Moms everywhere fell in love with House of White blogger Olivia White in July after she shared her 20 Crappy Mum Confessions (No. 2: “I smelt poo, but I waited till my husband noticed it so I didn’t have to change it”). Now the 27-year-old has reached hero status for sharing an unretouched photo of her post-baby body on Facebook.
“Puffy face, droopy milk filled boobs, wider hips and a belly full of stretch marks!!” the Melbourne, Australia–based mother to daughters Annabelle, 2, and Teddy, 5 months, wrote on July 27. “That’s my post baby reality, no ‘bouncing back’ here!”
And White couldn’t care less about not regaining her pre-baby body. “Those droopy boobs fed my babies and grew them up big and strong. Those hips and rippled belly was home to my little babes for nine months,” she wrote.
“It might not be the ‘transformation’ body so many ogle or aspire to! And sure, some days I wish it didn’t jiggle so much and was a bit ‘firmer’ but then I just remember the awesome s–t it’s done and cut myself some slack and go eat a cheeseburger, because we earned it.”
The post went viral before it was removed by Facebook, but the photo remains on Instagram with nearly 3,000 likes and more than 300 comments. “You have no idea how many women you just made feel beautiful. Inspiring,” wrote one commenter on Instagram, while another gushed: “2 babies and a few years on and I still struggle with how I look now vs. pre kids. No thanks to media. I’m off to get a cheeseburger.”
White thought it was important to share the photo in the age of Instagram. “I’m always seeing bounce-back bodies and fit mums or models showing off their post-baby bodies like they never carried a child,” she tells Us Weekly. “I thought I’d inject some variety and show that’s not the reality for all of us!”