Mirror, Mirror

*THIS ENTRY IS NOT FOR THE PRUDE*

Lets talk about mirrors.

Mirrors are kind of a love hate relationship for me. They often tell me what I don’t want to hear and unless I’m feeling super sexy (which comes from a lot of work that I deem totally unnecessary and only in the name of a few photos that may or may not end up on a public forum like facebook) I only use them because they are a necessary evil. Did I get the toothpaste off my mouth? Do I have any bumps in the dirty-no-time ponytail I am sporting?

Of course, there are others who love mirrors. Women you will catch practicing “the look” before they go out or who will look at themselves any time there is a mirror around. Women who put in the time to be pretty. I’m rarely one of them.

This leads me to giving birth. WHAT? How did we go from glamor mirrors to birth? Easy.

When my son was born I had one HUGE fear- that I would defecate right on the table in front of the nurses, the Dr., and my husband as I pushed with all I had to get him out of me. I am now willing to admit that this may have been a huge reason he had to be vacuumed out of me, but I digress.

For pushing encouragement, the nurses thought I should LOOK at my netherlands and the head that so desperately wanted to emerge from it as motivation to push harder. Mortified and determined to suck him back up the birth canal, the mirror did the opposite. I have never seen something so disgusting and it was happening to me! It was not this beautiful, natural right of passage, it was parasitic and mutating.
GET THAT EFFING MIRROR AWAY FROM ME!
(Pregnant women are allowed to cuss).
The nurses carted the huge, towering over my area mirror away at my husband’s urgency only I couldn’t shake the image from my mind. Now, not only did I have the fear of public defecation, I had a swirling vision of my personal mutation that caused me to consider: was this worth it?
Can I undo this?
I TAKE IT BACK,I TAKE IT BACK!
A human (I repeat, a HUMAN) is coming OUT of me and he was destroying my body!

Screw mirrors.

Mirror, Mirror Standing Tall, Show me my hoo-ha before it all!

images by simple moth