‘I enjoyed being big and beautiful’: Sameera Reddy asks expectant mothers to enjoy the journey

Actor Sameera Reddy almost always shares regular and relatable snippets of her life, her struggles, her journey raising her two children, etc., on Instagram. Among other things, she writes on body positivity a lot, encouraging people to look beyond the glamour of social media, and to embrace their true, authentic selves.

In one of her recent posts, the mother-of-two, shared a series of pictures from when she was pregnant with her daughter Nyra, writing that she “enjoyed being big and beautiful”.

“I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed being big and beautiful right till I gave birth????The day before Nyra was born I shot this ad and I remember having so much energy with my pregnant belly????” Reddy wrote next to pictures of her posing for the camera, looking resplendent.

“To all the preggy mamas who feel the body changes and the hormones, don’t forget that it’s the most special time of your life and you have to try and enjoy it!” she continued.

Often, mothers-to-be worry about the physical changes that accompany pregnancy, mainly the weight gain. Then, they succumb to the societal pressure of shedding all that weight, as opposed to enjoying the process.

The actor had previously opened up about her own struggles post-delivery, telling Humans of Bombay that after she got pregnant, she had imagined herself “posing away for the shutterbugs with that perfect baby bump”.

“My vision of motherhood came from the superficial glam world that I was from. But 9 months later, I weighed 105 kgs. And even as I held my gorgeous son in hand, it was as if I had no reason to be happy. I slipped into postpartum depression.”

Reddy admitted that while she was “heavily trolled for not looking ‘perfect’”, it did not bother her one bit. “And in 2018, when I was pregnant with my second child, Nyra, I told myself, ‘I’m going to do this my way.’

“I was 40, scared and bloated but I was determined to do everything that I’d missed out on during my first pregnancy–I spoke about mood swings; showed off my fat thighs. And when I was 8 months pregnant, I got an underwater bikini shoot done. That was the time when women started writing to me saying, ‘You inspire me’, ‘I want to be like you.’”

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