Postpartum Body Appreciation

A reminder to myself and whoever needs it.

I’m two months postpartum tomorrow and I’ve already found myself upset with my body multiple times. A body that created not one, but two healthy humans. Why do I do this? Why can’t I just accept that it took 10 months to make this human. I need to give my body a second to recover instead of “bounce back”. Just like our minds need time to heal, so do our bodies.

I went on vacation last weekend with my family and on more than one occasion I didn’t want to get into a swim suit. Did I really think that my son would care what I looked like in it? He just wanted me to get in and play with him. It’s me that’s beating myself up. It’s society putting all kinds of pressure on women and their bodies. From TV shows to magazines and now instagram especially. These filters. These instagram models that have the “perfect bodies”:

It might not be the nicest body by societies standards, but it grew, birthed and fed my two beautiful boys. So on days that I look at it and I’m upset about it- I’m trying to actively remind myself that it isn’t my first priority right now. That I have to forever be grateful that it allowed me to do the things that it has because some people aren’t as fortunate.

Let’s stop looking at bodies and assuming we can judge the person in them just by what they look like. You don’t know how much that body has been through and how much the mental load is weighing on the mama who owns it.

Put the spotlight on the personality in the body not on the body itself.