The experience of birthing my second, and youngest, daughter was one of the most empowering of my life. My eldest daughter was born via emergency c-section, a far cry from the homebirth my husband and I had planned. So to have the opportunity to naturally, vaginally birth my youngest daughter was very important to me.
I believe it was my issues from my past that kept me from being comfortable in revealing my pussy. The punishment I received in early puberty made me feel it was bad to show it - it was trashy, filthy, ugly. Until five years ago I never felt comfortable revealing myself, when the mental, emotional, physical and sexual abuse of my past was superseded by my desire to be seen as beautiful in every way.
I remember being a very small child and engaging in very innocent exploration of my own sexual anatomy. I discovered my clitoris, though I didn't know the word. And when I was in kindergarden we had a sex ed. class about where babies come from. We were shown with dolls how the man inserts his penis into the vagina. On top of the revulsion I felt about this (I was still in my "boys are icky" phase), I fully made the connection between the sex I was being shown and what I was doing with my own body. They didn't mention the clitoris at all, and I took that to heart.