Ever since my 40 over 40 Project, I’ve been waiting for this day.

Rather than the anticipated fear of ageing that I’ve always had when big birthdays approach (I felt the same when I turned 13 and became an acknowledged teenager and actually even the day I turned 10 I still have vivid memories of- that feeling of despair and almost broken heartedness at saying goodbye to single digit life. So this is clearly a thing for me), but turning 40 I was excited.

I don’t know if it was a culmination of meeting some incredible women and finally learning true self acceptance, or if in fact you just turn 40 and it turns out you really do just give less of a damn. But I wanted to expose a part of me that had been deep rooted in shame and disgust.

My post partum belly.

It’s taken me many years to get to the point of post partum acceptance, and on my 40th birthday I just felt the shackles go and decided to get naked and take some portraits.

With luck I will be in this body far longer than I’ve already been in it, so why was I wasting my time and energy on the concept that others might judge me for my post birth body. My firstborn was a large baby. Far too big for my body. With my second baby I was diagnosed with gestational diabetes, so I actually think I went undiagnosed with gestational diabetes with my first… but the care I received with my first was sub par at best the whole way through. Either way, I was left with a tummy that knocked my self confidence.

My son is now 10 years old, and over the years I’ve learnt to appreciate what my tummy has meant. I’ve gone from hiding my tummy to now wearing bikinis on the beach. There’s almost a thrill I get now when I do that. A sense of defiance and an advocate for all those mothers that didn’t get their previous bodies back after children. I mean what a misogynistic view point in itself (thanks media for that one).

Whether or not your body drastically changes with or without birth, our previous bodies shouldn’t even become an ideal. We should be nurturing the bodies we have.

Without that stretching I wouldn’t have my baby’s. Without the misshapen skin I wouldn’t have nurtured and grown two healthy children.

Yes I could remove the skin. But I’m not a fan of surgery at the best of times, so for me it’s not a route I wanted to go down. It felt like denying what my body had been through and how my children came into existence. Plus as more of my friends had babies I realised we all have post partum changes. Our breasts change after children, our tummy’s change. Some of my friends have grown an extra shoe size. I mean there’s no control over how we will change, but some of us physically do while others don’t change at all. And in truth it’s all ok.

So this is my version of 40. My tummy isn’t toned. It’s soft, it wobbles. It has wrinkles. When I bend over it’s almost like a man’s ball bag. No one complains about those do they… so que sera.

I know my body hasn’t finished changing. It’s constantly changing. With the menopause around the corner it’ll change again. I’m ok with that.

I can not even begin to tell you how freeing doing this self portrait session felt. If there’s a part of you that you feel shame over, I actively encourage you to confront it. Turns out, my belly doesn’t look half as bad as I thought it did, I actually quite like it. And I appreciate the other areas of my body that I’d completely forgotten about because of all my thoughts were consumed by my belly. When all along, it was doing exactly what it was meant to do. Helping to grow my children, and keeping me alive.