#variations of normal

They say that the moment your baby latches for the very first time is an incredibly special moment for mother and child.

I didn’t experience this. I was feeling a little overwhelmed by all that had happened so I felt numb to all of this. I remember my midwife squeezing my boob as she tried to get colostrum for my baby in a syringe.

I’m not sure why? I don’t remember. I’m not sure if it’s because he wouldn’t latch, or because he was distressed at birth and needed a pick-me-up from my colostrum.

The whole stay in hospital, I didn’t really feel that special bond. Feeding became really stressful as it was so ‘on the clock’, to get his low blood sugars up, and in this, I started to despise it. It was hard. There was so much pressure on my baby to feed well to get his sugars up. And there was so much pressure on my husband and I to make sure he latched properly and also that he took all the formula we had to syringe through a tube.

This is what a REAL MOM BODY looks like.

How you can tell: I’m a real person; I’m a mom; this is my body.

Other REAL MOM BODIES might look like this, or they might look very different. ALL are normal. ALL are just shells so your organs don’t fall out your butthole. What you look like right after giving birth, or one year later, or ten years later, means absolutely nothing other than you are human and have normal human tissues, and there are literally thousands of variations of normal. 

Stop telling women to lose all their baby weight in the first year.

Stop telling women they don’t look like “real” moms if they don’t have loose skin or stretch marks. 

Stop accusing women of starving or neglecting their children if they happen to have lean body types or did not get very big while pregnant.

Stop telling pregnant women not to get too big. I gained 50 lbs with my second kid. I am small (5 ft), she was big, still had a totally natural (home) birth.