Singer Aijia Grammer revealed that she had to have an emergency C-section to deliver her daughter — and as taxing as the experience was, she said that she came away from it with a deep appreciation for what women and their bodies go through.
"Everything. Hurts," she wrote on Instagram. "My neck feels like I have bad whiplash from a car accident, my boobs hurt because they are trying to figure out what their new job is, I have bags under my eyes because I have barely slept and my body doesn't tolerate pain medication, my belly hurts because I had lots of specific plans and ideas about how my birth was going to go and how granola I was going to be and all of it went straight out the freaking window."
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"What women's bodies go through is unimaginable," Grammer wrote. "Every change is so calculated and so exact. I would not trade a second of this pain if it meant I would not get to keep this little love."
"To my womenfolk, I salute you," she added. "Even if you have not had a baby, or don't plan on it, I hope you see the value in your perfectly designed body."
Her comments are especially refreshing, considering the amount of stigma there still is around C-sections as opposed to natural births. Many people still think that C-sections are "the easy way out," but as Grammer's post points out, your body can still go through a lot, no matter how you give birth.
Grammer, who is married to fellow singer Andy Grammer, told People that she wasn't anticipating a C-section, but is just glad that her daughter is okay.
"At the end of the day, the ‘birth plan’ is your wish for how things will go, but you never know how your body, or the baby’s body, will coincide with that," she told People. "So the true goal is healthy baby and healthy, empowered mama. If you get those two, the rest is just icing on the cake."
Welcome to Mothership: Parenting stories you actually want to read, whether you're thinking about or passing on kids, from egg-freezing to taking home baby and beyond. Because motherhood is a big if — not when — and it's time we talked about it that way.
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