Beauty Pageants or Cracked Tailbones?
Let's talk postpartum!
I’m currently writing a piece about pageantry, ideals of womanhood, and postpartum politics which means yes, I’m writing about Ballerina Farm yet again. If you’d like to weigh in on BF’s recent content, I’d love to hear from you! Just respond to this email.
Looming large over my analysis of BF and Mrs. American and eagle costumes is a consideration of postpartum bodies. And when I write about specific facets of motherhood, it’s impossible to not start from a personal perspective. I have experienced three postpartum periods and currently operate out of a postpartum body. And while most of us find ourselves uttering “why did no one tell me this” in the early days of motherhood, it’s been almost 5 years since the birth of my third child, and I still find myself surprised by everything I didn’t/still don’t know about postpartum bodies.
A non-exhaustive accounting of my postpartum body changes.
Tailbones can crack during childbirth! Super chill!
I was a million times hungrier postpartum than I was when I pregnant and my stomach had way more room for food than it did during pregnancy??? I speak, of course, as a scientist.
It took me a few weeks post childbirth to not feel winded climbing stairs and if I stood up too quickly in the early weeks I felt faint as hell.
HI IT’S ME NIGHT SWEATS. I’m sorry but having to change clothes MULTIPLE TIMES throughout the night and having to change sheets daily?! Not cool, postpartum goddesses in charge of all this shit, NOT COOL.
The fluffy baby bangs of postpartum can last for YEARS.
A so-called “pregnancy mask” can flair up a decade after the pregnancy which initially triggered it.
My hips are permanently altered and my ass hurts if I drive for longer than a half hour.
HAVE YOU HEARD OF THE PELVIC FLOOR.1
Speaking of my ass, I think my pregnant front body kinda made my ass more taut or something during pregnancy - like, I think my stomach stretched my ass into my back (in addition to being a scientist, I’m also a doctor), because following all three births, my ass immediately felt like a deflated balloon.
I wanted all things mild and warm and sweet postpartum. Pancakes. Nutella. Buttered banana bread.
Uterine cramping post-birth is supposedly more intense with each subsequent pregnancy (according to my labor nurses) which makes me wonder what our bodies are trying to tell us.
And finally, the fucking weirdest thing about my postpartum body that absolute no one told me was a thing or even could be a thing!