patron-saint-of-smart-asses:fuckyeahmumblrs:We Need to Stop Saying “Babies Ruin Bodies” by Ntima Pre

patron-saint-of-smart-asses:fuckyeahmumblrs:We Need to Stop Saying “Babies Ruin Bodies” by Ntima Preusser Before I became pregnant, someone told me, “don’t have a baby, babies ruin your body.” It has been over a year since Anabel began her life. This time last year she was a microscopic speck inside me, and we were announcing our pregnancy. Between then and now, I have gained and lost fifty pounds. Four months after her birth, and my body still carries proof of her existence.I have dark pools under my eyes. A valley where my belly button once was. Hips with a new amplitude that my teenage self wouldn’t recognize. I have lines mapped across the mountains of stretched skins left over on my midsection. Lightning bolts on my sides proving I was once too small to contain all of the love that filled me. Lines indicating that my daughter once lived inside of me.Do you realize the significance in that? Every limb, finger, toe…her heart, even, developed near the very place my own heart beats inside of my chest. Those mountains of skin are all I have left to prove that we were once one and not two.How can I be ashamed of that?I have so much to say about seeing my grandfather’s eyes embedded into the sockets, and under the brows and lashes of her father’s. I see the seventeen year old boy I fell in love with, and my grandpa as a child all at once every time she looks up at me. She even wears my ears and my chin. The two very things I cursed having the most growing up. Not much makes me feel more beautiful than seeing tiny renditions of those same features on Anabel, and realizing just how special they are. My body grew that. Not everybody has that privilege.Sure my belly is a bit softer nowadays, but the way it moves when I jump up and down sends my girl into fits of giggles. And yeah, my hips are hardly as narrow as they used to be, but they sure know the perfect figure-8 motion to sway her to sleep. My twenty-one year old hair is even beginning to gray, but not much soothes her more than my hair between her little fingers.I am not something flawless in the eyes of society, or even close to what I once was physically, but my perfect girl sees me for who I am. To her, I hang the moon. She knows  my heart - she knew it long before we met. And she loves me for it.I cannot tell you how much worth and validation I feel because of that truth. My body is only a vessel for my spirit. An incredible vessel. It is strong, well, able, and undefeated.My body is full of life.My body is powerful. My body made me a mother. If anything, I was ruined by the world before I knew her, and she made me whole again. *Cue Katy Perry’s “Roar” here.*Pregnancy and birth CHANGES your body, not “ruins” it.  Unless you suffered from a physical form of trauma from pregnancy or birth, your body is not ruined.Puberty changes us from girls into women.  Menopause changes us from childbearing women to women who can no longer carry a child, but carry on the wisdom of life to the next generation.  In between these two great changes, there is the change from being a non-mother to a mother (for those who are blessed with children, biological or adopted).  With all these changes in a woman’s life, her body changes with her: and these changes are NORMAL.Anyone who claims babies “ruin” the female form are blinded by ignorance and asserts that our female-given gifts of fertility and virility are diseases that cause the “symptoms” of pregnancy-induced, bodily changes.My breasts are a little bit flatter, I have stretch marks, and my belly button, too, is more of a deep crevice than a button: but these are changes that come with biological motherhood.  And you know what?  That’s okay.  Because. they. are. normal.  They do not make me less loving, sexual, mothering, or human.   And they do not make me any less beautiful, physical or otherwise.  They are a part of a woman’s life as she goes through her series of changes.  It’s about time we started accepting that. -- source link

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