A WOMAN WHO HAS EXPERIENCED MOTHERHOOD

As a woman who has experience motherhood, and all the changes that come along with it, I can say that coping with them is more than a little bit challenging. It’s hard to be a blissful goddess, Bringer-of-life, Embodiment of Mother Nature’s bountiful and abundant glory when you’re puking yourself inside out, you’re so ravenously hungry you shamelessly ask strangers to let you taste their food, you walk around sweating profusely while others are wearing parkas and everything you put on makes you look like a sack of potatoes.


Your body is expanding so that your midriff enters a room before you do, you cannot find a comfortable position to sleep in and your seating arrangements depend on whether or not you brought your entourage of burly men to help extract you from whatever furniture you’ve sunk into, because you WILL need to get up every 5 minutes to go to the bathroom. The fact that you are pregnant seems to give license for complete strangers to put their hands on your body and ask the most impertinent questions and give unwanted and unasked for advice regarding all sorts of private matters. And this goes on for 40 weeks out of the 52 that make a year.

After the baby is born the most intimate, sensitive parts of your body are incredibly sore, if they don’t have stitches. If they do, you’re in pain. Depending on the kind of birth you had, you may not be able to get out bed without feeling like your guts are spilling out or urinate without some measure of agony. Your uterus will cramp as it attempts to shrink to its original shape and you are bleeding for 6 weeks or more. Your breasts become huge, unevenly sized, painful bags of milk, whether or not you are breast-feeding. Your nails stop growing, your hair falls off and there are bags under the bags under the dark circles under your eyes. Even the most "together" mom will experience the same physical symptoms as well as anxiety about their baby's health and their possible shortcomings as a parent.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg; being that I have not touched upon the emotional, mental and chemical upheavals our bodies go through from the moment we conceive until beyond the birth of the child. Added to this is the violent pressures of a society that has separated women from any comfort we can find in our own bodily wisdom as well as that found in nature.

The pleasures of motherhood are found in the small moments where we can realize the beauty of what we are a part of between all these other experiences and demands that are happening simultaneously.

Nothing personal, Mr. Woods. I am passionate about women and very sensitive to criticism, particularly coming from one who cannot, and never will, experience these things in their own flesh.

Maybe we should reserve judgment and offer compassion instead. - Nanu Pagan

pregnant brown in the mirror 4