Issue #56: I still wouldn't say I've bounced back — and that's okay.
On getting more comfortable with the ways my body has changed postpartum
Heads up: This essay talks about pregnancy and body image / weight loss.
Once again, it’s the season when I try to both love myself and find a bathing suit that will cover my c-section “shelf.”
For years, I acted as though if I didn’t give my body too much of my attention — just enough to “maintain” or “control” it — I would be untroubled. I didn’t always have to love my body, but I wouldn’t hate it either. Like Aja’s approach to drinking,1 I thought I’d found an equilibrium at several notches above “giving zero fucks” and several notches below “injectables.”
But giving birth to my son forced me to see how much I’d been deluding myself.
Edited by .
I saw an Instagram photo of Karlie Kloss pumping backstage, and it pissed me off.
In the photo, she’s smiling broadly. Full face of makeup. Drinking a green smoothie. The pump flanges hang from her hands-free nursing bra like another accessory. She looks gorgeous — with flawless, glowing skin — and you’d never know that she had a baby in July. There must be a team of assistants ready to disassemble and clean her pump parts (of which there are many!) when she’s done… but they’re not in the frame.
The caption read, “multitasking at its finest.”
There was a time — prior to Jude’s birth — I would have looked at that photo of Karlie and thought, What a badass.
Now? I wish she’d be honest with us. It took a village — quite literally — of paid staff for her to multitask with such ease, to embody the ideal working mother. The first time I tried to pump from my car, I spilled half the milk on the floor and stained my shirt, then dumped the rest before I got home after growing increasingly anxious about how long it had sat out. And I got a parking ticket.
When I was breastfeeding, if I left the house without Jude I’d stay out just long enough that my boobs didn’t get engorged — then quickly return home to pump or nurse. My experience pumping while flying was, similarly, imperfect and embarrassing (and one genesis of this newsletter).
None of this, of course, is Karlie’s fault. But her picture reminds me of the unattainable beauty and motherhood standards I’m still trying to let go of.
I hadn’t thought too much about what my body would feel like after having a baby. I envisioned myself nursing for a few months and steadily easing back into exercise. Social media and celebrities had me believing I’d bounce right back.
What I didn’t expect is how foreign I felt in my own body. During the earliest days of nursing, my boobs became engorged as my milk flooded in — leaving me in incredible pain. I was ashamed to look at my body in the mirror. Discomfort ran up through my shoulders and back for months as a result of hunching over Jude five, eight, ten, or more times per day to nurse.
I rushed to get back to my familiar exercise routine, anticipating — and honestly, hoping — I’d shed the baby weight.
My first run, on a sunny 70-degree day in early November, felt like trudging through mud. I tried giving myself a pep talk. You’re doing it! That’s all that matters! Pain shot through my hips, as if they might collapse inwards, and my core ached. I looked at the time on my phone: not quite 10 minutes had passed.
After five more, I turned around and walked home. “How did it go?” Sam asked.
“Awful,” I said. “I felt like shouting, ‘I had a baby eight weeks ago!’ to anyone who passed me.”
It would be months before I attempted another run.
As I realized that my expectations were unrealistic — delusional, really — I reversed course. I bought new jeans in a larger size, avoided stepping on the scale, and tried to focus my attention inward, on what might really help me feel “like myself” again.
But I still felt the urge to explain myself to strangers. I felt it walking down the street, getting into an Uber, or stretching out in a yoga class. I still analyze my new stomach each morning in the mirror.
As author Emma Jane Unsworth writes in After the Storm, “now when I look back I see how there was a front-facing part of pregnancy — the shopfront, if you will — where it was important to seem in control and appreciative of feminism’s benefits; I took pride in this. And then there was a back room, a storeroom of feelings, where worries and inadequacies swirled.”
I didn’t necessarily want attention on my body, but I’d just gone through this hugely transformative, radicalizing experience, and as I moved through the world, it was disorienting to think I could fit in. That I could pass as someone who wasn’t walking around in a new body, with the scar across my lower abdomen as evidence.
Part of the way I dealt with the frustration and disillusionment was to open up to other moms: I’m worried about how my c-section scar is healing, or, Running sucks, right?
Sometimes we’d find a connection — an emphatic “me too!” — other times, it fell flat.
I’ve gotten so in my head. I tell myself that if other women aren’t talking about it, then I must be the only one who still compares photos of myself today to 30 weeks pregnant, or who actually felt empowered— not sad — when I quit nursing (and more importantly, pumping!) at six months postpartum so my boobs could shrink back to a more familiar size. Not the same, but at least more familiar.
As feminist writer Amanda Montei says, “I found in the early years of motherhood that it was incredibly hard to distinguish what I was doing… because of some cultural compulsion, some external pressure to meet a maternal standard that I had internalized, and what I was choosing to do in my parenting because I valued it, or found pleasure in it.”
Several weeks ago, I called and made an appointment to go back to the OBGYN. My scar had grown stiff and raised, and I worried what it might do to my fertility.
“You have a hypertrophic scar,” the doctor told me. “We don’t deal with those, but if you want to go to a dermatologist or plastic surgeon, there are ways to address it cosmetically.”
“Oh, thanks,” I said, mildly confused — I hadn’t said anything about my concern with the scar’s appearance. When I sat down in the exam room, I told her only that, twelve months postpartum, it was still itching and felt increasingly stiff. “Do you have any more questions?” she said, making her way to the door. “Will this have any impact on my fertility?” I asked.
“Oh, you don’t have to worry about that,” she said.
“Okay, great.” I felt a sense of relief. “Is there anything I could have done differently to avoid it?”
My primary care physician — as well as Instagram ads — told me about doing “scar tissue massages.” I spent $30 on “Organic C-Section Scar Balm,” but felt like a failure for not prioritizing five minutes of my day, every day, to the routine.
“No, it’s just how some bodies heal,” she said.
As I walked out of the office, I called Sam to share the good news. “And it’s not even my fault!” I said.
But I heard the doctor’s message loud and clear: the goal is for your body to bounce back — and you’re not there… yet.
Earlier this month, Jude turned one. On Sunday, I’ll run in my first race since he was born, a ten-mile road race in the Twin Cities.
“My body took more like nine months than nine weeks to readjust,” I told Aja recently when she asked how training was going. “It’s not the same. But it’s starting to feel good again.”
I won’t be chasing a specific mile time this weekend. I might have to walk. And I still don’t use my Garmin watch, now resting in a drawer — or fit into my old running shorts. But I’ll be there.
Bonus Content:
Additional books, articles, and other reading that influenced me in positive ways:
📖 I quoted Emma Jane Unsworth above, but it’s very worth downloading or picking up a copy of her book, After the Storm: Postnatal Depression and the Utter Weirdness of New Motherhood. I couldn’t put it down.
💄 Sara Petersen and Jessica DeFino’s conversation about the intersection of momfluencer culture and beauty culture is brilliant. They discuss motherhood as an identity eraser, the dopamine rush of buying new products, and the intoxicating impact of influencer skincare routines.
🙂 ’s newsletter is a helpful remedy for the pressure of the beauty industry. Valerie writes that you can’t win the beauty game unless — until! — you can see yourself uninhibited by objectification.
📖 Shrill, by , “provocatively dissects what it means to become self-aware the hard way, to go from wanting to be silent and invisible to earning a living defending the silenced in all caps.”
😊 A Smaller-Bodied Friend Let Me Borrow Her Bra... by is, as Tovar says, “a cute story about inter-size solidarity.” Wish there was more of this!
Any articles or books you’ve found helpful on this topic? We’d love to hear about them.
The original version of this essay was published in September 2023 as part of our “Body Image” series. Read our interviews with , , , and here.
Last but not least, ICYMI: our most popular link from Monday’s issue was the book picked up after a friend said it made him a better husband. 🥹
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Aja’s essay “Why I’ve decided to stop drinking” has some unexpected parallels.
I love this. I’m 19 months postpartum and post emergency c-section and I promise you it gets easier to find a way back to yourself. The American healthcare system fails postpartum women in so many ways. I started refusing to get on the scale at my doctors appointments and found a good therapist.❤️ also, you are a badass for running!! My good friend Elizabeth, @staygoldengirl on IG, has been documenting her postpartum running adventures and I find it super motivating.
Beautifully written!!!! I’m right in the thick of this too. I had to unfollow every famous pregnant person on Instagram when I found myself comparing my postpartum experience and body with theirs. It’s such an odd time! Sending you
Lots of luck in your race!