I was clicking through the archives of this site just now, trying to gather up bits of memory for my year in review holiday cards. I was hoping to make a list of favorite moments from 2007. I always hear new parents say the first year was a blur. It wasn’t a blur. It was just boring. But you had twins! No, I had twins in 2006, and in 2007 there was breastfeeding and too much food. And no fun clothes. I didn’t leave the house. I was a shut-in, and I was a cranky bitchfest. I spent the year pissed off. I was angry about being fat. I fucking hated feeling incompetent, not knowing exactly how to comfort the tots, then listening to Phil tell me how I could do it all better, his way, and what really pissed me off? Listening to strangers comment on my blog with, "don’t you have more important things to do than blog? Like take care of your newborns?"

I’m angry at myself now for ever letting those people get to me. I’m angry at all the people who made me feel bad about feeling fat. Who said, "it’s not about you. How selfish are you?" Yes, it is about me. It doesn’t stop being about me just because life changes, just because the universe shifts a little, just because you become a mother. You can take care of others and still think about yourself. And making people feel bad about this serves who, exactly?

I remember in remarkable detail not wanting to get out of bed just because I heard a child cry. Sometimes I didn’t. Sometimes I left it to Phil. Sometimes I did. They thrived. Things got easier. I still get pissed at all the people and their warnings of how hard it would be. Why do that?

I was a new mother, am a new mother, and if you asked me how I felt, I doubt you’d hear overwhelmed, or even exhausted. Those wouldn’t be the first words out. Like a tub. A porker. A roll. And I hated not fitting into clothes without elastic. I still see women shopping at Target with their newborns, a car seat in the shopping cart, and I think, "how is she that thin with a child that age?" Must be the nanny, I hope. But I know it’s not. And I get angry that I’m not her. I’m not thin mom. And I get angry that I’m even angry about it. Not all that much has changed in a year.