Hi Mama!
Have you recently had a baby and you’re wondering when you can get back in the gym to start your postpartum weight loss journey? You may have heard that it takes about six weeks for your body to heal after having a baby. At least, that’s what the society wants you to think! Today I’m sharing my postpartum weight loss journey to show that it takes TIME and you should give yourself that, and lots of grace.
The United States is one of the only countries that expects new mothers to go back to work after only six or eight weeks of postpartum recovery. Depending on how your birth went it could’ve been a very traumatic experience. If you had a natural delivery you may have had extensive tearing or if you had a cesarean then you have just gone through both giving birth plus a major abdominal surgery.
It doesn’t help matters that people on Instagram show themselves as completely recovered in such a short period of time. You may see new moms who suddenly look like supermodels again after barely six weeks after the delivery. This in itself is very detrimental to our society because it gives new moms unattainable goals and expectations for themselves during postpartum.
Because of this I felt like it was my duty to share my experience with my postpartum recovery since it was actually quite long. I want all moms out there to know that every body is different every birth is different and you may take longer to recover after delivering your sweet baby.
I had my daughter via C-section. Because of this I knew that the recovery was going to be a bit more difficult than a natural delivery. I knew that I should take it easy so that my incision could heal and that it just wouldn’t be the same as if I had naturally delivered my daughter. However, I still had those goals to be up out and exercising by eight weeks postpartum!
Around three weeks postpartum I decided it was time for me to get out and start walking. I knew that walking would be good for the recovery and so I decided that I would take up walking as a daily activity. However, I decided to take it a little too intense in the beginning. The first day of walking I ended up going over to miles! I don’t know what had gotten into me, but I guess I was just thinking that I was stronger than I actually was at that point. I was feeling so exhausted and still a mile away from my house didn’t know how I was going to get home!
So after that experience I did continue to walk but I took it much slower and much shorter for those first few weeks of postpartum recovery. I would just stick around my neighborhood usually walking my dog although sometimes walking with the baby in the carriage as well. I felt that walking did improve my recovery but I don’t think that anything can really speed up the recovery per se. It’s really all about when your body is ready to be healed.
I think around 10 weeks I was starting to feel a bit better and I started dancing around my house. I call it “baby Zumba”. In this case I would put on my favorite songs and dance around like a crazy woman to entertain my daughter. It worked out well because she didn’t really cry and she was actually giving me a little bit of a smile! However, after that intense dance segment I was feeling so much pain. I didn’t expect that because I thought after 10 or 12 weeks I should be pretty healed by then! After that experience I knew I needed more time.
So again, I kept up my walking because it was a low impact exercise that I could do and it also help me to relieve some of the stress I was feeling from postpartum depression and isolation due to COVID-19. Around four months postpartum I decided it was time for me to try to do a little bit of exercise! I found a workout video that looked quite easy so I figured I could probably do it! How wrong was I!
It was kind of intense and it was a circuit training video where you do one exercise for 30 seconds have a five second resting period before going on to the next exercise. After the second exercise (the first minute of the workout) I felt like I was going to pass out. I actually kept pushing myself to finish the workout which was about 15 minutes long. I’m not sure if that was the right thing to do or not because I was extremely sore for the following week. I knew that again I still needed more time to heal.
I think one of the reasons that I kept trying to work out a little too soon was because before I became pregnant I was actually very physically active. I will go to the gym about five times a week burning up to 1,000 calories each session. Because of that, I kept envisioning my body to be the same body that it was before I started my postpartum experience. Since I was strong before I couldn’t imagine not being strong now. My core was completely week. It was like I was starting from scratch!
Finally around five months postpartum I could officially say that I was feeling normal. Of course the area around my incision is still numb but at least it wasn’t in pain from moving. Because of this I decided it was finally time to take on a new workout routine. I continued with my walking and then decided to do some YouTube videos again. I took on the Chloe Ting two week shred challenge which is quite intense but I wanted to see if I could do it. Surprisingly, I got strong very quickly at this point and was able to complete the challenge. I felt like I was finally starting to feel like a normal woman again and almost like I was getting my old identity back.
I hope that reading my experience gives you hope and a little bit of relief. Our bodies go through so much to create this life that we are so lucky to create. But through that experience we change in ways that we couldn’t have even imagined. I’m glad to say that if you give yourself grace and time to heal properly you will start to recognize yourself again.
You are a strong and beautiful mama.
Read Next: Overcoming Postpartum Depression During COVID-19
xo
Mother of Fawn