Welcome to Your New Body
The moment you become pregnant, you will never again live in a body that hasn’t been pregnant.
The moment you give birth, you will become postpartum—forever. You will never again live in a body that has never given birth.
If you have a loss, you will never again live in a body that has not experienced a womb loss. Any future pregnancy will be a pregnancy after loss.
This is the way of it. There is no going back, bouncing back, to the body you lived in Before. If your OB or midwife or friend or celebrity or fitness trainer on social media tells you you’ll go back to how you were before, they were wrong. This is the truth. This is the way of it.
And—this is not bad news. No, it’s not! You have a new body—Welcome! New is not bad, change is not bad. Hard sometimes—yes. But inherently bad—no.
Postpartum is forever. We often think of it as the first few months or 40 days or Fourth Trimester. There are whole books written about it. And they are helpful, yes. But they aren’t the end. Most people I talk to who have given birth will tell you it took a year, two years, three years to feel like “themselves” again. I remember myself going for a run at 11 months postpartum and thinking, “Oh, this feels like me again. There she is.”
Every body is different. Everybody is different.
You may find that some things come back. Your strength returns, and your joy in life after sleepless nights comes back. You can still play soccer and do yoga and go to the gym, maybe slowly at first but gradually building back up.
Sex is different, but you find new positions that you didn’t used to like feel good now, or ones that were your favorite are no longer. And your vagina, if your baby was birthed via that path—it will always be different. (If no one told you that yet, I’m here to tell you that it will always be different. I’m sorry no one told you yet). Not bad—just different. Though at first it likely doesn’t feel that great.
Your belly—that may always feel different. It stretched beyond imagination, really. Maybe it’s squishier, maybe it is saggy, stretch-marked, tiger-striped. Maybe it has a scar across the lower part, just above where the belly meets the pelvis. An exit. Maybe it doesn’t feel beautiful to you (maybe yet), but know that it did an amazing job.
There will be grief. It is ok to feel the grief. Grieve the body you had before. Grieve the change. Grieve the loss. The loss of freedom, independence, tight skin, and smaller feet. Feel the grief, let it pass through you. Some of it may take up residence for a while—welcome it as a friend. It has something to teach you. But don’t let it overcome you. It is not you. It will pass, get easier, not feel so heavy.
When you’re ready, try on Gratitude. Your body did the most miraculous thing of carrying and building and nurturing a human being, then opening to the cold world outside to let that person be born. Your body is so strong, so resilient, so marvelously creative. Start there. Gratitude for your feet on the ground. The way your senses bring the outside world inside. The feel of the sun on your skin. The cool of air coming in through your nostrils, the warmth of your exhale.
As you practice gratitude, maybe you eventually come to the parts you have grieved. Can you thank your belly for stretching and holding your child? Can you thank your breasts for the way they produced nourishment for your child? (Even—perhaps especially—if you weren’t able to feed your baby the way you wanted to?)
Over time you may find feelings of neutrality toward the previously charged areas of your body. Neutral toward your belly, toward your vulva, toward your breasts. And maybe, eventually, perhaps you can try on feeling love for this body again. Or for the first time.
Ps. The theme of week 3 of MotherCircle is MotherBody, where we dive into the five universal postpartum needs to care for our bodies after birth. There is still space to join this 8-week course. Click here for more details.