After giving birth to three children, Samantha McSwain knows that those first few days, weeks, and months postpartum can look different with every baby. When the Honolulu, Hawaii, mom welcomed her first child nearly six years ago, she tells CafeMom, she expected both her body and mental health to be more or less the same as it was before. But boy was she in for a surprise. Now, McSwain offers other moms-to-be a candid glimpse into postpartum life on Instagram — mesh panties and all.
McSwain has never been shy about sharing her journey on social media.
Under the handle @lovvesammayy, she regularly posts snapshots from her home life with her following of more than 140,000 fans. But one image in particular caught a lot of attention when the mom shared a raw and honest photo taken just hours after giving birth.
In the photos, she stands with a distended belly, still stretched and swollen from the nine months it carried her daughter Korra. There are stretch marks across it, as well as a still visible linea nigra. And yes, she is wearing mesh panties.
"The journey back to my pre-pregnancy weight sure won't be easy," she wrote at the time, "but I'm taking it one day at a time. So here I am, day 1 postpartum, in my mesh underwear."
"I still don't understand how some women can look their best even after delivery," McSwain continued. "Not me, I just want to eat, sleep, and breastfeed."
People immediately applauded the mom of three for her honesty.
"Couldn't get any more real or beautiful!" wrote one person in the comments. "Thank you for sharing your journey that so many don't talk about."
In fact, a lot of people jumped in to share some of their own postpartum experiences … which weren't all pretty, either.
"My face completely changed (acne, skin thinning/sagging, dark circles, and my hair fell out in clumps for 2 years PP … and my stomach went back to 'normal' within 10 days … it's absolutely insane and unpredictable what can happen after having a baby."
It sure is.
McSwain says she stopped to snap a photo so she wouldn't forget the moment.
At that point, she remembers feeling "physically, emotionally, and mentally" drained. Despite being sore and anxious, she was also proud of what she'd just accomplished.
"So, I wanted to take the picture because I wanted to remember that exact moment of how I felt and looked right after giving birth," she recalls.
And she certainly did.
She later decided to share it online for a few reasons.
For one thing, McSwain says she wanted to erase some of the mystery and let other women know exactly happens to your body after you give birth. She also wanted to shatter the annoyingly persistent ideal that women hold in their heads about "bouncing back."
"I wanted to send the message to others that this is what is NORMAL after birth compared to what other people show that is 'perfect' images of their bodies," she tells CafeMom.
"Surprisingly, there were a lot of women that didn't know that this is actually what happens to a woman's body after giving birth. They expected a flat stomach and no stretch marks or stretchy skin."
McSwain's post also seems to help other moms who are struggling postpartum.
"Thank you so much for sharing this," wrote one mom. "All I am feeling [at the moment] is ugly and like I've failed and mixed emotions bout my body. I have a belly little small[er] than this and I'm 3 weeks pp after carrying twins."
But because internet trolls never miss a moment to come out of the woodwork, there were also some people who felt the need to leave nasty comments.
"Omg so this what you looked like the day after having a baby?" one person wrote. "I'm never having any."
"I didn't look nothing that something isn't right," another added.
"I'm sorry but d–n how many children you have?" yet another person wrote.
Sigh.
It's for this reason that images like this are needed more than ever.
McSwain admits that social media plays a big role in why women place pressure on themselves to "bounce back."
After all, when most of us scroll through Instagram, we're hit in the face with overly filtered photos designed to hide every natural "flaw" you can think of. But moms who have just given birth need realness.
They need stretch marks and puffy bellies and mesh panties and tired eyes. What they don't need is more nonsense about "bouncing back."
"We start to compare ourselves to women in Hollywood or women that don't show real life images of themselves," McSwain tells us. "Therefore, it causes women to want the same 'body' for themselves. We're quick to forget that we all experience postpartum differently and our bodies are all different. Some heal faster than others. We just need to remind ourselves that there's no race, and that everything takes time."
Luckily, McSwain has learned that lesson for herself three times over.
She tells CafeMom that in addition to her daughter Korra, who just turned 6 months old, she is also mom to Kimira, almost 6, and Kamden, 2.
In the months since giving birth, she's continued to share raw and honest updates from her postpartum journey.
She also hopes that moms who see her post take away more than just the fact that our bodies are all different, and react to pregnancy and birth in all sorts of ways. She also hopes people see it as a reminder of how connected we all are.
"I just want to let all the moms out there know that we are all in this together," she says. "I'm so happy and thankful that I'm able to use my platform to share the good and the bad about postpartum. That we moms can share with each other what we can relate on and help each other through this journey of motherhood and postpartum. I'm very grateful to be able to do that."
