“I want my body back.”
To all you mamas out there, how many of you have thought, “I want my body back!” Maybe it was during pregnancy, or in that draining postpartum period, or in the years after you were done having kids and looking back on old pictures of yourself. Maybe it was at 3am when you’re awake (again) breastfeeding (again) or when you’re all touched out at the end of a long day.
I know for me, I have been experiencing it more acutely this pregnancy (my second) as exercise has been virtually impossible without feeling dehydrated and exhausted for the rest of the day. I got back into running (shoutout to Fit4Mom Frederick!!!!) after my son was born and went from running a 5k in November to not being able to run for 5 minutes by February, when I was 6 weeks pregnant with my daughter. I was feeling so good in my body, so proud of what it was doing, so grateful for creating a life and then helping me feel more like myself after a difficult postpartum period. Running was making me feel more connected to other moms and helped me relieve stress and then poof - it was gone, what felt like overnight.
Right now, I can sit here and feel more of a sense of awe about what my body is doing, but that’s mainly because baby girl is quite active at the moment! And that’s the thing with this sentiment, of wanting your body back. There has to be nuance to it, right? I can be in awe of my body and also seriously miss my group runs on Sunday mornings. I’ll be grateful when my daughter is here and my body is creating food for her, but I can also promise you that I will be equally as frustrated by being tied to my pumping schedule. I know how excited I’ll be when I’m cleared for exercise, and how difficult it will be to have to build back up some of my endurance.
One important thing here, though, is that I am not defining my worth by my body. Never have, never will. But I have had so many clients feel almost the complete opposite. I’ve had clients who are pregnant and so happy to be growing their family, while struggling significantly with their bodies changing, feeling like they are worth less because they’re gaining weight. I’ve had clients who focus so much on “losing the baby weight” postpartum that they end up having to combat sleep deprivation and the return of their long-dormant eating disorder. I’ve had clients with kids in school who desperately want to be smaller again in order to feel more capable, more confident, as if being smaller will automatically make them a better mom. It breaks my heart because I know that for all of these clients, their kids don’t love them because of how they look, but because of how they show up and make their kids feel important, loved, and safe.
When that part of you gets loud - “Just five more pounds. You’re so lazy. You never used to be this way. Becky doesn’t eat carbs and look at her, she’s stunning.” - it completely detracts from the beauty of motherhood. You miss out of the small moments because you’re inputting your dinner into MyFitnessPal. You avoid being in photos. You say no to ice cream on a warm summer evening. You eat pizza on Friday nights with the family but feel so consumed with guilt you can’t even have fun doing so. You hate yourself for sleeping through your workout alarm and it throws off your entire day. You miss your kid’s cannon ball because you’re so focused on comparing your body to that other woman on the other side of the pool. No mom I know feels good about any of that because no mom goes into parenthood wanting to be focused on food, exercise, and body image. So what happens? The shame kicks in. “I’m a horrible mother. I’m a failure. I can’t even be there for my kids.”
And this is why nuance is needed when we start thinking about wanting our bodies back after having kids. It’s natural to want to get back into shape, to feel like yourself again, to be able to move comfortably, to have something that is truly yours when so much of your life is about other people. When that nuance starts to fade, we enter that dangerous zone of disordered eating, or even full-blown eating disorders. That’s when therapy is needed to find your inherent worth, either for the first time in your life, or for the first time in a while. Moms truly are amazing and deserve to see that within themselves, not just when they look around at others. So yes, you can go ahead and want your body back, but not so badly that your entire sense of self hinges on it.
