My Foreign Postpartum Body

When you become pregnant, you know that over the course of 40 or so weeks you will be growing a beautiful baby inside of you and therefore your body will be making the necessary changes to do so. This, of course, means growing a baby belly. The first few months are strange, when you can’t really tell the difference between a baby belly and looking like you just finished Thanksgiving dinner.  This can be challenging, especially if you haven’t told the world you are expecting yet.

18 Weeks

But then it happens. You go from looking bloated to having a bump that slowly continues to grow and grow. Although every woman’s shape and bump size is different, it is inevitable that it will grow and this is something that you eventually wrap your head around and many woman grow to really enjoy. It helps that inside that growing belly is a developing baby that you can feel moving inside of you and then the extra weight and growing belly all seem worth it.

39 Weeks 3 Days (the day I went into labor)

Then, just when you have come to love/like/get used to your new pregnant body it happens, you give birth and all of a sudden you aren’t pregnant anymore. For me, this was a startling experience. I went from spending each day enjoying my bump and feeling my baby move around inside of me to suddenly having my baby on the outside. I really wasn’t prepared for how this would make me feel, frankly I didn’t even think about how I would react but I surely didn’t think I would feel like a guest in my own body.

I still had the belly and the strangest part no baby moving around inside. It felt incredibly weird. It is a huge adjustment to make and all of a sudden this body that I felt so connected to during my entire pregnancy felt incredibly foreign.

As I said above, even though when I was pregnant I didn’t know how my pregnant body would look, I knew that my body would be changing and growing just like every other pregnant woman. As for my postpartum body I had no idea what it would look like, how quickly I would recover (I have another post regarding this) and how I would feel about it. Over the past two months it has really been a challenging journey to reconnect and feel comfortable with my new body; a journey that I am still on.

7 Weeks Postpartum

I am slowly beginning to learn to like my postpartum body.  A body that was strong enough to birth my beautiful baby.

Q: Have you ever had to deal with a sudden change in your body?
New moms: How did you adjust to your postpartum body?

3 Comments

  1. I’ve adjusted by working out as much as possible, trying to eat really clean foods, and crying here and there. My guy Jayden is 8 weeks Monday, and I’m surprised that nothing fits yet. My hips widened a lot and have yet to come back, so despite weight loss, I live in workout pants. My other struggle is the boobs. I’ve been a A my whole life and managing Cs is a new experience. Dressing them and my hips makes for some sadness, but I remind myself that “love is patient, love is kind,” and I do my best to be patient and kind to myself during this bounce-back period. We had babies–beautiful, healthy babies–so it’s all worth it.

    Keep up the good work with exercising 🙂
    Renée in Jersey

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