Being honest about what bringing home baby is like
Parenting doesn’t come with a handbook — and even if it did, there would inevitably be things left out. This wouldn’t be an oversight or a lack of transparency, because every child — and parent — is different.
And while parents-to-be and new parents often try to read every book they can find to prepare for the life-changing experience, what may prove even more helpful is a shift in society.
Today, more people — celebrities included — are sharing on social media what it’s really like to bring home a baby.
Model Chrissy Teigen, 30, recently tweeted: “No one told me I would be coming home in diapers too.” She also made public, via Twitter, that she was purchasing a perineal irrigation bottle after giving birth to her daughter, Luna, in April.
Last month, actress Hayden Panettiere, 26, announced on Twitter that she is seeking more help to battle postpartum depression.
“The postpartum depression I have been experiencing has impacted every aspect of my life,” she tweeted. “Rather than stay stuck due to unhealthy coping mechanisms I have chosen to take time to reflect holistically on my health and life.”
Panettiere has been open about her struggle with PPD since the birth of her daughter, Kaya, in December 2014. And her character on ABC’s “Nashville” also receives treatment for PPD.
Yet, these weren’t exactly topics people — much less celebrities — made public a generation ago.
“I think our society is shifting and becoming more honest and open about parenting,” said Danielle Haines, a midwife and mom whose Facebook post of a candid photo with her son three days postpartum went viral in September. “We can talk about breast-feeding and natural birth. I don’t think our parents were necessarily doing that. Our generation is more free, and we have more choices.”
Haines’ photo has been shared more than 23,000 times on Facebook. She posted it as a throwback almost a year after her son, Ocean, was born in November 2014. In the picture, she looks as if she’s on the verge of tears; Ocean is cradled in her arms, but he looks upset. In the caption she wrote: “I was so raw and open. … My baby was getting really hungry. … I had not slept since I went into labor. … I was kinda loosing my mind.”
“I’m still very grateful that it went viral and that it had an overwhelmingly positive response,” said Haines, 35, of Phoenix. “I’m a midwife, so I work with an honest bunch of women. We share this kind of honesty all the time. I forget that’s surprising to people — that honesty is surprising.”
In Chicago, Ashlee Wells’ self-portrait sparked the 4th Trimester Bodies Project, an ongoing photo documentary dedicated to “embracing the beauty inherent in the changes brought to our bodies by motherhood, childbirth and breast-feeding.”
“There is so much about motherhood — from stretch marks to everyone poops — that we just don’t talk about. And there is no reason we shouldn’t,” Wells said. “We don’t need to paint it as this pretty, beautiful thing.”
Wells, a photographer and mother of three, started the project in 2013 with a photo of herself in her underwear taken five months after one of her daughters came home from the hospital, following 100 days in the neonatal intensive care unit.
She has since been touring the world, taking photographs of more than 1,600 women who have chosen to “tastefully bare it all in the name of honest beauty.” A selection of the portraits has been compiled in the project’s first book.
“I had no idea that the project would grow as fast as it did,” Wells, 33, said. “I think it’s important for women to know that they’re not alone. You’re not alone. There are women, mothers everywhere.”