When I came home from the hospital with my first kid, I walked through the door, put down the bucket car seat, turned to my husband and proceeded to ball my eyes out. Looking as scared as a person possibly could, he asks me “what’s wrong????”. I stop sobbing long enough to say…”what am I supposed to do now???”.
Before having a kid, you go through what seems like 20 billion doctors appointments making sure the baby is good. Then you (possibly) have showers to get prepared for having said baby. Then you go to birth prep courses making sure you know how to have the baby. And then you (sometimes) clean and prep your house making sure that it’s ready for the baby to come home. No one really ever tells you what to do with the baby, or yourself when you get home having now birthed the baby.
I was so messed up. I thought (stupidly) that once you have a baby, you’ll suddenly know what to do. I mean the bad parts of pregnancy (morning/all day sickness, heartburn, out of breath going up stairs, exhaustion) are all gone, right? Things should be great! Just snuggle your little one, feed them, and love them while being blissfully happy!
****BIG NOTE HERE**** If you haven’t had your baby yet and would like to continue thinking that this blissful dream will happen, stop here. Come back and read the rest after birth to find out that you’re not alone in how you now feel ;).
Back to our regularly scheduled writing……..HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY….Woah Nellie! Back that horse up there lady! I had heard from a few friends that after having a baby, you’ll need to spray your lady bits every time you pee. That you’ll need some maximum coverage pads to deal with the bleeding and some frozen pads to ice your tender parts. I had NO freaking idea how hard it would all be! Not only are you dealing with a tiny, highly needy little human, but you’re dealing with feeling like either your vagina is a destroyed wound, or that your belly will rip open any time you move. You may feel like your nipples are being ripped off, or that you’re constantly cleaning bottles. There’s worrying about every little burp, fart, poop, pee, sound, etc that your baby makes. IT’S A LOT!!!
And then on top of ALL of that (plus more that I’m leaving out for everyone’s benefit) you’re being inundated with stories of how the next celebrity mom got her body back after just 2 minutes! I must admit that I thought (again stupidly) that my belly would disappear once the baby had vacated the space. No one told me that I would be swollen and that my belly would still look pregnant. I mean it took 9 + months to grow my baby and in conjunction, my belly but I thought, hey...I’m a fitness professional, my body knows how to move and how to get back to my pre-baby body.
Ya...no….just….no. FULL STOP NO! But still, that thought was in my mind. So there I was the day after having my boy going for a walk around the block. There I was planning how I would fit in a workout during his sleeping times. But when those sleeping times didn’t come, and I was EXHAUSTED beyond belief, those thoughts of workouts, and mom and baby fitness classes all went straight to the bottom of the list of priorities. Yet I couldn’t shake the thought of how in the hell do celebrity moms make it happen? Weren’t they also exhausted, feeling like their insides might fall out if they jump, like their core was a mushy unusable blob????
What do I do now?
Well what I did probably wasn’t the best idea. And having gone through it, and ALSO gotten some education about training in the postpartum time I definitely know what I did was a shitty idea. In the hopes that you also don’t go down that rabbit hole, here I am, experienced, and more importantly, educated about to tell you what you may want to (highly recommend) do.
Here it is…
Wait for it…
BREATHE. Just breathe. Lame I know, right? But seriously, take a breath. Trying to get back to your pre-baby body, to bounce back (damn I hate that term but it’s out there) is not what you want to do when you first pop out that baby. What you will want to do is to take it fricking easy! Move when you feel like moving and that movement is probably NOT going to be box squats! Your exercises will probably look lame (especially if you’re used to doing Olympic lifting) but they are necessary.
But first….let’s breathe. Learning the connection breath between your head and your pelvic floor is so key and will help you so much in your quest to start moving like you used to.
Connection breath you say...Caroline wtf is that? Check out my video about connection breath to go through how to breathe and connect with your pelvic floor. Gentle is key! You got this.
Questions? Drop me an email, a message, a carrier pigeon….whatever you got, let’s get you some answers. Last note….no question or information is TMI for me. I’d rather know it all in order to help you than to not know, so don’t feel badly or worry about what I think. I’m here for you to help guide you back to fitness safely without the worry of hurting yourself and I look forward to helping you.