Emily Piper (38 - she/her), Sadie (7), and Faye (6 mo)
Somerville, MA
How has parenthood impacted your body image?
I always had a difficult and complicated relationship with body image, and in many ways parenthood has helped me feel more at home in my body. I loved being pregnant, particularly the first time. My first labor was so empowering and left me feeling in complete awe of my body. In the first year or two after my first daughter was born, though, my relationship with her father suffered, largely due to his feelings towards my postpartum body. When we divorced, it felt like I was literally choosing myself over him, and that sort of cemented my relationship with my body. I also try to use my relationship with my older daughter to reinforce this. Teaching her about how miraculous our bodies are has helped me stay in a healthy place with mine. During my second pregnancy, she watched my body grow and swell and instead of speaking negatively about those changes, I always tried to emphasize to her how magical it is, what our bodies can do. She was with me for most of my second labor, and my hope is that she will carry that experience with her as she continues to grow into her own body.
My second labor was nowhere near as empowering as my first and I'm still working through some of the physical and emotional fallout from it. It's been difficult to try to reconcile that experience with my feelings about my first labor, although I am grateful that I had a positive experience first so I can understand that even though this labor didn't go as planned, I know what my body is capable of. I also know I have a long road ahead of me in terms of working through that whole experience, and I'm trying to be kind and patient with myself as I go down that road.
Since I had a breast reduction as a teenager (see: longtime difficult relationship with my body), I have also struggled to breastfeed both children, and at times found myself blaming my body for "letting me down" in that way. Other times I find myself angry at my past self for having the surgery without thinking fully about how it would impact my future children. In the long run I was able to at least partially breastfeed my first (who ended up nursing until she was 2.5) and am able to partially breastfeed my second as well, but there are times I still find myself feeling sad that my body isn't able to provide all the nourishment my babies have needed. In general, though, because of parenthood I feel a great deal of gratitude, awe, unconditional love towards my body. It's capable of incredible, sacred things and I try to remember that every day.
What was your postpartum experience?
My two postpartum experiences were drastically different. With my first, I had almost exactly the birth I'd been dreaming of, but two days later my newborn daughter ended up in the hospital with severe jaundice and dehydration, and spent a week in the NICU. I had the unmedicated, low-intervention birth center birth I'd hoped for, followed by a very medicalized postpartum experience. The week that she was in the hospital was bleak, but perhaps because of that I remember the time after we took her home as much easier. I was certainly sleep deprived and my then-husband wasn’t always the most supportive, but I remember nestling into our little mama-baby routine quickly and floating through a very hot and dreamy summer with this small new person at my side. We went to the beach, we walked to flea markets, she met all my friends. I wouldn’t say it was an effortless adjustment, but it felt like a natural one nonetheless.
My second daughter was born a week late, at the beginning of the winter, after a traumatic labor and delivery. My older daughter had been struggling emotionally for the majority of my pregnancy and I had a great deal of anxiety about introducing this new person into her life. I think the combination of my birth experience and my concerns about my older daughter, plus the darkness and cold of the time of year, set me up to have a more difficult time. My partner is infinitely more present and supportive than my first husband, and we avoided any hospital stay this time (I was hyper-vigilant about her feeding those first few days), but everything this time has felt more complicated. And while I knew that of course that would be the case, since I have another child already in the picture, I think I’m still mourning that a little bit. There has been no way to fall into that idyllic new mom rhythm this time with a big kid around, and I definitely experienced an uptick in anxiety, which ironically was starting to resolve itself right around the time the COVID-19 pandemic began. So for the first three months of Faye’s life, I was working through postpartum anxiety and learning to be a parent to two, and then since then I’ve been navigating how to parent in a post-COVID world. It’s been...weird. We don't have plans to have any more babies, but often I find myself yearning to have just one more, I think if only just so I can have one more chance to get it all "right." Which of course I know is impossible.
What is your truth that you'd pass along to your former self, or a new parent?
You will never get everything right. It's okay to not enjoy every moment. You are stronger than you think. You can be a parent and still be sexual. Don't forget to take care of yourself - your children will be watching, and they need to see you model boundaries and prioritize your own wellbeing too.
How has your (pregnancy/birth/postpartum/parenting) been affected by COVID-19?
As I mentioned above, my second child was born only about three months before we all went into quarantine, which has meant that we haven't gotten to enjoy the same kind of postpartum socializing that I loved so much with my first. I miss being able to take her out to meet the people and see the places I care about, to let her be passed around from person to person, to meet other babies. In addition, I've had to navigate all the usual new baby stuff while attempting to both work from home and homeschool my big kid, who has (understandably) been feeling a lot of Very Big Feelings about all of it. (Honestly, I can't imagine being a seven-year-old with a new baby sibling during a massive global pandemic.) She's anxious and angry and we butt heads every day, and I feel like the close relationship she and I used to have has gone out the window. I want so badly to be able to fill her cup, but my own is so consistently empty that I just don't know how. There are times, when both children need me, and my partner is at work, and I'm trying to do my own work, where I feel like a sand dune being eroded away, grain by grain. It's a lot.
Why did you choose to participate in this movement and share your story?
I've been following you for years and your work has played no small part in my own acceptance of my body after having a baby. I also really love the idea of being a part of documenting what it's like to be a parent during this time.