This is a picture of me when I was eight months pregnant with Zibbit. I absolutely love this picture.

It was taken about two years ago, so it’s not that far back in my history, but I decided to use it because being pregnant was a very important experience for me. When my belly began to swell with my first pregnancy, I realized that it was the first time in my life that I truly felt like a woman. Suddenly I had curves! I was soft and supple. The sharp angles and boyish figure I had carried my entire life were now padded and feminine. The fact that I was actually creating a person inside my body was incomprehensible- even the second time. So much of my teenage years were spent ostracized and made fun of for not looking like a girl. I was tall, bony, lanky… completely unlike any other girl I knew. Pregnancy was a validation for me. It made me realize that my body had the same capabilities and strengths of any other woman, even if I felt different from them on the outside. I relished every move the baby made, and every pound I gained made me feel more beautiful.

Sometimes I look back on the pictures of me during my pregnancies, and think “how in the world could I have felt attractive when I looked like that?” I see the stretch marks and swollen feet and blotchy cheeks, and I cringe with embarrassment at having ever flaunted that bloated body. But then I remember the hours I spent examining my ever changing body with wonder. I remember running my fingers over my tight, strained skin, completely in awe of my body’s ability to stretch and conform to seemingly impossible limits in order to accommodate the growing life within. I felt like a living miracle, proof of the wonders God has created on this earth. I remember lying in bed at night and lifting up the sheet so I could let go and watch it waft gently down, draping across the curves of my breasts and my bulging stomach. I remember the intense feeling of femaleness that I had during my pregnancies, and it makes me look at the photos differently. Instead of criticizing every flaw and imperfection, I see myself the way I remember feeling: as a round, amazing, phenomenal woman. I don’t ever want to forget how I changed during my pregnancies. I’ll have the physical reminders forever- my C-section scar, my nursed-to-extinction breasts… but those are nothing compared to the changes I experienced emotionally. I am proud of my body, of what it has done and can do. And I am proud to be a woman.

This is the last photo for this month’s Self Portrait Tuesday theme, “Personal History”. To see more self portraits, go to the Self Portrait Tuesday blog.