I'll be the first to admit: I wasn't a very big fan of my postpartum body. It took me a long time to learn to love my body after baby, and I'm still not entirely sure I succeeded. I was in far too big a rush to lose the baby weight, hoping that I could fit into that one pre-baby pair of pants or wear that one pre-baby shirt with confidence, instead of fear.
And it's a shame, really, that I fell into those crappy ingrained ways of thinking, because looking back, there are actually parts of my postpartum body that I definitely miss. I didn't take the time to really sit in that post-baby glow and appreciate my body, all the marvelous ways it changed and all of the fantastic things it did (and was continuing to do). Society can be damaging to new mothers, and it really and truly does kick into overdrive during postpartum months, when our culture convinces women that they need to focus on weight loss and shrinking to a certain size and hiding the changes that their body experienced in order to grow, birth, and sustain life.
Well, enough is enough. I may have missed out on truly enjoying my postpartum body, but that doesn't mean that I can't look back and wax nostalgic about my vulnerable, raw, sore, incredibly powerful, unbelievably magical post-baby vessel. And honestly, you should too (I mean, it's fine if you can't but it's worth a try). Try and think back to your postpartum body and all the ways you could have celebrated it, but didn't. Maybe you could have worn a bikini or just refused to hide your postpartum body. Maybe you could have simply put off even the idea of weight loss and, instead, learned to love all of your soft spots and all of your perfect imperfections. Maybe you are like me, and there were a million things you could have done differently that would have been kinder to your post-baby self.
Here are eight things you didn't think you'd miss about your postpartum body, because we don't spend enough time paying tribute to the vessels that brought our babies into the world.