Sarah Sullivan

Sarah Sullivan (34), Josie (18 months)

Flint, MI | Phoenix, AZ

Sarah shares -

“I had a miscarriage at 12 weeks in 2016. I was really unprepared for the emotional fallout that came along with it. I had a missed miscarriage so it actually happened sometime earlier, probably around 8 weeks but I didn’t bleed or anything and I didn’t know anything was wrong until my second ultrasound. I still felt pregnant. And when it happened I was totally blindsided that something like this could happen in my body and I could have no idea. That was a huge part of the grief and fear I had to work through, this idea that my body let me down, not only by not being able to sustain and support this life, but by not being able to send the right messages afterwards. It was really challenging for me to learn how to trust my body again.

I really didn’t know anything about miscarriage and I wasn’t really able to process my options in the moment. I chose to do a medically induced miscarriage because being at home seemed a little less terrible, and I left the office with a prescription for misoprostal. And it was really awful. It was a long process - I bled for weeks and the actual embryo didn’t pass until four days after the medication. I was sitting at my desk and I felt this sudden rush of liquid. I went to the bathroom at work and reached down and the embryo just sort of fell out into my hand. So then I was just sitting alone in a bathroom stall, holding this tiny, bloody lump that I thought was going to be my child. I was crying and shaking. I sat there for thirty minutes, not knowing what to do. Flushing it down the toilet seemed horrifying, but so did carrying it back through the office to my desk. And then what would I do with it? So finally I whispered an apology and placed it in the bowl and flushed. And then I just had to go back to work, like nothing had happened.”

How has parenthood impacted your body image?

“I have an eating disorder history and my miscarriage triggered a major anorexia relapse. I felt such a lack of control around my body and my eating disorder just slipped in fast and aggressively. It got pretty scary for awhile. I was angry and I didn’t know who to be angry at. I was grieving someone that I had no memories to tie to and guilty over a failure that I didn’t know how to fix, and I took it out on my body because that just seemed like the safest way to deal with it.

But then what came out of all that is that I started a treatment program with a therapist and a dietitian and got real help with my food and body image issues for the first time in my life. And it has changed everything. I started learning about intuitive eating and trusting myself and my body, and I worked with my therapist to deal with a lot of things I’d been masking with my eating disorder.

When I got pregnant with Josie though, it was shocking. My periods had stopped because of restricting and I was in the process of restoring weight but it hadn’t restarted yet. So I didn’t think I could get pregnant and I didn’t think I was emotionally ready to anyway. But it really energized my need to do my own healing work around my body, because I knew that my experience was not what I wanted to pass down to my child.

I look at her now and she takes so much joy in her body. Like when she gets really excited about something she’ll just grab her tummy and jiggle it in delight. She likes to look in the mirror and name all the different parts of her body, and mine. I want her to keep that joy and I want her to see me experiencing that joy in her body and in my own, so she knows it’s not something she has to give up when she gets older. And not just our physical bodies - I want to model healthy ways of processing emotions and dealing with hard things so that she doesn’t need to use unhealthy coping mechanisms in the future.

It’s a complicated thing because I know that I am a better parent because of the healing I’ve done in the last three years. Which means I’m a better parent to Josie than I would have been to the child I lost. Which I feel a lot of complicated feelings about, and sometimes I feel guilty, like I had to sacrifice that child in order to be the parent I am now to my girl. But mostly I’m grateful. Grateful for the body that I have and the person that I have become and for this beautiful little person that I get to know and watch grow up.

I don’t believe that everything happens for a reason and I still think about and grieve my loss. But I am also in a place where I don’t want anything in my life to be different. So I’ve gotten myself to a place where I can live with those dualities.”

What was your postpartum experience?

“I had a really great birth experience. I felt strong and powerful and connected, and I was lucky in that things really went the way I hoped they would with no complications. The nurses at the hospital, both in the delivery room and in recovery were amazing and so generous with their knowledge and support. My husband and I both work with teenagers but had absolutely no experience with babies. I don’t think I had ever even held a baby younger than 6 months old until I had one! And as much reading and research I did ahead of time, nothing can really prepare you for what that’s like. But the nurses were so kind to us - they walked me through every question I had and never made me feel stupid about anything. I do wish I had known more about the physical recovery process. I think I had thought that because I had a vaginal delivery and everything went well that recovery would be really easy. And it’s not! It’s still a huge thing that your body does and needs to recover from.

Because of my mental health history I had put a lot of checks in place for myself during the first 3 months. I was really transparent with my doctor during my pregnancy and I made a plan with my therapist for support. I brought Josie to my appointments the whole time I was on maternity leave which was great. But I was actually surprised by how good I felt during that early time. I was exhausted and emotional of course and it was hard - but overall I felt calm and centered.

It kind of took me by surprise then when I started experiencing some major postpartum anxiety and OCD symptoms when my daughter was about 5 months old. Being back at work was tougher for me than I expected and the 4 month sleep regression hit hard and stayed that way, so I was up 5 or more times every night. I have a really supportive partner but breastfeeding was the only effective way to get her to sleep so I was up every time. I started getting panic attacks where I would imagine something bad happened to her, usually imagining some devastating mistake I made. When it got hotter outside I started fixating on the idea of leaving her in the car. I live in Arizona so heat is real. I would get into the car at the end of the day, feel the warmth on my face and be taken over by the overwhelming image of finding my daughter’s body in her car seat, as if it was really happening. It got to the point where I was walking out to my car just to check multiple times a day at work, even though I knew she was safe at daycare. And it was compounded by the fact that nobody really told me that this kind of stuff could happen 6 months in. I had already mentally checked off the PPD box, seen it as something that didn’t affect me. And when I finally talked to my therapist about it, and decided I needed medication support, my OB’s office couldn’t see me about it because I was already 8 months postpartum. I finally found an amazing general practitioner and started taking Zoloft, and it made a huge difference. Honestly I wish I had done it so many years ago. And we sleep trained, and it actually worked, so we finally started sleeping again. By the time Josie turned one I was actually feeling like myself again. And it was another really joyful experience, in the months after her first birthday, to finally feel a sense of being settled into my life and identity as a parent.”

What is your truth?

“Having a miscarriage and having a baby both changed my body. But they also changed my relationship to my body. After a lifetime of controlling, punishing, and resenting it, I feel at home in my own body for the first time in my life. Like I’m really living in it for the first time. My body grew a baby and brought her into the world. It can feed her, nourish her, hold her, and protect her. Its flaws are nothing compared to its power. And now that I am a mother to a daughter, this perfect, beautiful, joyful baby girl, I can’t wait to show her the awesome power of her own body. I’m going to teacher that it’s magic, and so is she. I’m letting her teach me the same thing. And that’s what I would want to tell my former self, or another new parent - your body is good enough. Your body knows what it’s doing. And you and your body are a team. Building trust together is essential. “

Why did you choose to participate in this movement and share your story? 
”When I was pregnant a friend shared the instagram account with me and I was so drawn to it. I didn’t realize how hungry I was for these stories, for these images. I had never seen birth imagery, real postpartum bodies, had never heard other people talk so candidly about birth and loss and all the things I had felt and wondered about feeling. I followed this and other birth/postpartum accounts ravenously because it was the only place I felt like I was getting a real sense of what was going to happen to me. So I feel really grateful for the work that you all do and for the people who have shared their stories already. It’s a huge honor to be part of it, and it feels very powerful to be connected to so many others with different versions of my experience.

In many ways it feels similar, and energetically aligned with the work I do as a theatre artist. It’s about storytelling, connection, and being able to both see versions of your own experiences and have emotional resonance with very different experiences. It’s about sharing so many different versions of what’s true that there is space for everyone’s story. We all get to feel seen. We all get to learn something new.”

Marisa Veri

Marisa Veri (33), Theodore Xavier (3.5) and Gabriel Zane (15 months)

Toronto

Marisa shares -

“My journey to motherhood began in the summer of 2013 when I learned I was pregnant for the first time. Diagnosed with a genetic hormonal disorder as a pre-teen, I was told from a young age that I would need medical assistance to get pregnant but was encouraged to try to conceive before pursuing interventions.

For this reason, we had started to lose hope after 6 months of trying. In the seventh month we were overjoyed to learn I was pregnant, but I also found myself in excruciating abdominal pain. Fearing there was something amiss I went to my family doctor and to the ER, but the blood tests and ultrasounds all came back normal and my doctor ascribed the pains to IBS brought on by the pregnancy. We had a holiday booked off that year around this same time, to go north to our family cottage. While we were there the pains meant that we stayed in most of the time basking in the idea of our first baby, but one morning I woke up with spotting. We went straight to the hospital. The staff took blood and after a lot of waiting around told me that everything would be “tickety-boo”. I will never forget that phrase. I remember thinking it wasn’t very reassuring. I wanted something quantifiable.

We carried on hoping but worrying that things wouldn’t work out this time. We nicknamed him Oë, because we would have named him Joey (Joseph) or Zoë. My husband would lay his hands on my abdomen and send good vibes to our little dude. In spite of all of our hopes, near the end of my second month carrying him there was no longer a heartbeat on our ultrasound and at 10 weeks I underwent a medically managed miscarriage using misoprostol. Being RH negative myself, I had to go to the hospital to receive a RhoGAM shot and pain management. Lay waiting for treatment, I heard the doctor and her colleague walking toward my exam room. “It’s just a miscarriage,” said one of them to the other. In that moment, those words rung in my ears amidst my grief and anger, the loss of my baby, of my innocence and of the trust in my body.

After my miscarriage, my body image was decimated in a way I was unaccustomed to. As a plus sized woman, I am no stranger to insecurity and bad body image but I was not simply unhappy with how I looked, I was dissatisfied with my body as a whole. It couldn’t even perform the functions it was designed for. Before getting pregnant that first time I was eating and exercising to get as healthy as possible for baby, but after the miscarriage I was so angry at my body for its betrayal that taking care of it in that way was an infuriating reminder that even when doing everything right, it could all go wrong.

When I learned I was pregnant for the second time, I began to take care of my body again and really embraced how my body looked pregnant, and I was so proud to be creating life. However, at 37 weeks and 2 days labour was induced after tests indicated I had developed HELLP Syndrome. 43 hours of induced labour and an unplanned cesarean later, Theodore arrived. I remember after my first shower I sobbed as I looked at myself in the mirror. The HELLP had caused so much edema that my body was unrecognizable to me, and my body image plummeted as I felt my body had failed me yet again by needing a cesarean.

Breastfeeding my children seemed like the last way my body could redeem itself, and yet my milk was delayed. Fighting frustration, my husband helped the baby to latch time and again as we all learned how to make breastfeeding work. As my cesarean incision healed and breastfeeding became easier, my body image slowly began to rebuild. I began to see my body for its strengths and accomplishments, not for its shortcomings.

When I got pregnant for the third time with my youngest, Gabriel, I felt really comfortable in my body. I exercised regularly and chased my toddler around but there was still a lot of self-doubt left from my previous experiences. I attended Birth Without Fear, unpacked a lot of emotions there and sought more body positivity. I took prophylactic measures against the development of HELLP and was able to go on to have a totally healthy pregnancy. My body naturally went into labour at 36 weeks and 5 days and I was fortunate to experience an unmedicated VBAC which helped me to regain both confidence and positive body image. Overall, it feels like motherhood has repaired my relationship with my body. I am fortunate to have been able to carry and feed my children with my own body and in doing so was able to recognize a strength within myself that I didn’t know I had. Also, having children around has forced me to make peace with my body image issues, so that my children have the role model of self-love I want them to have.

Breastfeeding was challenging at the beginning but I was lucky to have a relatively uneventful, positive and healing breastfeeding experience with Theodore. My milk was delayed in coming in after the surgery, but once it did, I nursed him exclusively for 6 months and continued to nurse him after that until 19 months when I gently encouraged him to wean. I was wholly unprepared for the hormonal crash involved in weaning but we made it through.

Breastfeeding with Gabriel had its challenges since his mouth was tinier, and his chin was recessed, but now at 15 months and breastfeeding is still going, in spite of his acrobatics and biting. There were some growing pains as we found our footing as a family of four, but my husband is an excellent co-parent and our families were very supportive.

Things were going well, except that I could tell right away that my anxiety was flaring up. About a week postpartum the public health nurse flagged me as having “possible postpartum depression.” There were a couple of times when I mentioned my depression and anxiety to someone outside my immediate family and they dismissed it as not being PPA or PPD because I have pre-existing mental illness. I would tell my mother the extent of my depression and anxiety and she encouraged me to go to my doctor, but I kept believing it would get easier because my typical depression and anxiety spells usually do not require medical intervention.

By November of last year, I had reached a pretty serious depression, complete with suicidal and self-harm ideation. It was one of the most difficult experiences I’ve ever had to work through. I finally reached out to my counsellor who confirmed that I had severe high-functioning postpartum depression, yet I was still not convinced to seek medical help from my doctor. Since my usual cycles of depression and anxiety abate within 6 weeks, I was sure my doctor could not help when many medications for this would take just as long to begin working. I felt so ashamed that I would require such help when my life was so perfect. I should be grateful, rather than depressed. Truthfully, I was also terrified of what consequences I would face by saying these things out loud to the doctor.

I wish I had known earlier on, when the level of mental illness was not quite so severe, that it was PPD at play and that can and should be managed a little differently to traditional anxiety and depression. I also wish I had listened to the people who encouraged me to get help. Instead, with great difficulty, I muddled along for about 6 weeks with a quite a lot of help from my husband, family and friends until the unwanted thoughts subsided and I was able to think more clearly again. Since then, I am so thankful that my mood and mental illness has been fairly stable with some manageable bad days. I know that it will not always be smooth sailing for me in that department but knowing what I have come through, I know I have the support to help me face anything.

Battling depression and anxiety for years, and especially in my most recent postpartum year, I try to hold onto the idea that “It’s going to be ok.” During a bad mental health spell, I had this tattooed on my wrist. Now whenever I am overwhelmed and my mental illness sets in, it is what I tell myself.

One thing I always tell new parents is that everything is a phase. Whatever it is, from refusing solid foods to refusing sleep, in time it will end just as abruptly as it began. It can be overwhelming as a new parent because the beauty of parenthood seems so very fleeting, while everything that is frustrating or difficult, in that fog of sleeplessness and hormones, really feels like it’s going to last forever. Reminding myself and others that it is not going to last forever seems simple but it does seem to help.

I am participating to show the more insecure versions of myself, past, present and future, that I can be brave. I’m participating for my children and for other people who may not have the opportunity to participate. I want them to see that women are strong, fearless, powerful, and all different shapes and sizes. I want them to learn that doing that thing you want to do that scares you a little, is in fact empowering. I hope exposing them to these sorts of experiences helps them to continue to grow into awesome humans.”

Samantha Kumar

Samantha Kumar and Linus (12 months) 

Prior to Linus, Samantha had two miscarriages and has had one since his birth. She met her husband at 35, they dated for a year and then he proposed. Once they were engaged, she decided to undergo testing to learn if they would have any problems with conceiving. "The doctors told me my eggs were old and said it would be difficult to conceive". Thankfully, the doctors were wrong and she got pregnant within months. It came sooner than they anticipated and they were both excited and terrified. Samantha began bleeding at 6 weeks, however, and lost the pregnancy. They were told that 30% of first pregnancies end in miscarriage and to keep trying.

Three months later, she was pregnant again. Her husband had just accepted a new job and they prepared to move across the country from Colorado to Connecticut. The day before they packed to leave, they learned that this pregnancy was also not viable. She was devastated and also thrown into chaos. When they arrived at their new home, she took Misoprostal to terminate the pregnancy. The doctors in Connecticut believed she had a clotting disorder known as Anti-phospholipid Syndrome and she was prescribed injections of Lovenox during her third pregnancy and carried Linus full-term.

"My first miscarriage was devastating, but I also had a lot of hope afterward. I thought it was a miracle we got pregnant so easily. The second miscarriage terrified me. What if I could never carry to term? Would this keep happening? I always knew carrying a baby would be hard for me. I can't tell you how I knew, but I did. I wanted so badly for it to be easy. I felt guilt every day from day one for not being the perfect vessel. I took all the blame that no one was assigning and put it on myself. I think a lot of women do this - we take the weight of the world on our shoulders and into our womb. The prior losses made it difficult to relax into my pregnancy with Linus".

Samantha spent the first 13 weeks of her pregnancy telling herself everything would be okay but secretly feeling like she would lose this baby, too. She spent the next 13 weeks on a silent countdown to doom, just knowing something would go wrong before viability. Luckily, amazingly, miraculously, Linus was absolutely perfect.

In December 2016, Samantha learned she was pregnant again. It was unplanned but she assumed everything would be fine. She started the injections again but never really felt pregnant. At the eight week ultrasound, there was no heart beat. "I don't know why this last pregnancy did not take. I assumed that once my body knew what it was like to carry a baby full term, it would be easier the next time. Maybe it was the clotting disorder, but I don't think so. The body miscarries for so many reasons. This miscarriage didn’t hit quite so hard. I am not sure why, but I think it may be because I have Linus. I know that no matter what happens in the future, I have him and he is wonderful and, if it must be, he is enough. We plan to keep trying".

During pregnancy with Linus, Samantha obtained her certification to teach prenatal yoga. She began teaching while pregnant and continues to this day. "What I learned from my pregnancies, Linus’s birth and motherhood is that there needs to be so much more communication about pregnancy, loss, and life with an infant. Everyone says there is no preparing for motherhood, but I don’t agree. I teach my students what I wish I had known: that breastfeeding can be very difficult, that there are things such as tongue tie, that you may not make enough milk, that it is okay to use formula. I teach them what I learned during my training: that you can control your pelvic floor muscles, that you can learn how to push correctly, that breathing is key, that you are doing fine and trust yourself. I also teach them to be vulnerable and honest. We live in this society where it is almost frowned upon for a mom to admit she is tired or scared or annoyed or confused. We feel so pressured and judged, even if we put that pressure on ourselves. Reach out to other female friends, family, even strangers. I have cried in the arms of the woman who owns my neighborhood deli. There is so much wisdom amongst mothers. That is what we should share".

"I chose to participate in the movement for a number of reasons - I wanted to help myself heal from my miscarriages and a really tough first year of motherhood. But the main reason I chose to participate is because the trauma of back to back miscarriages and pregnancy, along with the Lovenox injections, took a physical toll on my body and I want to reclaim it. Prior to my first pregnancy, I ran marathons and half marathons. I worked out regularly and was strong. I was on my way to being in the best shape of my life. During my pregnancy with Linus, I did yoga but no longer ran or lifted. I was too scared it would cause a problem. I administered the Loxenox injections to my belly, which caused serious bruising. By the third trimester my entire belly was black and blue. As a result, I never felt comfortable, much less pretty while pregnant. I didn’t want anyone touching me. I didn’t get to show off my cute stomach at the beach or take maternity photos. I still don’t have my strong body back and there are shadows from the bruises still present. Maybe they will be there forever. Maybe I will never get to work out like I did pre-baby. But, I am tired of waiting to love my body. It did an amazing thing and I want to celebrate it, no matter what shape it is in currently".