Resilience.

“Do this ONE exercise to flatten your tummy!”

“Get your body back fast!”

“Reduce your stretch marks and cellulite!”

These are common messages women are bombarded with everyday. We learn from a young age that our body is inherently flawed and that we must work tirelessly to fix it. The radical notion that a woman’s body might be permanently changed by a pregnancy...and that would be just fine...is pushed to the fringes of society. 

As we transition into motherhood, a time when our whole life seems to be in upheaval, we are also expected to snap back physically. To look as if that baby never happened. 

This is not particularly resilient or empowering. 

As a trainer specializing in pre and postnatal fitness I have seen time and time again the physical effects of trying to do too much too soon after baby. Women are in a panic to look like themselves again (a concept that is in of itself so strange because our bodies change constantly throughout our lives, just on a smaller scale) and choose exercises and activities that are not well matched for their sleep deprived, healing bodies.  

Emotionally I see women heap a whole lot of shame on top of their postpartum experience. Maybe they feel guilty for making the time for themselves to exercise when there is this new, helpless creation that needs them. Maybe they feel defeated and “lazy” because they aren’t getting the results that they hoped for. Women worry that if they don’t hit certain benchmarks (the number on the scale, the size of jeans) by a certain point that they have “let themselves go.” To where exactly? Where have they gone? I’ve heard countless women worry that if exercise doesn’t feel good to them during pregnancy or after that they are “just making excuses.” These terms are rooted in patriarchy and misogyny. Why do we worry and sweat and punish ourselves to make sure pregnancy takes as small a toll on our bodies as possible? It’s because we live in a culture where women are never allowed to “give up”—to let their bodies get older, softer, and larger, to be changed by circumstances and the passage of time.

What would an empowered and resilient fourth trimester look like? 

Embrace the excuses. Maybe you DO have excuses...and they are good ones. You skipped a workout and chose kiddie cuddle time instead? Sounds like a good excuse. Breastfeeding is zapping the last vestiges of nutrients from your body and that cake looked delicious? Sounds like a solid excuse. A park workout replaced your weights workout so that you could be outside with your kids? Great idea! 

As new mothers sometimes we just can’t. We can’t push through and do all of the things we had hoped to do. And that’s ok. These aren’t excuses, this is life. And postpartum is just one small blip in time in the grand scheme of our fitness journey. 

Give yourself grace. You just had a baby for godssake! It’s ok to rest, to recover and to find your new normal. 

Ask for help/don’t be ashamed of having needs. Your baby did not come with an instruction manual. Each baby is different and no matter what books you’ve read or what Facebook moms’ group you are in, you are bound to find yourself in need of help at some point. Asking for help is not a weakness. It shows strength and resilience. 

Speaking of seeking out help, we hear from clients all of the time that they wish they had known about us during their first pregnancy. They wish that they had had better information about their bodies. Seek out better information. Search for professionals who are uniquely qualified to work with pregnant and postpartum women. It really matters...trust me. 

And also, don’t believe the hype. The science is conclusive. Health and thinness are not necessarily the same thing. In fact, thinness is often not actually the best marker for health at all. Make a list of all the amazing things that your body can do. Even if you have weight loss goals it can be extremely beneficial to focus on other health markers during a time when your body is changing so drastically. 

A resilient postpartum might not actually look the way we imagined. It might not look like sliding back into your skinny jeans 12 weeks after baby is born. It might look a lot more like rest and mess and patience. It might look like gathering your people around you for support and gathering the information you need to support your body now and in the long term.