New Midriff Movement Hopes to Empower Mothers to Embrace Postpartum Bodies
Angie has four children of her own and admits it's easy to be disappointed with your post [...]
A new healthy image campaign is hoping to inspire women across the globe to love their bodies just as much as they love the children that were inside of them.
The "Mid Drift" movement, created by Minnesota couple Mike and Angie Sonrode, wants to change society's unrealistic expectations of what a mother's body should look like and to embrace motherhood's physical transformations, according to their website.
Angie has four children of her own and admits it's easy to be disappointed with your post pregnancy body when it doesn't look anything like it did before getting pregnant.
"I do wish that I didn't look at myself and think, 'Wow, that's a great body except … '" she said in an interview posted to Today.com.
Angie also knows she isn't alone - she works as a doula and constantly hears stories from mothers about their frustrations with their bodies.
"I sit with these moms, I see them crying,'" said Angie. "I see them saying to me, 'I just don't love my body anymore.'"
To spark the "Mid Drift" movement, the Sonrodes are making a documentary film about the postpartum experience around the world.
"One of the things we really intend to do... is have showings," said Angie. "We'll show the film and then we'll have mothers show each other their bodies."
The campaign aims to bring families together and to not only change how mothers view themselves, but also how the world's perspective should adjust.
"We want to start a conversation that I hope will never end," the movement's website says. "One in which mothers do not make excuses for their shapes or scramble to cover up tugging at their shirts and smoothing out their stretch marks. One that brings mothers, daughters, sisters, sons, friends, and partners together in a love note to our postpartum bodies."