This is Postpartum : The Honest Mom's Post about enduring Postpartum Blues, Embracing Real Feelings and Enduring
This is postpartum.
The less instagrammable side, anyways.
My body, which carried him for 40 weeks and 4 days, remains not my own.
My arms, which longed to hold him at last, still ache sometimes due to lingering soreness from labor.
My stomach, which provided a home for him and his siblings, tells the story of my pregnancies through leftover stretch marks.
My shirt, the third shirt of the day, is covered in sweat and breast milk and spit up and who knows what else.
My eyes are heavy from long nights of interrupted sleep.
My body, slowly healing from the intensity that is labor and birth.
My mind, racing constantly. How long has it been between feedings? and when was the last diaper change? And did I eat lunch today?
And my heart. Oh my heart. It sometimes feels like it could burst from my love for him. Somehow it grew again to make space for him, the same way it did when each of his siblings came into the world.
There are few things I can think of that are as vulnerable as being a postpartum mom. It’s messy and glorious and exhausting and painful and miraculous.
And it’s easy to share the sweet pictures of a sleeping baby but the reality is the moments like these that make up the real life in between the picturesque photos.
I debated sharing this photo because it feels awfully vulnerable and raw, in my pajama shorts and with my shirt permanently in disarray due to round the clock breastfeeding.
But I’m sharing it anyways, because today was one of our harder days since bringing home home and I’m particularly wiped. But I’ve been feeling this sense of solidarity that I’m experiencing the same pains and aches and hormones and reality that every woman who has ever given birth has experienced.
And it is messy and raw but it feels beautiful, too. Too beautiful to rush past.
This body has brought 3 little humans into the world, and I’m awfully proud of her.