Stella Dee (30 - she/her) and Rosalind (6 mo)
St. Louis, MO | Boston, MA
How has parenthood impacted your body image?
Before I got pregnant I was working in (what can be the fairly macho) field of arboriculture as a climbing arborist, where when I first started work, I was the only women on a staff of 40, and when I switched to working for a smaller company, I was the only women of a company of 6. As a consequence, I was pretty invested in my muscles, and status as a more autonomous physical being, and pretty fearless when it came to putting my body into physically extremely risky situations involving heights and chainsaws.
With pregnancy came a concern for my physical safety that I've never felt before--I was working surveying trees during pregnancy, and concerned about all the icy slopes I was walking down last winter--as well as a new mindfulness about the physical safety of situations I was in. With pregnancy also came a newfound lack of ability to do things that I had taken for granted for most of my life--for example, to walk down the street without pain. I didn't resent my body for this, really, because I was amazed that it was growing life, but it was new.
In parenthood I also feel a newfound sense of responsibility for my physical safety, because now I feel like Rosalind has some claim to my body. When I go back to work I'll for sure be more cautious, and more aware and proactive about mitigating physical risks. I didn't gain a lot of weight while pregnant, and hated when people would make comments about how "small" I was carrying--it made me feel like I wasn't taking care of my child. Similarly, I was worried about losing too much weight too quickly while breastfeeding, and more muscle along with it. I'm pretty sure that's happened, although I've been trying as hard as I can to maintain weight. As a consequence, I hate the comments I get about how "good" I look when people really just mean thin. Thin isn't my goal, and I can't wait regain some of the weight I had, as well as to not have the anxiety around milk supply that come along with weight loss.
Also related to my occupation, I was pretty routinely mistaken for a man on first glance by strangers before getting pregnant, particularly at work, so it was definitely a shift to being so consistently coded by strangers as a woman. I don't enjoy when people use he/him pronouns for me, so that was kind of a nice shift, actually. Physically, I didn't enjoy being pregnant at all, even though I had by all accounts an "easy" pregnancy. I didn't like the symptoms, and didn't like the limitations. We want to have another child and I'm looking forward to the baby, but dreading having to do the pregnancy part again.
What was your postpartum experience?
Physically, early postpartum wasn't easy for me, although in comparison with other stories I've heard it was relatively uncomplicated. Rosalind was born in July, and we don't have central air conditioning, only a window unit in the bedroom, and Boston reached a heat index of over 100 degrees within the first three weeks of Rosalind's life. So we were basically trapped in the bedroom for a few of the days. To go from working outside every day to being trapped in a 10ftx10ft space with the shades closed was challenging both physically and mentally. Granted, most of the time wasn't that hot, but Rosalind's temperature as a newborn was a consistent source of stress. My bleeding picked back up about ten days after giving birth, and when I went back to see an Ob/Gyn who was different than the doctor I had worked with prenatally, they did an ultrasound and said that there was still material in my uterus that needed to come out, and he offered me a D&C, which I declined. So then I just bled for longer than you're "supposed" to.
Emotionally, postpartum has been much easier than I was concerned it would be. As someone who's definitely struggled with intrusive thoughts in the past, I was concerned about the possibility of a postpartum mood disorder. If anything, though, I've experienced LESS intrusive thoughts than in the past, which I wasn't expecting. I love watching Rosalind grow and develop and figure the world out. It's been deeply challenging not working, as well as not sleeping; I miss the trees and my coworkers and my work as an arborist, although I feel lucky and grateful for taking the time off that I have; I miss the bodily autonomy of not breastfeeding, especially since we haven't succeeded in giving Rosalind a bottle; and as someone who's always valued sleep and made time for it, not having slept an uninterrupted 8 hours in months is a challenge.
My parents are both teachers and were able to come cook and clean for us in July and August, which was incredible, and my partner was also able to take an extremely generous amount of parental leave. That made early postpartum extremely wonderful interpersonally--we felt so taken-care of. I'm part of an activist community in Boston that also organized a meal train for us. I know that the amount of support I had as a nursing parent and that we had as a couple is sadly rare and systemically denied in this country, which I find deeply unjust.
As someone who was (and hopes to soon go back to being) an hourly worker as a climbing arborist with class privilege, FMLA is incredibly insufficient. I wasn't physically able to continue working for my small company while pregnant (which wouldn't have been required to give me time off due to small business exemptions anyways), so I switched companies to a larger one, which wasn't required to give me time off because I hadn't been working there longer than a year. As a consequence, had I not had family support that allowed me to take unpaid time off, I would've had to either get another job or go back to a hard, physical job immediately after the incredibly intense and grueling physical experience of giving birth. I feel both lucky to have taken so much time off but also angry that the industry I work in makes it so hard for people to have children while still remaining employed.
There's starting to be more recognition of women in arboriculture but so far that seems to remain completely uncoupled from thinking about the experience of pregnancy, childbirth and postpartum return to work in arboriculture. I can count on half of one hand the number of women I know who've been climbing arborists and had children in Massachusetts, myself included.
What is your truth that you'd pass along to your former self, or a new parent?
I feel like I experience much more camaraderie from strangers who are also parents since becoming a parent myself. That's pretty great, and something to look forward to that I wasn't expecting. To my former self I'd also say that so may of the cliches around pregnancy, childbirth, and parenting that I'd heard are true--it is the hardest thing I've done physically and emotionally, but also the most amazing.
Why did you choose to participate in this movement and share your story?
Even though I grew up in a family that was very sex positive and open around bodies and pregnancy, and I knew my matrilineal history of pregnancy, loss, abortion, and postpartum recovery as it impacted my mother, grandmother and great-grandmother, those are still only a few experiences. I was the first of my close friends to get pregnant, and there was a lot about the infinite variation of experience that I didn't know, and I want to do my part to serve as a resource for the community of people who carry and/or bear children.