Navel: Missing in Action
This is a little story I wrote a about a year after having Panorama. It can also be seen on Helium.
After having my baby, one of the most difficult things to get over was the loss of my belly button.
I had a baby last year. Within 4 weeks of giving birth, I was the same weight that I was the day I took the pregnancy test. Don’t be too impressed- I was quite overweight when I got pregnant. Many women have to gain “padding weight”. This is the weight that your body wants to hide in special corners of your body in case you run into famine during the gestation period. This is the weight that women find difficult to lose after giving birth. I already had this padding, so my body didn’t need to make any extra. The only weight I gained was baby, baby swimming medium, and some extra blood volume.For the most part, my body appears to be behaving similarly to pre-pregnancy. Perhaps my chest is a bit larger and maybe not as high, but no major changes. My stomach skin has a different texture and some stretchmark shadows but I don’t really notice.
The only change that bothers me is my belly button.I have always had an “inny”. Not only was it an inny, but if you looked inside of it, it was twisted so tight that you could not see the end of it. Some people have belly buttons that when you look in them you can see the back wall of stomach skin. Mine was a black hole. For all I knew, it continued deep into my insides. It was a vortex. A tornado. Who knows what happened to lint and dust and toothpicks that got caught in my bellybutton.
About 8.5 months into my pregnancy, my entire abdomen really stretched. It was like trying to put a condom on a basketball. I could almost watch the skin being challenged to the point where it couldn’t give anymore and a lightening bolt-like stretchmark would appear like faultlines in an earthquake.
It was all very cool until the area of stretch approached my navel and I helplessly watched my personal hole-to-china become distorted. it was pulled in all directions. I could actually watch it slowly unravel itself. The skin that became exposed in small increments was purple, timid, virgin skin that hadn’t ever seen the light of day. It was skin that was created and twisted long before my own birth. It seemed to be squinting. Then, one day, I woke up, looked at my belly button and I could see the back wall.This was mind blowing to me. It was like meeting God. Maybe you always were pretty sure he was there, but now, here He is. Looking at you.
After the birth, the stomach quickly deflated, but the navel never retwisted itself. I thought maybe it would be like a spiral phone cord- you take the phone off of the hook and let it spin itself loose, but inevitably it becomes twisted up again.
Apparently this is not the case with belly buttons.I had my annual exam with my OB/GYN the other day and when he asked me if I had any concerns and if I was feeling back to normal, I lied and said everything was great.
I just didn’t think he would understand. Nor do I think there is any treatment.
Perhaps when he does my next c-section he can reach in there and give it a few turns.
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