I didn’t become a mother through “pushing” the way I thought I would—rather, I became a shell of myself from “the push” and then re-found myself as an unplanned cesarean mama. I had been on a path to have the closest thing to a “natural birth” that I could aspire to, rare for a plus-size pregnancy. I had reasons for cautious optimism. I kept my weight gain on-target, didn’t have gestational diabetes, and my blood pressure was good. Things seemed in line with the tropes that subconsciously shape aspirational expectations for “Natural Birth.”. With the benefit of time, I now believe that the conditioning of women to aspire towards an external ideal as they birth another human is borderline-abusive. I also now believe that I had a doctor that always intended for me to have a c-section. He was “open” to the idea of me “trying,” but he probably decided while harping on my weight at our first visit that he was going to convince me that a c-section was in my baby’s best interest. 

The books I read during pregnancy

My pregnancy reads were intended to be empowering, but wound up working against me when “the push” was incongruous for the mental and physical experiences that transpired. I struggled to reconcile my reality with the narratives around me and the expected responses in those obligatory postpartum conversations. I became really hung up on the physical and binary moment when I was supposed to go into my primordial self, the one that ”literally every other mom has experienced.” It was those small but pervasive assumptions around iconic “mothering” that alienated me so much in my first moments of my baby being outside my body. Arguably, I’m still playing catchup from those first hours/days/months of feeling so broken. I continue to push on, though...

- Sarah Salvatoriello, Founder, Short Girl Long Name