I’m not pregnant anymore, but my body is broken

I’m really struggling with my feelings about postpartum this time around. My body is extra swollen and stretched and weak. I’m finding myself trying to hide the reality that I just had a baby because there aren’t clothes really meant for that space your body inhabits post maternity and it’s tough to not feel insecure. 

I’m not pregnant anymore, but my body is broken—it was broken to give our two sons life. I’m injured, emotionally fragile, sleep-deprived, exhausted from the late hours and pain of breastfeeding, bleeding, wearing diapers, and smelling like sweat. I have stitches in my vagina, a giant wound on my uterus and after 9 months of making a whole human being my battered body feels sad and afraid it’s been abandoned and will be judged. 

I know I’m supposed to honor my body after what it’s done, but I don’t know how and instead I find myself resentful.

This phase is so hard. It is unbelievably hard and having a toddler in addition to this has created a whole new environment ripe with self-inflicted guilt. I’m crying because it’s going so fast, I’m crying because the lack of good parental leave thrusts you out into the world before you’re ready, I’m crying because I miss my firstborn, I’m crying because I’m crying when I should be happy.

It’s intense. It is so intense and laborious and isolating and there’s so much pressure to get through it and act like you—your body, your energy, and your emotions—are back to “normal”. I know I’m supposed to honor my body after what it’s done, but I don’t know how and instead I find myself resentful. This culture does not make it easy to be a woman, let alone a postpartum one. 

@karrie_locher had a post recently and said “We had 9 months of pregnancy. We didn’t shoo it away. We didn’t brush it off. Let us have postpartum too.” 

For godssake, let us have postpartum too. 💔

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