Aaron Reser (39 - she/her) and Juniper (2.5)
Minneapolis, MN
“I have had one miscarriage and several likely chemical pregnancies as part of a long journey with infertility.
How has parenthood impacted your body image?
It has been all over the map.
For me, it started well before birthing my child. My fertility journey was so hard. I started the journey much older than expected (I always imagined I'd be a young mom, but that's not the way life worked out!) and it was an uphill battle. In short, I struggled for several years with infertility. As a person who has always been blessed with a very able body, full of strength and vitality, infertility was not only the heaviest emotional weight, it was an affront to my identity.
After several years of infertility, including one miscarriage and several chemical pregnancies (in hindsight, an emotional rollercoaster that I think I was feeling on a subconscious level... my body works! my body doesn't wok. my body works! my body is broken.) I was both stronger than I ever imagined I could be (with a world of support from my partner) and at the same time an emotionally broken person through my infertility struggles. After several years I ended up with a fairly invasive uterine surgery, and against all odds became unexpectedly pregnant during a period of recovery from surgery when pregnancy was theoretically impossible.
I had not yet healed fully from the surgery when I became pregnant and while my doctors and midwifes assured me that the pregnancy was normal, I questioned the capability of my body through the entire pregnancy and was never able to really ease into a comfortable sense that it would all work out. Even when my belly was huge, it's like I almost didn't believe it could be true! I will say, that baby's kicks were some of the very best experiences of my entire life. My pregnancy wasn't easy (sick and tired through the whole thing, though no major complications), my birth was hard and not at all what I planned and ended in a swift rush to c-section because baby wasn't doing well. We were told she would not come out breathing. But she did! She wailed! The biggest sense of relief in my entire life.
My body took a long time to heal and I'm still emotionally healing and trying to regain trust that my body is capable and strong. We struggle so hard with sleep (even at over two years it's not uncommon for me and my kid to rouse at her every sleep cycle, talk about a long period of interrupted sleep! it has probably been three years since I slept more than three hours straight), and relatedly my hormones and metabolism have been all over the place, and I have a thyroid related auto immune disease. I weigh more than I ever have and it would be dishonest if I didn't say that was really hard for me. It's hard. I don't feel like myself. Still, I am so proud of my body. I love my body. It has been through so much and has supported me and my family through so much (2.5 years of breastfeeding, including the first 15mo of almost breastfeeding exclusively!). It's very important for me to create a healthy environment of body-positivity as I raise my child.
What was your postpartum experience?
It leveled me and I'm still rebuilding. So much harder than I expected it to be, and I expected it to be very hard! I write about it some in the next question. It was harder for much longer than I imagined it would be. I'd say I hit a really rough wave of postpartum depression (if you want to call it that, for me it was a complicated bundle of emotions and "depression" seems an overly tidy and hollow diagnosis, but I try to share my experience knowing that PPD is very real for lots of new parents and needs to be talked about more) around one year. And I still feel like I'm sifting through all of the postpartum layers and trying to reorient myself 2.5yrs later.
What is your truth? What is one piece of knowledge you'd pass along to your former self, or a new parent?
Sometimes age old wisdom really stands the test of time: Be true to yourself. Drop the comparison and "shoulds" and give yourself the freedom to be your authentic self. What a gift. Listen to and learn the people you love, really commit to understanding who they are, and support them in being their truest selves.
This is advice I'd give to my former self and to any new parent.
My earliest parenting struggles (and, I can see now in hindsight, struggles with other relationships) were related to me trying to hold on too tightly to an expectation of how something should be, or how I really wised it could be, instead of just embracing the reality in front of me. I've wasted a lot of emotional energy wishing that things were different, or pretending that things could be different if I just tried harder or found a magic solution right around the next corner, rather than addressing struggles head on or just letting go and appreciating things the way they were.
I had an exquisitely sensitive baby who required an exceptional level of mama TLC and closeness. We struggled with colic, with car rides (pure hell), with bottles (never), with solid food (not until 15 months), with sleep (ha...) and with so many other things. My first postpartum year was so intensely difficult. It felt, in many ways, like a forced isolation. Our second year was difficult. Having a toddler is difficult. It's been hard on my relationship with my husband, it has ground me into pure exhaustion. We have an exquisitely sensitive child. But my savings grace through difficulty was and is the ability to (eventually... it did not come easily!) see my child for who she really was and is, to acknowledge her deep needs and my beautiful role in filling those needs, and to do my best to let go of my expectations of "being the type of mom who did... xyz." I just did not have the type of kid who you put in a carrier (never, I tried them all) and go on with your enviable, active, outdoorsy, adult life.
Here's the real gem though: the journey it took for me to really understand my kid helped me to understand my partner better and to understand myself. It was a time of tremendous personal growth. It's like my baby was teaching me all the lessons I desperately needed to learn: how to slow down, how to breath and accept, how to really deeply listen and observe, how to be there for the people you love in the way that they need, how to rethink your priorities and shed old expectations that are no longer serving you, how to ground yourself in your real values and use that as your compass, how to tune in to your own intuition. Wow. My first 2.5 years as a parent have been the toughest and the most joyful of my life. My child's greatest challenges are also her greatest gifts - she is so aware, so curious, so tuned in to the world. She's so emotionally astute and empathetic. She is wild and tame. And even in this short time, one of the greatest teachers of my life.
Why did you choose to participate in this movement and share your story?
I'm so appreciative of this work.
My journey to motherhood has completely leveled me and has fed me at the same time, spaces like this are healing and we need more of them, I am excited to participate and support!