Rasee Govindani (39 - she/her). Mother to Lexi (8)
Bangkok, Thailand {Photographed virtually via FaceTime}
How has parenthood impacted your body image?
As I was growing up in a city and country where beauty meant being skinny and fair-skinned and hairless, my dark skin and bigger body and Indian body hair were the total opposite of what was attractive. For a long time I think I accepted that I would never be "beautiful." When I was 23, I spent a summer working at a camp in the middle of nowhere in Missouri where the counselors were from all over the world and I think that's when I understood that beauty was relative and my body that could climb and shoot arrows and row canoes was a good body.
And then I got pregnant (quickly) after being diagnosed with PCOS as a teenager and basically being told I wouldn't conceive and I realized that me thinking my body was broken was because of the stories other people told about it. Conceiving my daughter, birthing her, and feeding her at my breast established my True Love for my body. I'd done an amazing thing and I had stretch marks and a different body as a result, but I sure loved every stripe and every bump. I made a person!
What was your postpartum experience?
I always joke there's a reason I only have the one child and it was the combination of a difficult birth and a challenging postpartum. I had fourth-degree tears from birth and an episiotomy and my vagina didn't heal well so I was in a lot of pain for about a month after birth. Ultimately a doctor found granulation tissue over my stitches and they had to be cauterized, and after that things improved dramatically in terms of the pain.
I'd had a breast reduction surgery in my 20's so I didn't seem to have a really good milk supply at the start (and I suspect I always had "just enough") so my daughter was attached to my breast all day and night. Lexi didn't sleep through the night until she was two years old and she would never take a bottle. But I could never pump anyway.
It was just so hard. Harder than I had imagined. She was so needy and I didn't know how to mother her. I kept being told to trust myself, but I needed some mothering too, and I didn't know where to find that. I'd never had a baby before. I'd never breastfed before. I think because I was a doula it was assumed I'd know how to be a mother, but I wasn't prepared for how difficult it was going to be.
What is your truth that you'd pass along to your former self, or a new parent?
Probably that you must take care of yourself above all things. Yes, feed that baby and change that diaper, but you cannot put the baby above yourself because you can't mother when you're tired and hungry and dehydrated and in pain, not the way that you'd like to. Yes, those first days and weeks are so hard, but they don't necessarily need to be quite that hard. Surround yourself with your village, whatever that looks like. Make sure someone is in charge of taking care of you, of feeding you and giving you time to shower and sleep.
How has your (pregnancy/birth/postpartum/parenting) been affected by COVID-19?
As a doula, very quickly I had to figure out what was going on in our hospitals and how best to continue serving our families. I started a Facebook group early on that's been a good resource for families who are pregnant right now and planning to birth here in Bangkok. I've had to be tested for COVID-19 to attend a birth and I may have to be tested several times this year.
My daughter has been out of school for two months now and I have no time to myself at all. We live in a full house and her online learning takes a lot of my energy. I just don't have the moments I used to, where I could drop her off at school and then go work out or wander through the bookstore or go to the movies alone, which is on the top of my self-care list. So my cup is far from full and I have to keep pouring.
Another aspect of this that won't be familiar to people who haven't faced life-changing diagnoses before is that this triggers all my trauma from being diagnosed and treated for breast cancer four years ago.
Why did you choose to participate in this movement and share your story?
I think my cancer diagnosis revealed my authentic self. There was no pretending left, no trying to be strong. It was hard and hideous and terrifying and I had good days when I felt in control and I had a lot of shit days where I couldn't get out of bed. I was sick and I was strong and then I was tired and I lost my hair and it was all grief and pain. I was stripped raw. And I've stayed true to myself--ugly and beautiful and all.
After birth I wanted to be part of this because I had a traumatic birth and I wanted to reclaim my body and my story. After cancer I want to show up when women search for mastectomy photos, especially without reconstruction, and maybe help them realize that it's just one more scar and one more beautiful story and this body is everything and nothing all at the same time.
I'm also doing this for my daughter, to show her that her body is hers alone, just as mine belongs to me only, for me to do with as I wish. I want her to know that this body has survived unimaginable grief, that these hands have held hundreds of babies and these eyes have anchored warrior women riding the waves of labor, and this heart--oh, this heart of mine...loves her, loves her, loves her.