, thinking about some new makeup that perhaps would make my face appear less like a flakey pizza and trying to suck in my gut when a young woman came in. She had a look to her physical person of one whose physical deformities also suggested mental slowness as well. I realized then what a bastard I was. Here I was, moping about how “bad” I looked (I still had a guy in line check me out), and this poor young lady may never have had a guy give her the time of day. I hope I am wrong about her, and that my even thinking all this proves what a jerk-face I am, but I also know that people are cruel and that we judge on the physical even when it is completely unfounded and unmerited. I want to be the type of person who looks not at the outward apperance, but at the heart.