I found out I was pregnant 349 days ago. There has not been a day since that I haven’t thought about how my body looks or feels. To be fair, this hyperfixation isn’t out of the norm for me. I’ve dealt with body-image issues, coupled with disordered eating and exercise behaviors, for nearly three decades. (I first remember thinking that my thighs were fat when I was 8 years old.) The high-level summary: Years of therapy and lots of self-work finally got me to a place of pseudo body acceptance and fairly “normal” eating and exercise. I was feeling the most stable I had in my whole life.
Then I got married, and my husband and I started to talk about having kids. I’d always wanted to be a mom—that wasn’t a question. The issue was my paralyzing fear of what pregnancy would do to my body. Once again, cue the intense therapy and self-work.
I ended up getting pregnant, then had a miscarriage shortly thereafter. The experience changed me forever, including putting those previous fears about pregnancy ruining my body all the way on the backburner. When we found out I was pregnant again a few months later, I was absolutely ecstatic. We went for our first ultrasound, nervous and scared to once again get bad news. Instead, we learned we were having twins. As the ultrasound tech showed us the two(!) heartbeats on the screen, my thoughts were as follows: Holy [expletive]! … Oh my God, we need a bigger house! … What is this going to do to my body?
The first trimester of my pregnancy was hard, in every sense of the word. I’ve never been more physically incapacitated; I was sick and exhausted to the point where I was barely able to move from bed to couch. As someone who (body issues aside) genuinely loves to exercise, not being able to even walk my dogs messed with my mind in ways I didn’t know was possible. Gone were the days of green smoothies and salads—I lived on frozen waffles and McDonald’s Sprite. The scale slowly ticked up at each doctor’s appointment. I started to not be able to button my jeans. It sent me into a mental tailspin, even while I thanked the powers that be every single day that my babies were healthy and growing. It was the first example of an antithetical duality that I’d quickly learn would be an ongoing theme.
And then something changed. I don’t know if it was the combination of feeling better as the second trimester kicked in and actually starting to look pregnant and not just bloated or finding a prenatal therapist, but somehow, the body-image issues started to fade away. Did I love being pregnant? Not really. Did I hate it? Definitely not. I fell somewhere in the middle. I didn’t necessarily love how I looked, but I did find “dressing the bump” fun. I still thought about my body a lot (okay, every day), but I appreciated my ability to exercise more than ever before; I even worked out the morning I gave birth. My thoughts soon shifted, moving away from how I looked and more toward what I could do to stay healthy and keep myself pregnant, given that twins are notoriously premature. I did think about what I would look like post-birth, especially as I continued to gain weight. “If the babies ruin my abs, I’ll just get a tummy tuck,” I’d quip, more serious than not. Throughout my pregnancy, I heard both “Wow, you’re so tiny, there’s no way you’re having twins” and “Wow, you’re so big!”—sometimes on the same day. (PSA: The only thing you should ever say to a pregnant woman or new mom is, “You look great!”)
On November 9, 2023, I delivered two healthy, perfect, beautiful babies. My daughter and son were born one minute apart via C-section on their scheduled date, at 39 weeks and three days. And then things got really crazy.
While my C-section was smooth and uneventful, the recovery was anything but. I took a shower on the second day in the hospital and nearly fainted when I took off my gown and looked in the mirror. I was bruised from my belly button to my groin, unrecognizably swollen. I’m a monster, I thought. This can’t be my body. I’m never going to look normal again. What I didn’t know was that I was developing a massive hematoma (hence the extreme bruising, which I would later learn was not normal). I landed in the E.R. nine days postpartum, when my incision started to bleed. Nearly half of it had to be reopened, to drain said hematoma (a process I’d wish on no one), then left open to heal and close back up.
I had two new babies at home, looked like an extra from the opening scene of Saving Private Ryan, and was performing a daily wound care protocol not for the faint of heart. Needless to say, the immediate postpartum experience was not exactly what I had anticipated. Dealing with the C-section complication made me all the more aware of my body. Everything was soft and squishy and leaking and painful, and I had a gaping hole in my body and had never felt more like a stranger in my own skin. And there was nothing I could do about it except sit in the emotional and physical discomfort.
But time apparently does heal all, because my incision did close and I was cleared to finally start exercising six weeks later. I thought this would be the solution to all my woes. I’d get back in the gym, the 14 pounds of baby weight I was still holding on to would fall off, and I’d be back to my usual self. Not so much.
Ironically, the past two and half months have been even more mentally challenging for me than those initial six weeks, when I felt minimal pressure or expectation to look a certain way. Everything was healing, I couldn’t work out, my uterus was still shrinking, etc. But after that, something shifted and I felt like I needed to bounce back. Immediately.
I’ve been a beauty editor for nearly 15 years, focusing largely on all types of plastic surgery and cosmetic procedures. It’s made me hyperaware of aesthetics, postpartum body transformations included. I’ve written more than my fair share of stories about mommy makeovers. It’s hard to believe that this hasn’t played into the pressure I feel now, even though I’d like to say so. I was picking apart how my stomach looked daily, wondering if the loose skin would ever regain elasticity or that tummy tuck I had continually referenced would be the only way to get rid of it. There were newfound spider veins that needed to be treated. And would a breast lift be the only thing that would allow me to once again go braless?
If there’s one thing pregnancy and motherhood have taught me, it’s the power of duality. Telling a new mom who’s lamenting her lack of abs to simply appreciate and celebrate what her body did can feel invalidating and infuriating. Of course, it’s true—what women’s bodies can do is pure magic. But that doesn’t mean we aren’t allowed to feel bad about how we look. I appreciate what my body did—I grew and birthed not one but two healthy little humans. I would do it all over again in a heartbeat. And also: I hate how my body looks right now. Both are valid.
Once again, I’m in a phase of extensive therapy and self-work as I wade through this postpartum period. Some days are better than others, and there are things that have helped. I ended my breastfeeding journey after three months—the final piece in feeling like my body belonged to just me again after almost a year. I got Botox for the first time in over a year, and I’ve never appreciated my smooth forehead more. Little did I know that something as simple as a few injections would go such a long way in helping me feel more like myself again. I’m trying to be patient as I build my strength back up and work on losing the leftover weight. Do I think I will be one of those women who just accepts that their body is always going to be different after pregnancy? Nope. I’d like to be, but that’s just not realistic. And I’m realizing that as long as I’m not causing myself mental distress or engaging in the unhealthy behaviors I used to, that’s okay. It’s totally fine that I want to get back into my pre-pregnancy jeans.
I can’t say that I will ever seriously consider that tummy tuck I once so casually threw around as an option; the complications post-birth have made me extremely reluctant to undergo any kind of abdominal surgery. But I do have an absolutely newfound appreciation and understanding for why women choose to have these types of surgeries and procedures. When you feel like you’ve completely lost your sense of self, the desire to try anything and everything to get it back is palpable. To that point, I will definitely be trying noninvasive treatments like Emsculpt.
My advice to any mom not feeling like herself is this: you don’t have to either bounce back immediately or take a Zen approach and praise your squishy belly daily—you can fall somewhere in between. It’s okay to want to wear a crop top sooner rather than later and get a tummy tuck if you decide it’s right for you. Or not. All you can do is figure out what serves you best, in any given moment, and lean into that.
