What We Have in Common

I'd always been a pretty modest person, knee-length skirts, no sleeveless or backless dresses. I liked my body to be where it belonged, under clothing. Then I had children and much of my modesty, privacy and dignity were chucked out the window of the delivery room where I lay in my "backless" gown with all sorts of my private body hanging out to be checked by various strangers claiming to work at the hospital. If you had on any sort of ID badge at the American Fork hospital, chances are you had the opportunity to view and/or handle a little too much of my Daring Young body.

Follow that up with a year of using my breasts as a food source and occasional teething toy, another birth with no less than 10 ID-badged strangers in the delivery room and then another year of breastfeeding, it feels that very few people in the world have not had the chance to grab or suck on my breasts or at least see me au naturale in some very undignified positions.

Now my kids see me naked nearly every day and I am unfazed. What does bother me a bit is their commentary on my body. Laylee, who is obsessed with babies and pregnancy finds it hard to believe that I am not currently with child considering the fact that my tummy is "SO BIG."

Yesterday as I was getting into the shower with a crowd of 2 looking on, Magoo looked alarmed and pointed at my breasts, "OH NO! You got a ouchy on it!"

"No," I answered, "They're just fine. Those are my breasts."

Laylee wasn't buying it. She squinted up at me skeptically. "Then how come they look like they're hanging down SO LOW?!"

Um… Yeah. You let sweet little leeches suck the life out of your elbow for a couple of years and see what IT looks like. Then we'll talk. It's because my breasts look like this that your brain had the nutrients to develop enough to even know to ASK me that question.

A couple of weeks ago I was chatting with Dan as I got ready to jump in the shower. Laylee walked in and said, "OH DAD! Close your eyes. You're a boy so you can't see mom naked!"

He handled it quite nicely by explaining to her that since he's my husband, he's the only man who's allowed to see me naked (besides the 2 or 3 hundred men who work in the maternity ward of the hospital). He told her he was lucky to see me too because he thinks I'm beautiful. Somebody mark him down a bonus point somewhere.

So Laylee started thinking.

"So I get to see mom naked because I'm a girl?"

"Yep."

"And Magoo gets to see mom naked because he's just a little boy?"

"Yep."

"And mom gets to see herself naked because it's herSELF?!"

"Uh-huh."

"And YOU GET TO SEE HER NAKED BECAUSE YOU'RE HER HUSBAND?!"

"Yes ma'am."

"THEN THAT'S THE ONE THING WE ALL HAVE THE SAME!!!! WE ALL GET TO SEE MOM NAKED!!!!"

If things ever break down in our family, we're all snarky, somebody's eaten the last Oreo, we can't agree on politics, religion or paint color, at least we'll always have a common bond, something to bring us together and help us realize we're not that different after all.

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