Gaining Self Confidance (Monique)

age 21, pregnancies 2, births 2, 2 yrs and PP 5 months

When I got pregnant with my first child I was engaged to a man who was great. Supportive, loving, caring, everything you’d want in a man. About 6 months before our wedding date I stopped taking birth control thinking that it would take about a year to actually get pregnant (I was on the depo), and presumably after the wedding. I ended up getting pregnant a mere month after the shot was set to expire. It was a shock, but I was so excited… for a while. After I got pregnant the man I knew completely changed. He became physically and verbally abusive. He threw me down stairs, broke his hand on my face, made me watch porn and tell me how much better the girls looked/were in bed compared to me. I was so blessed that my baby boy came out gorgeous and healthy even though he was born at 34 weeks.Afterwards my body bounced back immediately. I lost all the weight easily, got no stretch marks, but it wasn’t good enough for him. He constantly put me down and made me feel just horrible about myself. I finally got the courage to leave not for me, but for my son and I met the man who is now my husband. He always tells me how beautiful I am, supports me and cheers me on in everything I do and treats my son as his own. I got pregnant very early in our relationship (on birth control and pulling out) so it was a huge shock. I wasn’t very happy in the beginning, I was terrified about what the baby was going to do to my body. I was afraid he would leave me because my body was going to change so dramatically only months after meeting me. I was afraid I wasn’t going to get so lucky this time around, that added to still healing from low self esteem from my prior relationship I was miserable for the first 6 months of my pregnancy. Once I felt her kick it was all over, but I still did whatever I possibly could to look good after I had her. I worked out until I gave birth, I slathered myself in cocoa butter and bio-oil, ate well, ended up gaining a little less than 20 pounds and used a belly binder PP, I started pelvic thrusts 3 days PP, cut calories and started back at the gym the day I was released for exercise. It sounds a little intense but I was determined. Everyone told me I looked great for just having a baby, but I didn’t believe it. Though I got back to my normal weight, everything shifted and sits differently. My tummy is rounder no matter how many crunches I do, my hips are wider, my boobs are a little saggier. I was miserable and though I loved my princess I hated my body. No matter how I “good” everyone said I looked I couldn’t stop putting myself down. I finally realized I needed to work more on my self esteem and less on my body. I started looking at myself in the mirror every morning and finding one thing I like about my body. Doing this I began to appreciate my body that much more and gained self confidence which I’ve never had. I also realized that before I wanted the same body I had when I was 16, why in the world would I want that??? Becoming a mother has made me a woman in so many ways, so why shouldn’t my body reflect that? A woman’s body has curves, it’s rounder and softer, it has blemishes, it’s imperfect and that much more beautiful because all of this means it gave life. Now I don’t want a girls body, I want the body of a woman, the body of a mother.

First and second pic – 36 weeks pregnant, third pic – 5 months PP, fourth pic – me, my son and daughter after bringing her home