Baby bump here to stay

Thank you Jennifer Garner for saying what needed to be said:

"I am not pregnant, but I've had three kids and there is a 'bump.' From now on ladies, I will have a 'bump' and it will be my 'baby bump' and let's just all settle in and get used to it, it's not going anywhere."

Garner set the record straight Wednesday on The Ellen DeGeneres Show. Her words were not defiant or full of angst. She sat on a sofa chair in a studio filled with lights, cameras and eyes on her telling her truth, a message sprinkled with hope, to the world. She was polite, passionate, funny and endearing. She was beautiful and eloquent. She said what every women with “a little in the middle” has been dying to say.

She expressed a sentiment, all of us girls want to echo, even the childless among us. We are not going to battle with our bodies over this bump. We are going to accept it. It’s part of us and part of life. A simple but strong message that resonates with women who have tried Herbalife, who are regulars at the gym, who practice yoga and run in 5Ks – all of us girls who have labored for hours, pushed out a human and now have the bump to prove it.

I dutifully eat a salad in the afternoons at my desk, but I still see the bump in the mirror when I undress. After two kids I have come to terms with the roundness of it and realize no matter how tight my shapewear, the bump – a resilient volleyball of a body part – is here to stay.

At the lowest point of my day, when I am fed up with the bulge, I shed tears in the bath tub, wishing my belly would be slim again. When I wake my reasoning returns, I realize it is the part of me that my kids shared. It is the part of me that provided a cocoon of warmth and safety for their first selves to snuggle in for nine months. This stomach did that.

When I tickle my sweet babies it often ends in a fit of kisses on their “bunsies” – a word my husband and I use for the soft center of their bodies. And so rather than ridicule my extra padding, why not celebrate it? Call it a bunsie. Rub it. Kiss it. Love it.