Parenting blogger Anupa King is used to sharing her life on the internet, but last week, she posted two photos on Instagram that she says were difficult for her to "build up enough courage to share" with her over 26,000 followers.
The photos, which show both her pregnancy body and her post-baby body, aren't too out of the ordinary for a parenting blogger to post, but King wrote that she hasn't been feeling like herself in her body. However, she wrote, "One of the main reasons I share this, as most of you know, THIS is a marathon/dancer's body and while that can mean I'll bounce back in no time it clearly doesn't."
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She also wanted to post the photos after an encounter in which a stranger assumed she was still pregnant.
"Yesterday, I was asked by the baker at my supermarket: 'Are you having a girl or a boy?'" she wrote. "That would have really hit some soft spots/nerves with me...I mean I'm not pregnant anymore but I sure do look it."
Instead of being outraged, however, she politely smiled and said that she had a boy — which isn't a lie. But afterwards, she realized just how proud she is of her body, no matter what it looks like.
"After I left the supermarket I realised I absolutely love my body and am so super proud of it hence the reason I chose to share this post image with you," she wrote.
King tells Refinery29 that she posted her message because she wanted to combat the image of "perfect pregnancies and perfect postpartum pregnancy bodies."
"When you're going through what you're going through, you just want to feel surrounded with moms who get it," she says. "You just want to hear that it's going to be ok and what you're feeling is perfectly normal."
Though King eventually wants her body to "journey back to where it was once [was]," she's not in any rush — nor should she be. And while that's her decision, we want to remind you that you don't have to "bounce back" at all. Your body will change (especially when growing and delivering a human), and that's fine.
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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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