Why are women expected to get their pre-pregnancy bodies back so quickly?

Six weeks after giving birth to Cyrus at 40, I was exhausted, recovering from a forceps delivery and trying to squeeze into jeans that had apparently disowned me. Naturally, I decided Body Combat was a sensible idea. It wasn’t.

Six weeks after childbirth, my jeans had disowned me

Six weeks after giving birth, I stepped on the scales and stared at a body I barely recognised.

My belly, in particular, looked less like the soft, rounded bump I had carried through pregnancy and more like something that had wandered in from the old television series Alien Nation. It was also providing convincing visual evidence of the copious amount of chocolate I had scoffed before Cyrus arrived. My old jeans, meanwhile, had disowned me, and I couldn’t squeeze back into them for months.

I had just been through an induction and forceps delivery at 40. I was exhausted, learning to look after a newborn and recovering from an experience that had been far more physically demanding than I anticipated. Yet I was already looking in the mirror and wondering when I would resemble my former self.

Some of that pressure came from outside. Relatives speaking in Farsi, usually intending to be affectionate or funny, made comments about my body that landed rather differently when I was already trying to work out what had happened to it. The British side of me wanted to smile politely. The rest of me wanted to ask whether everybody might concentrate on the baby and leave my stomach out of the conversation.

But much of the pressure came from my own head. I have always loved exercise, and somewhere along the way I had absorbed the idea that my body was a project requiring constant maintenance. So, at six weeks postpartum, I threw myself back into Body Combat.

Given what I know now about recovery after an assisted birth, I wouldn’t recommend following my example. Apparently, enthusiasm and sound judgement are not always on speaking terms.

We talk about postpartum recovery as though it has a deadline. Yet the body doesn’t necessarily recover according to a calendar, and getting back into your jeans is hardly a recognised medical assessment.

What does postpartum recovery actually mean?

The phrase “getting your body back” sounds harmless enough, doesn’t it? But back to what? The body before pregnancy, before childbirth or before the sleepless nights? And who decided that six weeks was the point at which we should start worrying about any of it?

The six-week postnatal check can sound like a medical all-clear, followed almost immediately by an unofficial fitness deadline. Lose the weight, flatten the stomach, strengthen the core and get back to yourself as quickly as possible. Quite a list for somebody who is still recovering from childbirth while learning how to keep another human being alive.

Yet the NHS advice on exercise after having a baby makes an important distinction. Following a straightforward birth, gentle activity such as walking, stretching and pelvic-floor exercises can begin when a woman feels ready. Higher-impact exercise requires more caution, and women who have experienced complicated deliveries may need longer to recover and individual medical advice.

In other words, the six-week check is not a starter’s pistol. Recovery involves healing, strength, pelvic-floor function, mobility and emotional wellbeing. It cannot be measured by how quickly a pair of pre-pregnancy jeans fastens.

Finding a more sensible approach with Buggies, Bums and Tums

In the haze of night feeds and endless washing, which I usually left in the machine until everything needed washing again, structured support became important to me. I needed exercise that fitted around motherhood rather than expecting motherhood to fit around exercise.

Vicky Bradley, founder of Buggies, Bums and Tums, offered a practical approach to postpartum fitness. Her classes focused on rebuilding strength and cardiovascular fitness, with pelvic-floor awareness and the rather significant logistical complication of having a baby in tow.

It sounds obvious, but fitness programmes can overlook the fact that new mothers have lives, and babies. A conventional gym session assumes you can concentrate on the workout. A new mother is also checking the pram, the feeding schedule and whether that suspicious silence means the baby has finally fallen asleep or is about to produce an entirely different kind of emergency.

In Vicky’s classes, the buggy became part of the session rather than an obstacle to it. Mothers moved through the park with their prams, combining walking and appropriately adapted exercises. The babies watched from their buggies or mats, presumably wondering why their mothers were voluntarily making life even more tiring.

What I appreciated was being around women who understood. Nobody needed an explanation for the exhaustion, the interruptions or the occasional inability to remember what day it was. Everyone had arrived with roughly the same amount of sleep and a baby who might have other plans.

Why pelvic-floor recovery deserves more attention

The pelvic floor supports the bladder, bowel and pelvic organs. Pregnancy and childbirth can affect how these muscles work, sometimes leading to urinary or bowel leakage, pelvic heaviness, discomfort or symptoms associated with prolapse. Yet women can be left believing that these problems are simply part of having a baby.

They are not symptoms we should be embarrassed about, nor are they necessarily something to exercise through. The NHS guidance on the post-pregnancy body explains how pelvic-floor exercises can help and when to seek advice. Women experiencing persistent symptoms may benefit from assessment by a pelvic-health physiotherapist.

This is particularly relevant following an assisted delivery. Royal Devon University Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust’s postnatal physiotherapy guidance notes that bladder and pelvic-floor recovery can take longer following forceps delivery. Looking back at my own rush into Body Combat, I wish I’d paid more attention to that side of recovery before worrying about my stomach.

• Gentle pelvic-floor exercises can form part of early postnatal recovery when appropriate.
• Bladder or bowel leakage, pelvic heaviness and persistent pain deserve attention rather than embarrassment.
• Returning to high-impact exercise should be gradual and informed by your birth experience and symptoms.
• Women recovering from complicated or assisted births may need individual advice before resuming strenuous activity.

If you experience ongoing leakage, pain, heaviness or pressure, speak to your GP, midwife or pelvic-health physiotherapist. You do not have to accept these symptoms as an inevitable consequence of motherhood.

Why does postpartum fitness always come back to weight?

This is the part I find most frustrating. We are perfectly capable of talking about postpartum recovery in terms of healing, mobility, strength and confidence. Yet the conversation so often circles back to the stomach, the scales, the BMI, the jeans and the dreaded baby weight.

Then there is that photograph taken a few months later, when somebody on Facebook wants to know whether you’ve got your figure back. It is an odd phrase when you think about it. A woman has grown and delivered a baby roughly the size of a watermelon, and apparently the achievement we most want to measure is whether her waist has returned to its previous dimensions.

For women becoming mothers over 40, there can be another layer to this. Age-related changes in muscle, hormones and recovery may already be part of the picture. Add pregnancy and childbirth, and the idea of simply reversing the clock becomes even less useful.

That doesn’t mean women shouldn’t want to lose weight, improve their fitness or feel more comfortable in their clothes. Of course they can. I certainly did. But the decision should belong to the woman, rather than being presented as the inevitable next stage of successful motherhood.

The more I thought about it, the more I realised that much of what we call postpartum recovery isn’t about recovery at all. It is about appearance. How quickly can a woman lose the weight? When will her stomach flatten? When will her jeans fit? When will she look like herself again?

There is also an uncomfortable commercial question. A woman who believes her stomach is a problem is a potentially valuable customer. She can be sold programmes, plans, supplements, classes, clothing and an endless supply of before-and-after photographs. None of those things is necessarily wrong in itself, but the suggestion that a woman’s body needs correcting after childbirth deserves scrutiny.

I am not against fitness programmes. I love the gym, and I know how much exercise can do for my physical and mental wellbeing. What troubles me is the idea that a smaller waist should be the principal measure of whether a woman has recovered from giving birth.

Looking recovered and actually recovering are two different things. One asks how quickly you can make your body look familiar. The other asks what your body needs to function, heal and become stronger.

Rebuilding strength rather than punishing the body

If I could revisit those early weeks, I would ask a different question. Instead of wondering how quickly I could lose the baby weight, I would ask what sort of movement my body was ready for. The answer might have been walking, gentle exercises, more rest or professional guidance before returning to higher-impact classes.

The Pelvic, Obstetric and Gynaecological Physiotherapy guidance on returning to exercise recommends a gradual approach, with attention to symptoms and individual recovery. That makes rather more sense to me now than trying to reclaim months of fitness in one heroic session.

There is a rather depressing assumption behind some postpartum fitness marketing: that pregnancy is an unfortunate detour and the destination is the woman you were before. I don’t buy it, although I say that as someone who spent months unable to get into a nice dress and cared far more about it than I probably should have.

Pregnancy and birth change the body. Motherhood changes the person inside it. Trying to erase all evidence of either seems like an exhausting way to spend the limited energy available to a new mother.

I cared about my stomach, the scales and looking like myself again. But eventually I realised that looking like myself and looking like the woman I was before Cyrus were not necessarily the same thing.

The more useful goal became reclaiming strength. Carrying Cyrus, pushing his buggy up a hill without my face becoming the colour of beetroot and eventually returning to the activities I enjoyed. That was fitness too, even if it didn’t come with a dramatic before-and-after photograph.

Recovery is not a competition with your former self

Postpartum fitness should be about building the body you have now, not punishing it for changing. That means respecting recovery, paying attention to pelvic-floor health, progressing gradually and finding exercise that fits around motherhood rather than adding another impossible demand to it.

I still love a demanding workout. Give me music, movement and a class that leaves me thoroughly out of breath and I’m happy. But there is a time for pushing yourself and a time for recognising that your body has already done something demanding enough.

The real achievement after childbirth isn’t looking as though you never had a baby. It’s gradually feeling comfortable, capable and at home in your body again, whether or not the old jeans ever make another appearance.

Did you feel pressure to lose the baby weight, or did you find support that helped you recover at your own pace? And if you could give your newly postpartum self one piece of advice, what would it be?

Occasional stories, experiments, discoveries and big questions from Saffron & Cyrus.