The First Time I Truly Loved My Body—After Giving Birth
After years of body shame, motherhood helped me see my body's true power. This is how I finally learned to love my postpartum body—fully and fiercely.
POSTPARTUM HEALINGBODY LOVE AFTER BABYMOTHERHOOD & THE BODYHEALING THE BODY THROUGH MOTHERHOOD
5/22/20251 min read
I love my body after having a baby—for the first time in my life.
How could I not?
It carried life for nine months.
Labored. Delivered.
Feeds my baby daily.
And bounced back with power and grace.
People used to comment on my petite frame like it was public property up for discussion
because it wasn’t the typical overweight body in America, and because it didn’t fit the ideal standard of curvy beauty.
The media bombarded me with unrealistic and unattainable images of the perfect body, designed to profit off of insecurity.
I internalized that conditioning so deeply that I once branded the side of my breast as a teenager—angry that I wasn’t what society told me I should be.
But I’m no longer under the illusion of what a body should look like through the lens of marketing—one of inadequacy, comparison or shame.
No longer swayed by our culture’s obsession with hypersexualizing women.
My body is no longer an object
I see the female body now for what it truly is:
Breasts for nourishment.
Hips for life.
The female body has a sacred purpose.
I thought I knew my body.
I lived in it every day.
But I didn’t truly understand it, not until pregnancy, birth, and postpartum reshaped everything.
Now I stand in the mirror—bare, changed, and in awe:
hips wider, proudly wearing 8 extra pounds, fuller breasts with milk that will probably sag one day—
and just smile.
I still can’t quit wrap my head around what this body has done.
But I see it for the first time.
And I love it now.