8 MOTHERS BARE BODIES CHANGED BY BIRTH
MY BODY has changed forever, stretched in ways I’d never imagined since my two pregnancies. My hips have widened, my stomach is softer. There will always be a gap between my abdominal muscles. I have stretch marks, my first and only tattoos. My back aches and feels weaker than before. My boobs are smaller and softer. But my motherly evolution extends deeper than my skin; it’s also altered my mind, my perception of myself and the way I interact with the world.
Even when my kids — Elio, 4, and Coda, 1 — are not with me, they’re always with me. They’re lodged somewhere in my thoughts. It’s like when you leave a good concert, the experience delicately perfumes the rest of the day. When Elio was born, I remember feeling eager to get back to my previous life before children. I wanted to go out with my friends. I wanted to accelerate the career that I had worked so hard to attain. I was impatient for my body to return to the way it looked before pregnancy.
It took me about a year to feel comfortable adding mother to my identity. So I set out to photograph mothers and show the parts of their bodies that had evolved. The images would hopefully serve as a touchstone for others exploring their own relationships with their bodies after having children.
For typically nine months, we share our bodies with our children, and no matter how helpful our partners are, pregnancy can never be shared or compensated for.
For me, pregnancy was a complete transformation. I feel stronger in many ways. When I need an extra oomph, I draw on the pain I felt while delivering my second baby, pushing in the delivery room without an epidural. The hardest task was trusting my body could handle my baby, using each moment between contractions to enter a safe place in my memories. My mind and body were dancing together. That I successfully delivered a baby brings me strength.
Having kids also has focused my attention on things that make me whole. There is no time for waste. The focus has propelled my work and led me to have deeper, more meaningful relationships with people in my life. Even more so, I am a more anxious version of myself, constantly on the edge of worrying for my kids’ wellbeing and doing the right thing for them.
For these eight women I spoke to over the course of the last five months, pregnancy and childbirth prompted astounding metamorphoses. The mental and physical changes are our keepsakes, no matter how old our children get.