Mum shares honest pic of stomach four days after giving birth
Remember when some people couldn’t handle the Duchess of Cambridge’s post-partum bump just after giving birth to little Prince George?
Unfortunately, there seems to be a myth that the second you’ve given birth, your body will magically return to normal.
But any mum will know that this is far from reality, and (hopefully) that the pressure to look perfect despite having just brought an entire human being into the world is absurd.
No one knows this better than Mel Watts, a blogger also known as The Modern Mumma.
Watts has just shared two refreshingly honest photos of herself, proving to mothers everywhere how much childbirth changes your body and that there’s nothing wrong with that at all.
Watts shared two photos on Instagram – one from when she was 30 weeks pregnant, another four days after having a cesarean section – saying that it’s “no castle or bloody piece of art” but that she celebrates it.
A post shared by M E L W A T T S – MUMMA LIFE (@themodernmumma) on May 31, 2017 at 8:35pm PDT
“Honestly it’s no castle or bloody piece of art,” she wrote.
“Sure it’s filled with stretch marks and dimples.
“But this body, this one the one I own gave me another life. Another small human to love and to hold.
“It held onto him for 9 [sic] months and sheltered him, protected him and prepared him for the day he was born.
A post shared by M E L W A T T S – MUMMA LIFE (@themodernmumma) on Jun 4, 2017 at 10:17pm PDT
“So many times I’ve doubted my body, so many times I’ve pinched and pulled at sections that I didn’t like.
“In reality this body has done everything I’d ever want it to do.
“Sure it’s not magazine or swimsuit worthy to some. But to me and my husband, it’s the place that grew our babies.
“It’s the place that everything we love most started. And that’s all that counts right?!
A post shared by M E L W A T T S – MUMMA LIFE (@themodernmumma) on Jun 7, 2017 at 3:34am PDT
“We feel as though we need to follow society’s stigma on what we should look like when in fact we should just do what we feel works for us.
“No body has the same body and every body has their own body.
“Enjoy it.”
And the post has been inspiring for fellow mums.
“I love how raw you are,” wrote one commenter on the post. “You are such an inspiration to so many people.”
Another said: “I am 47 years old. I have given birth vaginally 3 times and I have had 2 c-sections.
“My body never went back to my prebaby state. I have felt guilty for years over it.
“I’m a Nana now and I look back at my beautiful children and realize that they were all worth it.
“Thanks for sharing your beauty too.”
And Watts isn’t the only mum to have embraced her post-partum body on social media.
Another Instagram-blogger who posts on her page ‘Chillin With Children’ about the ups and downs of family life posted a photo of herself with her kids along with her “saggy belly skin and crazy amounts of stretch marks” which she had chosen to “embrace”.
“There are 100’s and 100’s of women who would give up their perfect stomachs in return to have what I have, without thinking twice about it,” she wrote.
“So I won’t think twice about it either.”
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