The Shape of a Mother

I was doing some study for my Childbirth Education course, and came across this amazing site!(see links) Photo's and posts of real mothers and their real bodies, celebrating our similarities and diversity. Very few of us have a "perfect" body before birth, let along after, but yet we punish ourselves for being normal women with normal bodies, why is that? And who decided what was perfect anyway?

All of us are beautiful, a mothers body even more so in my opinion. We have carried, protected, birthed and nourished our babies with our bodies, that should be celebrated!! I remember looking in the bathroom mirror about 5 days after birthing my first baby, everything was so different! I prodded at my still very soft belly (cloud belly my husband called it - he thought it was great!) remembering the pre-baby bod and despairing of ever seeing it again, when I had an incredible revelation of just how incredible my body was. I had made a baby, birthed it and was feeding my precious baby with my very own body, I was Wonder Woman!! My stretch marks are my badge of honour, I am a Mum, and I am proud of myself!! I will never have the same body I did as a 22 year-old, but what I have now is better. I am strong, healthy and more confident than that 22 year-old. And if anyone doesn't like it I don't care - I make my own people now!!!

"Brains 'rewired' to aid motherhood"

This is the little article in Sunday's paper that caught my attention;

Science has finally caught up with what mothers have been saying for years.
They are superwomen with superpowers thanks to an influx of hormones during pregnancy and labour to enable them to cope with the demands of childrearing.
Neuroscientists have discovered that women's brains are rewired during that period making them faster, more robust and less stressed than before.
Professor Craig Kinsey, a neuroscientist at the University of Richmond, Virginia, found the lifelong transformation is caused by an influx of hormones, including estrogen and oxytocin, to the brain.
The revolutionary findings could lead to a new world of chemical therapies to transform "bad" mothers.
Professor Kinsley said if females with a deficit of the brain chemical oxytocin can be identified, "when they are first interacting with the baby you can give them a boost of oxytocin at a critical time".
Sunday Mail April 27, 2008 p26

Have they considered the natural rush of oxytocin that a mother's brain is literally washed with when she births naturally? This rush of hormones only happens during a natural birth, as the drugs used for epidurals stops the natural oxytocin from doing it's job. Synthetic oxytocin fools the body into producing contractions, but it blocks the natural oxytocin from being produced and having the incredible effect it is designed for.

Maybe, instead of trying to identify the "bad" mothers (their quote) after birth, perhaps they should be working on supporting mothers properly before and during birth, to maximise the opportunity for these women to start motherhood with every advantage that should be theirs, naturally.