Honoring Our Bellies: Pregnant Belly Diversity

May is Honoring Our Bellies Month at Well-Rounded Mama.  We had a Belly Blog Carnival where we shared blog entries from various moms of size, talking about their feelings about their bellies during and after pregnancy.  We've shown pictures of Belly Henna and how it can be used to honor your belly during pregnancy.  Now it's time for some more pictures!

One frequent anxiety about fatness and pregnancy for many women of size is wondering what their pregnant bellies will look like. 

And the truth is......it varies.  Fat bodies do not all look alike, so fat pregnant bodies won't all look alike either.  Some women just get much more apple-shaped, some look pear-shaped with a small bump, some get a really big belly, some hardly look pregnant at all, some get a double-roll belly, some look like the classic basketball belly.....you just never know what your body will look like until you actually ARE pregnant. 

Here are some pictures sent into me for the Belly Blog Carnival.  They represent some of the diversity possible among pregnant women of size.  I've re-used a couple of pictures, but most are new.  For the sake of privacy, I identified some of them only with an initial (and even that may have been changed). Others contain first names. All were used with permission.

Please note that the copyright of these pictures belongs to the mothers and this post; do NOT copy them and use them elsewhere.

I've included here the ones submitted to me that identified exactly how far along they were.  All pictures are of women of size, but of varying sizes of large. I've put them in order by gestational dates. Since most people take more pictures at the end of pregnancy than the beginning, late baby bumps are far more represented than early baby bumps.  Finally, I ended with a couple of pictures of labor, newborns, and nursing, just for a sense of closure.

Enjoy!

This is "L" at 6 months pregnant.

This is "Sh" at 28 weeks pregnant (about 7 months).

This is "J" at almost 8 months pregnant.

This is Arwen at 8 months.

This is Issa at 33 weeks.

This is "T" at 35 weeks.

This is Angela at 37 weeks.

This is "A" at 37-38 weeks.

This is Cassandra at 38 weeks.

This is Lexi, at approximately 38 weeks.

This is "A" at 40 weeks, 1 day.

"E" at 41 weeks, 3 days.

"Ch" during pushing phase in labor.

"M" pushing during labor, baby starting to crown.



"E", skin-to-skin, after birth.

"J" nursing, 8 months post-partum.



Thank you to all the moms of size who so generously shared their pictures.  You rock!  You totally look beautiful, and you have done a real service for future moms of size who wonder if fat women really do get pregnant, and oh-my-goodness-what-am-I-going-to-look-like-if-I-do?

Yes, Virginia, fat women really do get pregnant, we do have baby bellies, our baby bellies vary as much as our pre-pregnancy bodies do, but whatever unique shape and size we end up having, we are beautiful. 

*This is the second publishing of this post.  Blogger went down shortly after it posted originally and all recent posts were deleted.  So we're putting it back up to make sure everyone has the opportunity to see it, and so that it stays in our archives.  Apologies if you are seeing it a second time on a feed or newsreader.