This story is part of The Wall of Wombs, our 2024 exhibition sharing honest, deeply personal journeys of motherhood.
What you’re reading is a direct transcription of a spoken story — shared bravely, in the speaker’s own words.
Listen to this story and explore others at wallofwombs.com.
To be honest, so far I haven’t even really noticed that I’m pregnant. Seems weird because my bump is pretty big, but honestly, I will look at myself, and I go, “Oh my god, I’m actually really pregnant.”
We still can’t fathom that we’re going to have a second child in a week’s time. It’s been pretty good, no bumps on the road so far.
This time around, I’ve done more research and just been a bit more relaxed about the whole thing. Like I know I’ve got birth in a week’s time, but at the same point, I’m like, “It’ll be what it’ll be.”
During my first pregnancy, I felt really big the whole time, and people kept mentioning how big I was. By about this stage of my pregnancy, I just wanted out. That’s part of the reason I wanted to be induced. I was just like, “I’m done, I’m done.”
With this pregnancy, I’ve sort of embraced my bump a bit more. I just think it’s important for women to not feel scared to have feelings about their body, about liking it, hating it, all that, but to just also, when they feel ready, embrace it.
I think, as women, there’s so much pressure on us, like, um, you know, to have kids, to not have kids. You get to an age where you get told like, “Are you having kids?”, “Why aren’t you having kids?” And then it’s like, with your body, you get the pressure of, “Is your bum big enough?”, “Is it too small?”, “Are you going to give birth in a hospital?”, “Are you going to give birth at home?”
Everybody has an opinion on what women do.
In mental health, we actually look at your developmental history, including when you were in the womb. So we look at how was mum with you in the womb? Was mum anxious? Did mum have depression? Was there violence going on around? All that stuff actually shapes who you are to this day. There are so many mums that think they have to do absolutely everything, and it’s like, “Oh, my mum did it.” And that’s what the older generation do as well. They say, “Back in my day, I did it by myself, and we didn’t have leave, and we didn’t…” And it’s like, cool, but look at the mental health issues of people these days. Look at the trauma of people these days. We need to change the system.
So that’s why this time around, I’ll do my pregnancy differently. I actually planned for my postpartum instead of planning for a baby. Because it’s the postpartum for women that there’s just still not enough research all about it. Like, we know about postpartum depression, postpartum anxiety. But if you ask, like, any of the mums that have come today, how much has been done so far for them, they’ll probably tell you they did one or two survey things with the hospital, and that was it.
And then, if you ask any of the postpartum mums, they’ll tell you that they got checked in at six weeks, and that was it. Whereas, in this stage, you get checked in like if I’m going to an appointment, it’s all about me, you know? In two weeks’ time, it’s all about the baby. And that’s where we falter. That’s where women falter through the cracks.