A new mum has shared photos of her caesarean section scar to prove she did not "take the easy way out" when giving birth to her baby via surgery.
Posting on Facebook, US woman Raye Lee explained how angry she felt when people suggested she didn't "actually give birth" to son Roxas on August 14.
"Ah, yes. My emergency c-section was absolutely a matter of convenience. It was really convenient to be in labour for 38 hours before my baby went into distress and then every contraction was literally STOPPING his HEART.
"Being told at the beginning that I was displaying great progress and wouldn't need a caesarean section ... and then being told that I was being prepped for major abdominal surgery was not a shock at all. It had nothing to do with the fact that I physically couldn't because I was given no other choice to save the life of my child. Oh, and that surgery is super easy peasy to recover from.
"WRONG. That is all sarcasm."
Raye described how her son's birth "was the most painful thing I have experienced in my life".
"I now belong to a badass tribe of mamas with the scar to prove that I had a baby cut out of me and lived to tell the tale. Because you can die from this, you know," she wrote.
"Having a shrieking infant pulled out of an incision that is only 5 inches long, but is cut and shredded and pulled until it rips apart through all of your layers of fat, muscle, and organs (which they lay on the table next to your body, in order to continue to cut until they reach your child) is a completely different experience than I had imagined my sons birth to be.
"This was not pleasant. It still isn't."
Raye said recovering from the c-section delivery of her son was difficult.
"You use your core muscles for literally everything ... even sitting down, imagine not being able to use them because they have literally been shredded and mangled by a doctor and not being able to repair them for 6+ weeks because your body has to do it naturally," she wrote.
"When that first nurse asked you to try getting out of bed and the ripping pain of a body cut apart and stitched back together seared through you, you realised the irony of anybody who talks about it being the "easy way out". So f*** you and f*** how you see what I did.
"I am the strongest woman, that I know. Not only for myself, but for my beautiful son... and I would honestly go through this every single day just to make sure I am able to see his smiling face."
Raye's raw and honest post has struck a chord with c-section mums everywhere and has been shared more then 16,000 times since she shared it on August 19.
"Dear fellow warrior mama: thank you for this post. I had two C-sections myself, and they were brutal. Damn near died on the table the first time after I went into cardiac arrest. It's not the easy way out, and never will be. Thank you for shining a light on this. And btw, your scars are beautiful," commented one fellow mum.
"Man, before my first child I really did think a c-section would be easier. But then I actually went into labour for 13 hours, tried pushing, and then had to have an emergency c-section, and the relief I felt thinking it would be over soon was pretty short-lived. A c-section is not easy. It is major surgery," wrote another.