It’s no secret that there’s a lot of pressure put on moms these days. Whether it’s the incessant need to have the perfect “candid” Instagram photos that I’m convinced had to take 30 tries to get right, or the unspoken pressure of delivering a baby naturally—as if we don’t have access to drugs designed to make the already LABORous duty of giving birth just a smudge more comfortable—moms really can’t catch a break.
Throughout her pregnancy, Olivia White heard the same pressures as everyone else. Breastfeeding is the “only” way to support your baby, and C-sections are “the easy way out.”
Determined to silence those who have yet to learn how to mind their own womb, Olivia took to social media with a post C-section photo that has moms everywhere clapping.
“Look I know it might not be my best angle (or is it?),” she writes. “But who wouldn’t take selfies hours post birth so they can see where they sliced you open and yanked out a whole person.”
Olivia White–House of White
The Australian mommy blogger of two specifically addressed the stigma around the surgery and the widespread belief that it’s the lazier option of childbirth.
“To anyone who thinks it’s the easy way out, well try having a 6 inch gash in your abdomen like a gutted shark who had the body parts of the surfer it ate retrieved! That’s then sewn back together with fishing wire while it feels like your vital organs are trying to escape!
I mean sure, everything is rainbows and lollipops till the spinal wears off! After that it’s like you’ve been hit by a bus which then backed over you just to make sure it didn’t miss you the first time! If you don’t time the Endone exactly before the previous lot wore off then you will most certainly know you are alive (while wishing you were dead) and worst of all you’ll feel as if you’ll spend your entire life wearing nanna knickers up around your waist because the thought of anything settling in the canyon between your gut and pubic region is the stuff nightmares are made of!”
Olivia’s honest post brings some comical truth to the matter that giving birth is different for every single woman.
It blows my mind that this day and age, in a society so vocally devoted to the equality and treatment of women, we’re constantly having to talk about “mom-shaming.”
We are all in this together. Here to support one another, lift each other up and stand together through the hills and valleys of the journey that is motherhood. HOW does having a C-section or delivering naturally have anything to do with what kind of mother you’ll be?
It doesn’t. And it’s people like Olivia that are helping mothers everywhere put an end to the pressure and stigmas plaguing motherhood.
“Anyone who’s ever had a c section knows that you’ll forever be dependant [sic] on your friends Nancy, Dr 90210 and Spanx because you cannot for the life of you get rise of the ditch that is left by the scar.”
While she admits that her body will change and heal differently than someone who gives birth naturally, the body-conscious thoughts are the same.
Still, it’s the joy of what she now holds on the outside, and even more in her heart, that makes all of the gory, painful details more than worth it.
Olivia White–House of White
“But for all the skin tight Kookai dresses I bought while pregnant that now make me look like I have a Kangaroo pouch – I wouldn’t change it! Because if it wasn’t for the ability to deliver my babies this way they might not be here today plus I reckon getting cut from A to B sounds way worse.”
Olivia’s words are the reminder we all need today to mind our own womb. A healthy happy baby is one that is loved, treasured and cherished—regardless of which way they made their entrance into the world.
