Tag: Visibility

Diastasis Recti, Body Image, and Gender

Postpartum recovery is typically portrayed as a rapid return to pre-pregnancy weight and shape. For many people, this is not an accurate representation. Many people never return to pre-pregnancy weight or shape. Some do but have to put in a lot of work to make that happen.

I have a short torso so when I was pregnant, I carried my baby out in front. I started showing early and was very round. I had many stretch marks from early on and still have them. At halfway through my pregnancy people were surprised I still had a while to go. I was asked many times if I was having twins.

At six months postpartum my belly had shrunk somewhat but I still looked about the same size as when I was halfway through my pregnancy. While I knew that the media portrays postpartum recovery inaccurately, this seemed particularly slow. So I tested myself for diastasis recti and found a 3-4 finger gap between my abdominals. This was soon after diagnosed by a physiotherapist.

I started doing specific core exercises and regained my core strength fairly quickly. But at just over nine months postpartum, I still look the same as I did halfway through my pregnancy. While out for a walk with my nine month old baby in the stroller, a stranger congratulated me on the second baby I have on the way.

Having a round, pregnant shaped belly is a difficult experience for me for a number of reasons.

  • No one should ever comment on another person’s body shape, size, or presentation without being invited to do so and yet pregnancy seems to be a socially accepted time to do this. Being perceived as pregnant invites these sorts of comments.
  • In most people’s minds, being seen as someone who is potentially pregnant puts me in the category of ‘female’ or ‘woman’ and negates any other aspects of my presentation that might suggest otherwise. I dealt with this while pregnant for the sake of having my child but was really looking forward to not dealing with this anymore. And here I am, still being perceived as pregnant.
  • While pregnant, having a large belly helped minimize my perception of the size of my chest by comparison. Now that I am no longer pregnant and would like to flatten the appearance of my chest, doing so would only accentuate the size of my belly.
  • In order to heal diastasis recti, I have to avoid slouching. Standing up straight makes my chest look and feel bigger, increasing my dysphoria for the sake of healing my abdominals.

I know that recovery from or healing of diastasis recti is slow and takes diligent work. Being constantly aware of my posture, movement, and muscle activation takes mental effort. Making myself do core exercises daily takes will power. I am trying but I’m not always successful on all fronts. And without noticeable change in my function or shape, it is hard to stay motivated.

In search of answers and community, I recently turned to the internet and social media. I found lots of good information but every single resource used female terms and pronouns throughout. Finding community and support for part of my experience that actively excluded and invalidated other parts was painful, exhausting, and overwhelming.

Here is yet another topic where gender neutral terminology would not exclude or invalidate anyone and yet at every opportunity professionals refer to ‘ladies’ and ‘mama’.

Throughout this whole internal struggle with post partum body image, I have tried to be aware of where my thoughts and feelings are coming from. I avoid and reframe any thoughts I have about my weight. I try not to judge my body in negative ways due it’s size or shape. However, I can’t escape how my shape triggers my dysphoria or interferes with my preferred strategies for managing my dysphoria. And I can’t ignore how others perceive me when they assume I am pregnant.

No two people recover from pregnancy the same way. Don’t make assumptions about other people’s bodies based on their shape, size, or function. Don’t make assumptions about other people based on their bodies. If you are a professional supporting a community, question your use of gendered language. Substitute gender neutral terms and use language referring to a specific experience wherever possible. If this is something you would like help with, please contact me.

Did you struggle with body image after pregnancy? Did you or do you currently have diastasis recti? Leave me a comment below! I’d love to hear from you.

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My First Parental Celebration Days as a New Parent

I recently celebrated my first Nonbinary Parent’s Day and Mother’s Day as a parent so I thought I’d share what those days felt like for me as a nonbinary person.

Some background:

  • I am more comfortable being called a parent than a mother or a mom
  • I identify with parts of ‘mom culture’ but the parts I don’t identify with feel really wrong to me, mostly for gender related reasons
  • My parental term of choice is ‘Mur’ which is a sounded out version of M and R for Meaghan Ray (my name)
  • The majority of people in my life do not yet know about my chosen parental term or my discomfort with the label of mom or mother

NONBINARY PARENT’S DAY

Nonbinary Parent’s Day fell on April 18 this year. I didn’t even know about it until my husband mentioned it a few days early. We didn’t plan anything special, just went about our normal activities. But the day still felt special. I was more in tune with my connection with my baby, more grateful, thankful, and had an sense of inner peace and oneness.

Only a couple people other than my husband knew to wish me happy Nonbinary Parent’s Day the way you would for Mother’s Day or Father’s Day. This wasn’t surprising since I hadn’t even heard about the day until he told me and hadn’t broadcasted it to the world. I did see lots of celebratory photos and posts on social media from other nonbinary parents which gave me a much greater sense of community and connection.

So while celebrating this day felt great personally, it has very little recognition in the wider world as of yet. I’m hoping this will increase in future years. Starting next year, I will be more proactive at letting my friends and family know that this is my preferred parental celebration day.

MOTHER’S DAY

I had no idea how I would feel about celebrating Mother’s Day, or at least being wished a happy Mother’s Day by others. Turns out it was a complicated experience.

I was looking forward to getting to celebrate my first Mother’s Day as a parent alongside celebrating it for my own mom. I was looking forward to the sense of understanding, shared experience, community, and recognition. Turns out that when the title of ‘Mother’ doesn’t sit right, being wished a happy Mother’s Day doesn’t feel great either.

I did some translating self talk every time someone wished me a happy Mother’s Day. Something like – they’re recognizing my new parental role, expressing their understanding of the work that goes into being in the primary parental role that I’m currently in, and I appreciate that. This translation helped a bit but it also took effort.

Every time I was wished a happy Mother’s Day, while I knew it came from a good place, I also knew that it meant that they had overlooked how my gender interacts with my role as a parent. Feeling seen in my new role as a parent and simultaneously invisible in my gender makes for a confusing and isolating experience on a day when I was hoping to feel seen and connected.

A few friends were careful to wish me a happy Parent’s Day or happy Gestational Parent’s Day on Mother’s Day which definitely felt better. These wishes were more personalized and recognized my gender in addition to my parental role but didn’t lead to a feeling of being connected to any community with similar experiences. I let these friends know about Nonbinary Parent’s Day and was wished a happy belated Nonbinary Parent’s Day instead.

For me, celebrating Nonbinary Parent’s Day feels like the right fit. It’ll take a while for my friends and extended family, and especially the wider world, to recognize this annual day but at least we can make a tradition of it in our family of three.

Next year on Mother’s Day, I will try to use a gentle response such as: Thank you, but I celebrate Nonbinary Parent’s Day instead which is the third Sunday in April.

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Making Sense of Myself by Writing Poetry

Back in 2008, a few years after my initial gender questioning experience but many years before I actually figured out my gender or heard the term ‘nonbinary’, I wrote a poem for an LGBT publication at my university. I was going through boxes of notebooks and found the one I had written it in. Reading through it, I found it incredible how accurate it still feels. I don’t even think it was chosen for the publication but it means a whole lot to me so I thought I’d publish it here.

Both

Neither boy nor girl.
Not neither, both. 
Sometimes one more than the other, 
But always both. 

Gender is fluid, always changes.
It's not black and white, 
not static, 
not for me. 
Gender fluidity.

It's not visible like race. 
It's who I am and part of all I do. 
The way I walk,
the way I talk,
the way I punch your shoulder. 
The clothes I wear defy gender, do not conform,
instead show who I am. 
And the way I sit - have you not noticed?

Of course not. 
I use the women's washroom
(every time glancing at the men's sign).
I check the 'female' box on forms
(wishing it didn't matter).
It's in the language:
Masculine, feminine, he, she, him, her. 
It's defined, as it should be, 
as it needs to be,
for society. 
But not for me. 

I'm not butch, that's just an image. 
Don't call me a tomboy, that's just a name. 
I don't need a category, 
I don't want a label. 
I'm me and will forever be
neither boy nor girl. 
Not neither, both. 
Always both.

There are some parts of this that I’ve changed my perspective on or have a deeper understanding of. I now understand that race can be as invisible as gender, just as difficult to navigate as gender, and is absolutely as inherent to someone’s identity as their gender. I also do appreciate labels as a way to communicate who I am in a variety of ways depending on who I’m talking to and what the situation is. But the labels typically given to me by society feel just as wrong or irritating now as they did when I wrote this poem.

Even without accurate language to describe it, much understanding of it, or much experience exploring my own gender, I was still able to communicate the emotional experience of living as a nonbinary person in a binary-gendered society.

If you’re stuck on a strong emotion and keep going around in circles no matter who you talk to or what advice you hear, try writing it down as a poem. I have relied on this as a tool of expression, communication, and self-discovery many times over the years all the way from elementary school into adulthood. Even if you’re not the poetry type, or don’t think you’re good with words, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t have to be eloquent. If you start from a place of strong emotion and use words that represent that emotion and the experience that triggered it or what it feels like to sit with it, you may be surprised how powerful your words can be.

Give it a try and, if you’d like to share, post your poem in the comments or send it to me in an email. I’d love to read it.

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