Thread by @Lysistradical

My first child was born surgically, any other way would’ve killed us both. When they started to put up the curtain, I declined. I watched the whole thing. I saw my intestines put into a bowl, saw the hooks they used to pull aside my abdominal muscles, saw them pull him from me.🧵

The entire time, my ONLY concern was for my CHILD. None of it gave me any pause, not the sight or smell of my own blood, or my literal evisceration. My universe hinged on awaiting a single nose:
His cry. His first breath. My life, my identity, was being the portal for him.

My second birth, I decided to do vaginally. This is called a “VBAC” and not a lot of women attempt it. Again, however, my body was in service to my child, and I made that decision to risk my life for her better health.

I can not think of a moment in life I have felt more alive, and primally powerful, as when my daughter was moving through me into this world. The experience held a level of sanctity which can not be done justice by in words.

I breastfed both of my children, for more than a year each. Breastfeeding is actually very difficult. It hurts, your nipples crack, you leak in public, you have to gauge your supply to make sure you are producing enough… you have to keep a schedule to ensure you don’t dry up.

If you miss a feeding, your breasts become engorged. It is MASSIVELY painful. Sometimes a duct will get blocked, which is excruciating and difficult to fix. If you decide to continue supplementing your child with breast milk after they begin solids…

Then you are dealing with a baby who has TEETH. My nipples were bitten more times than I couldn’t count. Sometimes they would bleed. But, breast milk has enormous immune benefits, so I again put my body in service of my children, as much as I could, for as long as I could.

In other words, I was a mom. That’s what mothers do.
When I look back at it, my body has done incredible things. Growing my kids, healing from their births, feeding them so well that they were chubby and healthy babies. My body, my biology, did all that. And could do it again.

That makes me unbelievably proud.
It also makes me unbelievably furious when I see the desanctification, commercialization, and appropriation of the female body and, increasingly, it’s reproductive functions.

BIRTH is not a fetish.
BREASTFEEDING is not for self-affirmation. (In fact, women get actively shamed for it, told to leave and hide in public places.)
PREGNANCY is a fucking nightmare of a miracle, and a hugely intricate, dangerous, and taxing biological process.

When I was pregnant, I couldn’t take ADVIL. I couldn’t eat SUSHI. I couldn’t dye my hair. There was a list of things as long as my arm I couldn’t do. And I gave it all up, gladly, for my kids. For their health. Now, I see pregnant women pumped full of testosterone.

I see MEN forcing newborns to latch and ingest synthetic hormone fluid which is NOT breast milk. I hear other men talk about how they want to get a womb transplant. Body parts from a woman sewn into them.
All these things so they can pantomime childbirth for their validation.

Childbirth is the LEAST SELF ORIENTED process I can think of. My body bears it’s war scars.
This fetishization of childbirth and childbearing MUST STOP.
The children subjected to these things are being ABUSED.
Pregnancy is where a persons whole life begins.
PROTECT IT.