A Call for Reverence for the Body and Better Postpartum Wellness
Remembering the transition to Motherhood and Returning to fitness postpartum:
A Call for Reverence for the Body and Better Postpartum Wellness
Balance
Jade is 11 now, she made me into a mother at 23. I had just found my passion for health and fitness a few years before and broke into the field at Gold’s Gym as a sales rep and assistant manager. I LOVED my job. Being part of someone's journey to fitness and wellness, facilitating their decision to prioritize it over the other demands in their life in pursuit of feeling better was immensely rewarding for me, and still is. I had lived with my husband for 4 years at that point and our roles within our relationship were solid, he took care of the bigger fixed expenses and I being younger and less able financially (yes these were the understandings) took care of the rest of the household needs; groceries, cooking, cleaning, animals, my student loans, my car needs, any households needs (towels, rugs, shower curtains, bedding, etc). I’m really just trying to remember here, how clearly defined our roles were. I loved my domestication, I grew up sewing, cooking with my grandmother and mom, learning how to make cookies our men loved, and now I have my own family to do the same acts of love for. We decided we were ready to expand our love and bring a baby into our world, so naturally we had sex twice a day every day during my ovulation cycle. Jade was on her way into our world.
The transition to Motherhood begins at conception. Our entire being starts shifting its focus from the me it’s always known and provided for, to our deep core, and our womb which houses creation. The very center of our being is now growing another being, and all our intentions are flowing to make baby.
The core is a hub of activity, and for the next 9 months as our bodies go through the greatest transformation of expansion we make room for our little beings. Our ribs flare out and our pelvis starts to rotate anteriorly as our deep core muscles are stretched to their max. Our posture, the way we hold our body, shifts as we expand to make carrying our new girth easier. Our core canister, the foundation of our strength, our stability, and our transferer of our power, literally expands to full capacity and its integrity is to say the least, destroyed... temporarily. This is the sacrifice we make to partake in creation, the most powerful part of our body is now housing our baby. We are capable of the most magnificent things. When she is ready, the core of your being will participate with the core of your body in the greatest physical feat you’ve ever partaken in. Giving Birth. This is truly a magical time.
Every birth story is as unique and different as each of us are unique and different. The pressure in the core builds and as we bear down to assist the contraction in effort to meet our baby the pelvic floor get blown to bits, kinda like the atmosphere during a rocket ship launch. Just tearing on threw. If we had a cesarean delivery then on top of the greatest physical feat ever we also had major surgery. Then typically we will get 2 nights of care in the hospital to then get shooed out and sent home to return to our previous life with all our previous responsibilities. America is awesome.
Maybe you’ll have family in town ready to help out, they will make you meals and do the dishes, they will help rotate the laundry and maybe walk the dog. You will be ‘allowed’ to just be, to just be with your baby, rest and nurse as needed. Or maybe you won’t have any support at all and it’s a different story entirely. Or if this is your first rodeo you may be anxious and this transition into the unknown is exciting but very very uncertain. Maybe your significant other knows exactly how to meet your new needs and is taking on all the ‘domestic’ chores that would otherwise be taking away from your physical recovery. Or maybe your significant other doesn't know how to support you right now, they can’t help feed the baby, and they feel uncertain and insecure in the middle of the night as they see no way they can be of service: which they probably do wish they could be. Maybe you’re doing this entirely alone. Maybe you are surrounded by support that encourages you compassionately to surrender your to do lists and just heal and bond with your baby. Or maybe you are caught up in the push, produce, perform, take it all on culture and it’s important for you to be able to ‘do it all’. Burning at both ends of the candlestick, our culture glorifies the hustle that fills up no one and drains all. It’s time to balance our energy output postpartum and save energy for what really matters, by considering where energy is most needed, and placing it there. In our society it takes more strength to ask for and accept help then it does to try and pretend we can do it all ourselves.
I was surrounded by love for sure. I didn’t have to go back to work, though I loved it. I was ‘allowed’ to just be with my baby. But I was still anxious and torn. My worth came from being an advocate for our collective wellness and I wasn’t doing that right now. It also came from holding down the fort and being responsible for the domestic domain. Instead I was treading new waters, with a whole new set of responsibilities; caring for my baby, healing my physical body, and transitioning into my new self. This is work. I anxiously awaited for my milk to come in as Jade frantically cried, she may have been borderline colicky fussing a lot, and clustering feeding from 6-12 pm only dozing off for a few short minutes before waking to only be soothed by nursing again. There probably was a better way, that I didn’t know of. I was so sleep deprived, no one told me about that. I spent the next 8 weeks reading all the sleep books and eventually became a Grade A expert on sleep training babies. I’m tired, exhausted in fact, uncertain of most things but if you talk to me I’m certain about everything. This time takes a tremendous amount of emotional, physical, and mental energy; we are trying to figure EVERYTHING out. Then at 6 weeks postpartum (still completely sleep deprived), we are cleared to return to exercise. With zero guidance as to what that means. With no guidance we all just got back to what we knew, running, group classes, HIIT, yoga, etc. It is my belief that we, as a country, do a terrible job of taking care of MOM postpartum. Did you get clear guidelines as to how to rebuild your core postpartum?
I just now got curious, when do we first feel the pressure of our culture to get back into shape? That 6 week clearance is probably the best place to start: “Ok, everything looks good, you are clear to exercise again. This is where you should start.” Did that happen for anyone? I remember going for my first run probably around 6 weeks, I felt good and energized, until the floodgates of my pelvic floor opened. And pissed all over myself. Didn’t stop me though, kept right at it. Was back running in no time, accepting the leaking for years. Even 6 years postpartum I was training to become a HIIT coach with a great group of women, we all leaked and couldn’t control our pelvic floors with high impact exercises like jumping and running. I went with it and 3 years later my stabilization system shut down, my pelvic floor collapsed, and I had plantars fasciitis that ripped my feet open EVERY morning with pain. Fun Fact: Did you know that a single leg strike of a run bears 6x your body weight. Do the math. Running is one of the most high impact repetitive athletic movements we ask our body, it requires proper core stability, hip mobility, and a high level of overall strength.
When we are ready to work on our bodies again, after the greatest physical feat you’ve ever participated in, we first prioritize healing and recovery and then rebuilding.
You just participated in a 9 month marathon and have since transformed into a vessel of nourishment and become a Mother. Your creation station gave way for birth and it’s now YOUR time to restore YOUR core and nourish YOUR healing. Your deep core needs YOU to rebuild its strong foundation by finding balance in the demands of life. Good news is, I have spent the last few years learning all I can about how to rebuild the core. I have rebuilt my stabilization system, cured my pelvic floor dysfunction and my plantars fasciitis, and built a beautiful toned core in the process.
Our core and pelvic floors are not ready for fitness, not yet. They need STABILITY to regain their INTEGRITY. Core stability is the capacity of the muscles of the torso to assist in the maintenance of good posture, balance, and control the position and movement of the core. A great core stability program is the cornerstone to any good training program. A properly designed training program starts with core stability and includes customized corrective exercises to build your strength foundation, unlocking your full movement potential.
Our bodies are marvelous and they can adapt to many demands, they are on our side and want to help us achieve whatever task we ask of them. So without a core stability program your body will try its hardest to meet the demands placed on it. It does this by compensation. Compensations, or alternate movement patterns, are precisely how the body adapted to pregnancy. A return to fitness without a strong core foundation and postpartum corrective exercises to restore balance is detrimental to long term athleticism and prolongs the healing of our deep core. If you feel like your lower belly bulges and you ‘still’ look pregnant many months postpartum, or you have abs separation (diastasis), hernias, stiff neck, pelvic floor incontinence, or low back pain there is a good chance you need to focus on your deep core muscles and restore you deep stabilization system. I developed CORE INTEGRITY: HOW TO TAKE CARE OF YOUR CORE POSTPARTUM specifically to meet this need. Core Integrity: The Foundational Series is a small group training core stability program with custom specialized postpartum correctives designed to meet the needs of the postpartum mom. Get customized personal training in a small group setting with other mom’s and learn what you need to know about healing, restoring the core postpartum, and balancing life’s demands for optimal wellness.
We are all unique and have different birth stories, different levels of support and wisdom surrounding us, different external expectations that we accept and those internal ones we bestow upon ourselves. I’m calling for us to filter the messages that are sent to us, our cultural expectations to return back to our previous workloads, our previous bodies, our previous selves like we didn’t just undergo the greatest transformation of our lives. Our culture is severely starved in having reverence for the body, instead we actually have swallowed the poisonous message that our bodies are something to detest and that we scorn. It is totally ok to want to feel good in your body again and feel like yourself again, we are all yearning for this familiarity. If we take the time to do what is necessary, then what is possible, suddenly we are doing the impossible. Take the time to build your foundation. Then get back to it, whatever it is that turns you on, once you are stable and strong you will be able to do all these things again.
“Start by doing what’s necessary, then do what’s possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible.”
-St. Francis of Assisi
Finding balance in our roles, in our responsibilities, and in our efforts to regain our fitness are key to managing our energy for what is truly important. Which is the giving unto ourselves, the nourishing of ourselves, and the restoration of ourselves postpartum.