Someone new

She doesn’t recognise herself.

She looks in the reflection and sees someone new.

Stomach empty, yet still heavy like a waterbed.

Arms stronger from who she holds, yet shaken by what her body has just been through.

Eyes hollowed by deprivation, yet awake to the most wholesome kind of love.

The woman staring back at her is not the woman of yesterday.

She has farewelled the reflection of what it took her to carry life.

The reflection that is now only stored in her camera roll as a series of her evolving stomach.

The reflection that was.

She now looks on to her new.

The her of today.

She has been through so much and it shows.

Every part of her postpartum experience is mirrored back at her.

It is raw.

It is real.

It is imperfect in almost every way.

But that baby she now holds - the one of yesterday and today - isn’t foreign.

That baby has been with her through it all.

And that baby -

The one who looks at her and sees nothing but perfection,

That baby -

The one who wants no one else but her,

That baby -

The one who wants to face her, not the mirror behind,

That baby reminds her that she is exactly who she needs to be right now,

Even if she struggles to see it herself.