The greatest and hardest time of a human’s life.
It’s obviously hard on us, moms but it is hard for baby and daddy too.
Everyone just went through the biggest life change you will ever face.
Life isn’t the same at all anymore.
Your happy relationship becomes stressful, confusing, the focus is all about baby and resentment builds. No time for each other, someone always feels they are pulling more weight than the other…
Your confidence is at an all-time low just like your boobs that give our babe’s food. haha (I thought that was pretty funny)
Your stomach is bloated and you don’t even recognize yourself anymore…
Why do I feel so guilty for feeling all of this when it should be the happiest time of my life?
My hair is falling out, my boobs changed, my belly is different, I have cellulite, my ass looks like a fucking zebra because all the stretch marks I got haha and I didn’t bounce back as fast as I thought I would… and I feel awful about it all. I feel awful thinking it. Saying it and doing something about it…
How can I leave my baby? What will other’s think if I am at the gym instead of at home with my baby?
This is everything, I battled with the first 3 months after giving birth aka 4th trimester…
Waking up in the morning before my beautiful little girl was up to get to the gym and get some “me time” in but every time, I left… the guilt set in… What if she misses me? What if I miss a smile or laugh? What if her dad doesn’t feed her fast enough and she cries for a wholeeee 30 seconds!?!?!?!
So I would rush through my workout and hurry home. A workout that took me 90 minutes, took me 40 minutes just so I wouldn’t miss a thing with my sweet baby. It was a constant race with the clock and it gave me really bad anxiety. Well… every time I got home… her ass was still asleep!!!
After a few weeks of this, I realized I needed to chill out and take my time because I was getting more anxious and felt a lot of anxiety.
That started taking a toll on my relationship, everything was a fight… because our needs weren’t being met because our focus was on our daughter ONLY, not on ourselves or our relationship. Luckily, we noticed it and decided at 4 weeks, we need weekly date nights or we won’t have a happy family and none of us wanted that.
So instead of fighting, it was time to start understanding each other again and embracing this new life together. Which was weird at first… I thought once you had a baby everything was butterflies and unicorns. But the more research I did… the more I found out, most relationships fail during this period.
Everyone loses themselves. We get defensive and we start to part ways…
So making that time for yourself, for your partner and for your family is so important and it takes a lot of honest communication and forgiveness to make it happen but it is worth it.
Focusing on what your partner didn’t do or did do causes more stress and more stress means more weight gain…
Which leads me to the next beautiful part of postpartum! haha
Stubborn fat, cellulite and building up that lean muscle mass again….
I know you are proud of your baby and everything your body has done but I know how much I missed my flat tummy after birth and I’m sure you do too.
One thing to keep in mind, it takes a while for fluids, blood and organs to go back to normal and not to mention hormones mess with us big time so relax if you just gave birth and you’re freaking out because you still look 6 months pregnant…
GUESS WHAT… WE ALL DO!
Some things that helped me…
I immediately put on a postpartum belt and got back to clean eating. My last week of pregnancy, I was acting like a starving cow who could only eat sugar. haha
and when I felt up to it, I slowly started lifting very light and walking around.
I don’t recommend stressing about being active. So many women get so stressed trying to find the time to be active and I have to stress to you… LISTEN TO YOUR BODY!
If trying to find the time to workout, gives you anxiety then just continue to rest and recover.
ohhhh and Don’t start being active until your doctor and you are comfortable.
You will get your body back. I promise.
As far as building that body back up… we want to focus on building lean muscle mass through lifting weights and burst training.
When you build that lean muscle mass, cellulite starts to diminish, loose skin starts to fill in and best of all… that stubborn fat starts to disappear.
So start light, do 15 reps, 3 sets of major muscle groups (tons of workouts on my blogs here) and finish with some burst training cardio like sprints.
I didn’t rush into lifting heavy until about 3 months after, I had McKenzie because I didn’t have my normal strength and the relaxin hormone was still pumping through me so I didn’t want to push myself too much and get an injury.
I want to remind you it’s ok to feel everything you are feeling. You went through a huge change and no one should shame you for how you feel. Whether you want to sleep and recover or be active and recover. It is all ok (as long as your doctor says)
If you want your body back, that doesn’t make you a bad mom. It doesn’t mean you aren’t proud of what your body did. It means you know you deserve the best and so does your baby and your family. If you need help getting your body back on track…
email me for a free consultation. Trainwithtana@gmail.com
If you have any signs of postpartum depression, I do recommend reaching out to a therapist.
You deserve happiness, you deserve health and so does your baby and your family so don’t be scared to talk about it. Just be sure to get the proper help so you can heal faster! You’re incredible.
