The Unfiltered Truth About “Bouncing Back” After Baby
A recent article in the New York Times, "The Birth of a Mother,” really got my wheels turning. It centered on an anthropological term I had never heard before, yet deeply resonates. Matrescence: the process of becoming a mother.
As a society, when it comes to pregnancy and motherhood, we spend so much time focusing on infant health and development. (Is it just me that never, ever wants to hear the word “milestone” again?) However, matrescence is about the woman's transition. It’s about what unfolds as SHE enters this entirely new role and identity.
The more thought I gave to matrescence, the more I kept coming back to postpartum fitness. This being the fitness transition that occurs upon entering new motherhood. I am now 2 years postpartum, and my fitness - namely strength and power - is just now returning to where it was before getting pregnant. Sure, this entire time I have been making it to my weekly yoga session, going for runs, and taking some weight classes. But the pace at which I truly “bounced back” has been excruciatingly slow.
So why is this? There are so many layers to the fitness transition, most of which—despite muted warning from friends—took me by total surprise.
Factor #1 gets a good deal of attention while the baby is cooking: What is going on with your b.o.d.y. Pre-natal yoga, pre-natal massage, birthing class, and on and on. An example: As a longtime runner, I was almost immediately unable to run upon getting pregnant. My whole body ached. I had round ligament pain starting very early on. Every time I so much as started to jog while on my daily power walks, my body immediately said STOP. So I listened. Not my strong suit, but a no brainer when there was another life to worry about. It is simply much easier to reconcile the radical physical changes in your body when something so tangible is happening to it. Something so visual. In sum, the pregnant woman’s changing body is given a lot of attention and tender loving care—but the postpartum body? Not so much.
In fact, I was shocked and disconcerted by how foreign my body felt when I started exercising again 6 weeks postpartum. Yes, a part of it was the extra weight. But it was also the weight in new and bizarre places. It made old, familiar exercises feel alien and uncomfortable. Along with the fact that all of a sudden, this flat-chested chick needed to double up on sports bras during cardio of any kind.
And the many other physical changes as well. Just last week my friend laughed to me about leaking urine during a SoulCycle class. And her daughter is also about 2.
Factor #2. Time. Where did it go? I can't seem to find it anywhere. After 9 months or so of being a stay at home Mom, I had the luxury of starting 2 mornings per week with a nanny. Plus, I have an awesome husband who is on kid-duty every Saturday morning. These 3 guaranteed windows of time per week, with the sole purpose of exercising, are a lifesaver. But the reality is, it’s still way less time and schedule-flexibility than before. Furthermore, with any/all other forms of self-care on the back burner, when that precious free time arrives, it’s often much more tempting to just crawl back in bed. Sometimes in full-on yoga gear.
Which leads me to Factor #3. Lifestyle and the lack of consistency due to 1) sleep and 2) sickness. All of a sudden, upon having a child, I had way less of the former and way more of the latter. I lucked out (not) with a child who didn't sleep through the night for at least 18 months despite all kinds of sleep training attempts. The chronic sleep deprivation was intense and my fitness suffered tremendously. For a year and a half, I was utterly exhausted the majority of the time.
In addition, starting at 6 weeks old, all of a sudden we were immersed in germ incubator…I mean “Mommy and Me”…activities; another source of constant fitness sabotage.
Pre-kid, I prided myself on staying fit through regular, consistent physical activity. These days I can keep it up for a little while, but there is always, always something that gets in the way before too much time has passed.
And I won't even mention the healthy eating obstacles presented by the aforementioned lifestyle changes.
So where is the reprieve? What is the moral of all this sharing of body struggle and fitness hardship?
Fitness in motherhood is a long game. Manage your expectations. My frequent frustration and disappointment about my unfamiliar body and my uncontrollable schedule could have been mitigated by taking a step back. Putting less pressure on myself. Accepting the utter unruliness of new motherhood. Your fitness will return if you are committed over the long haul.
Matrescence changes us in deep and lasting ways. The accompanying identity crisis is compounded if we emotionally hang on to our formerly fit selves. That doesn’t mean give up. That doesn’t mean we’re “letting ourselves go”. It just means that health and fitness as a new mama necessarily looks different. It looks different in your daily schedule and it looks different in the mirror. And that has to be 100% OK.
