Decide to Love Your Body That Gave Life to Your Precious Baby

In Episode 9 of The Business Mamas Podcast, I introduced a Framework for Enhanced Well-Being - Focus on Beliefs, Relationships & Making Heart-Guided Decisions. By using this framework, I have been able to unlock the incredible peace that comes with being present in my work, with my kids, and in other aspects of my life. I know you're ready to welcome that peace into your life as well. When you have empowering beliefs, and empowering relationships with yourself and others, you are setting yourself up to value yourself, to know your truth, and then to honor yourself and your truth by making heart-guided decisions.

Today, I want to talk with you about making the heart-guided decision to bravely and unapologetically love your body. This is the story of my transition from appreciation, but some criticism for my pre-childbirth body to having total reverence for my post-childbirth body.

When I think about my relationship with my pre-childbirth body, it was different than the relationship I have now with my body, after giving birth to my two children. I have early memories of being weighed, and then talking about how much I weighed, and how much my friends weighed, and realizing that I was heavier than many of my friends.

Mama: Look for Opportunities to Teach Your Children to Love & Be Grateful For Their Bodies Early On

I remember my mom telling me that I was heavier, because muscle was heavy, and I was a strong and healthy girl. I remember my mom telling me that she was muscular too and that when she was growing up as a young girl, she was oftentimes heavier than her friends too.

I remember that the message my mother communicated to me was that my body was healthy and strong, and that it certainly was nothing to be ashamed of. Following her lead, I appreciated my own strength and continued to develop the strength of my body by becoming a gymnast, and then later, a pole vaulter.

I knew my mom was right. I was strong, and I was usually glad to be strong. I do remember having fleeting moments where I envied the skinny girls. I remember seeing pictures of Kate Moss and other waiflike models in the magazines that were popular in my teenage years. In the time when I was experiencing all the hormonal changes and starting to want to be sexually desirable, I remember realizing that my body looked different from the waiflike models that I was seeing in the magazines, and who were advertised as the beauty ideal. I can never remember this going further than a noticing and awareness for me, though, and I credit that largely to my mother. I think that if she had not told me when I was a little girl, that nothing was wrong with my strong and healthy body and that I shouldn’t feel bad about seeing numbers on the scale that were higher than the numbers my friends saw, then perhaps in those teenage years, I would have started to dislike my body that didn't look anything like the image of beauty that was being projected to me.

I am thankful that when I brought up the subject of feeling insecure about my body to her as a young girl, that she took that opportunity to teach me to be grateful for my body early on.

The process of giving birth and taking care of a new baby, brought my self body-love to a whole new level.

Giving birth to my first son, Jackson, looked nothing like the birth plan I had created with my doula. I was supposed to labor at my home, and then get to the hospital when my contractions were consistent and increasing in their regularity. That was the plan. Instead, when I went to my OB for my 38 week check-up, after realizing that my blood pressure was higher than it had ever been, I was diagnosed with preeclampsia. I was told that I needed to be admitted to the hospital immediately, and that I wouldn't be leaving the hospital until after I had a baby. This made no sense to me. I had been healthy all of my life and I had been healthy all of my pregnancy. I had been doing yoga five days a week, and eating healthier in the last month of my pregnancy than ever before. But there I was, facing a new reality, one that I didn't design, but one that I got to adapt to.

My goal was to have a completely unmedicated birth. I communicated that to the nurses and the doctors that I was seeing. They told me, they could monitor me and the baby for a while, and that they didn't need to take any immediate actions. After several hours, my blood pressure had not decreased, and I was told that I was going to need to be induced.

I asked so many questions.

We discussed the advantages and disadvantages of inducing.

We discussed the advantages and disadvantages of different methods of induction.

Since this hospital did not have an acupuncturist on staff, I requested that an acupuncturist sneak into the hospital to try to use acupuncture to jumpstart my labor. I had an acupuncture treatment done. It did not work to start my contractions, but I felt good about having at least tried.

Then, I asked for the next non-drug form of induction. I was told that I could have a Foley bulb inserted, and that the purpose would be to try to get my cervix to start opening and to start my contractions. The doctor inserted the Foley bulb, and it was incredibly painful. I called for help, and I was told that it had been inserted incorrectly. When the doctor came back to try to insert it again, I told her that I was not going to have her insert it again, and that I wanted another doctor. Then, another doctor inserted it again. This time it was much less painful, as it was actually properly inserted the second time, but it still didn't do the trick. My contractions were not starting.

Eventually, I decided that the risks of not being induced outweighed the risks of using the suggested drugs to induce me into labor.

I made an empowered choice.

It was not my intention going in to all of this to use Pitocin to get my labor started but that was the best choice in that moment. And it was my choice. I understood the risks and the benefits. I had been able to explore my alternatives, and I made the choice that was best for me and my baby. I cannot emphasize this point enough. When things were not going as planned, being empowered to make my own birth decisions was so important and so empowering for me.

What came next started off mostly as observation. I watched as my body did not respond to the Pitocin. Every half an hour, they added more Pitocin into my system. After around eight hours of adding more Pitocin every 30 minutes, I had maxed out. I was receiving the most Pitocin that was permissible to administer to me, and my body seemed no closer to starting labor than when we started the Pitocin. Then within a few minutes of receiving the latest dose, it hit me like a ton of bricks; my contractions went from zero to hellacious. I am so grateful that they were able to get the anesthesiologist to administer an epidural because those crazy Pitocin induced contractions were like no other pain I had ever experienced. After the epidural hit my system, I was able to feel pressure and some pain but it was so much less than what I had experienced before, and I felt very, very grateful.

When it was time to push Jackson out, I asked the medical staff to bring a mirror, and I got to watch the miracle of me delivering him into the world. In that moment, when I was watching my body, deliver him into the world, I felt totally in awe and totally grateful. I think one important piece of this is that I was choosing to feel empowered. There were certain things about birth that I could not control. There were other things that I could control. I was very informed, and I made decisions about all the things that I could control. I very much believe that having an empowered birth was the launching pad for my new even deeper love of my body.

Mama, I invite you to ask yourself these questions.

1) Was as your body the safe place for your little one to grow and develop?

2) Whether by an unmedicated birth, a medicated birth, or a caesarean birth, did your body give birth to a baby?

3) How can a body that did all of that amazing work for you and for your baby be anything other than totally magical and 100% amazing?

I'll tell you the answer. It can't be anything other than totally magical and 100% amazing. Love your body, Mama.

If you enjoyed Episode 22 and this blog post, I would love it if you shared the blog or the podcast with someone you think could benefit from them. I would also be incredibly grateful if you could leave an honest rating and review of The Business Mamas Podcast on Apple Podcasts as that helps more people find the show and it helps me in sharing this message of practicing self-love and self-care with more people whose lives I know could be enriched by hearing it. Sign up to download my Morning Routine Guide and receive my twice-monthly newsletter at The Business Mamas Podcast.

Kara Stein-Conaway, is the host of the Business Mamas Podcast, self-love advocate, lawyer, and mama of two. The Business Mamas Podcast is made for women who know they should be doing more self-care, and practicing more self-love, but are overrun with balancing at all. This podcast provides the tools and support you need, so you can have a successful career, while also being a present and loving mom. Until next time and with gratitude, Kara Stein-Conaway, @karasteinconaway on Instagram.