A decade ago, a revealing photo of Chrissy Teigen probably meant she’d just finished her latest Sports Illustrated shoot. Now that she’s raising three kids, it can turn out to be from regular old bath time at home. A constant, though, is the model and entrepreneur’s body acceptance and openness.
Teigen shared a picture of mother and child in the bath three months after her husband John Legend and their youngest daughter Esti were born on Jan. 13th. Alongside the adoring snap, her caption noted some of the changes that pregnancy has bestowed on her body — and she embraced them all. “A boob that somehow hangs all along my side and deep purple lifetime scars but you are too perfect to worry about any of it !” Teigen wrote in her sweet message to her baby.
In the comments, those who enjoyed the post quickly expressed their appreciation. “Thank you for being brave (though it shouldn’t be brave) enough to post suck [sic] real photos,” actor Keegan Connor Tracy wrote. “I think there’s a dysmorphia that is happening because everything is so filtered and contrived. Here’s how people appear when the veil is removed. Beauty is in the real. In knowing we have sacrificed to create these beautiful children. Our bodies are meant to be lived in!”
Teigen’s changes will be even sweeter, considering she suffered a devastating pregnancy loss back in September 2020. After the loss, the Cravings Author shared with us many of her emotional challenges, such as adjusting to the fact that she had a body prepared for a child but was sent home without it.
“When you lose a baby halfway through, your body just pauses,” she wrote, in part, in September 2021. “It has nothing to do. There’s no one to feed. And you’re just…stuck. Stuck with saggy boops that were preparing to be milkbags, and a belly ready to bake. I’d be lying if said that this didn’t stink. Not only are you ummmm extremely, diabolically sad at what could have been, but you have this daily reminder every time you look in the goddamn mirror.”
After Esti’s arrival, however, the Teigen-Legend family — including Luna, now 7, and Miles, 3 — was over the moon. “The house is bustling and our family could not be happier,” the proud mom wrote as part of her Instagram announcement on Jan. 19. “Daddy sheds nightly tears of joy seeing Luna and Miles so full of love, and I am learning you still need diapers with a c section!? We are in bliss.”
