My belly has always been an afterthought. Never the object of childhood teasing, except when a boy I liked said girls with hair on their stomachs were gross because they looked like men. The size of my belly was never a topic of conversation. But it was inside my head. Obsessing over how much my belly stuck out above the waist of my pants, and if it was less than the day, week, or month before. But I don't want to write about that. It feels vulgar or wrong. Too personal, but more than that, so negative. I want to praise my belly for all it's done.

Changing size with such ease. Stretching to accommodate another life, something that had never grown there before. I thought I would be afraid of watching my body change, like I was afraid when I was young. But I found a beauty in it, this process that I had wished for for so long. There was beauty, yes, and also the almost mundane nature of it. My body knew exactly what to do. It was as if my belly had been preparing for this moment all my life. Which it had. In my teenage insecurity, I could never have imagined being proud of my belly. How it grew and moved along with my baby. The ripples across the surface whenever she stretched. We moved as one, my belly expanding to fit her.

I had imagined it so many times, hoping desperately to feel these changes happening from the inside. Wondering what it might be like. And still I was surprised. Different from an out of body experience, it was like a finally inside of the body experience. For the first time, I wasn't trying to escape my body. I wasn't ignoring the sensations inside my belly, or pretending not to feel them. I was eagerly searching for them, wondering when the next rolling wave across my body would begin. My baby was a part of my belly, and because I loved my baby, I loved my belly, too.