The pressure to “bounce back” after having a baby is intense. And your ability to bounce back to your old body after giving birth is often graded and used to determine your “goodness” as a woman and mother.
Yep, diet culture is E V E R Y W H E R E … even for new moms.
When I was pregnant for the first time, bouncing back postpartum wasn’t something I thought much about. In fact, being pregnant felt like I was finally healing a decades-long, tortured relationship with my body and disordered eating.
As my belly grew to make space for the ever-expanding cluster of cells in my uterus, I finally felt the freedom to eat when I was hungry—and to actually satisfy that hunger.
It was liberating.
And because I felt so great about my growing body, I wasn’t really worried about my body postpartum. I sort of assumed that once I gave birth, my body would shrink right down with my uterus. That was the expectation, anyway. It’s what women’s magazines told me would happen. It’s what I saw in movies and on TV after a character gave birth. I mean, just look at Rachel Green on Friends!
Deep down, I knew it was fiction. But I still filed that “problem” under future me. It wasn’t something I was willing to worry about while I was pregnant.
How Media and Culture Distort What Postpartum Recovery Looks Like
When I gave birth in 2013, Instagram was still in its infancy. There weren’t many—if any—momfluencers showing off their real postpartum bodies the way so many do now. If they were, I certainly wasn’t seeing them.
Instead, I watched America’s Next Top Model reruns while I nursed my newborn on the couch—which, in hindsight, was not the world’s healthiest choice.
And unsurprisingly, my body did not “bounce back.” Sure, my belly got smaller as my uterus contracted, but that only took me so far.
The Fantasy of Shrinking Instantly After Birth
Women get wildly conflicting messages about the postpartum period.
I was told by my midwife to go easy on my body for the first 40 days. At minimum, no strenuous exercise until I’d stopped bleeding. “Give your body time to heal,” she told me.
But the culture? The culture trains us to believe our bodies should immediately return to their pre-pregnancy state. As if nothing ever happened.
How is that even supposed to work without strenuous exercise and serious calorie deprivation? And more importantly: Should that even be the goal?
What Really Happens to Your Body After Birth
I tried to be patient and gentle with my postpartum body. But it was hard when my body didn’t look the same—not at 1 month, not at 6 months, not even a year postpartum.
Even when I got back to my yoga mat.
Even when I started running again.
Even when I lifted weights.
And here’s the thing: that’s normal. It’s the expectation of instant weight loss that’s wrong.
The Physical Changes No One Talks About
Pregnancy changes your body. So does labor and delivery.
Your hips widen to make room for a baby, your breasts enlarge in preparation for nursing (whether you end up breastfeeding or not), and your internal organs shift to accommodate a growing uterus.
Ligaments all over your body stretch, your feet may grow a size, and many women experience whole-body swelling thanks to increased blood and fluid volume.
Your hair might get thicker and shinier during pregnancy—only to fall out in clumps in the shower 3–6 months postpartum thanks to hormonal shifts.
These are the changes that naturally occur for mothers in order to create another life—an incredible expression of what our bodies are able to do.
So how is it okay that those same changes are what “devalue” our bodies once the embryo becomes a baby?
From Diastasis to Pelvic Floor: This Is Normal, Not Failure
Then there are the postpartum changes:
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Diastasis recti, where your abdominal muscles separate.
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Pelvic floor trauma, including torn or weakened muscles.
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Incontinence, when running or jumping triggers urine leakage.
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Prolapse, which is every bit as uncomfortable as it sounds.
You’ve probably experienced some of these if you’ve given birth. And yet, we’re still expected to snap back into shape like nothing happened.
It’s a race to see who can be the most unaffected by pregnancy, delivery, and postpartum healing. We’re being assessed to see how quickly we’re able to return to pre-pregnancy factory settings once we’re no longer pregnant.
It’s absurd.
It’s unrealistic.
And from a physical standpoint, it’s dangerous.
Because it very often leads women to feeling like they need to just suck it up and deal with the pelvic floor pain, occasional leakage, swollen boobs, hypersensitive body, and just lose the baby weight already. Instead of taking the time to heal, they feel pressured to get everything back to the way it was as fast as possible … or at least make it look that way.
But having a baby is no small thing. Why shouldn’t it have changed us? Who says we have to “go back” to being who we were before this life-changing experience? Why should that be the goal?
Who Does the Bounce Back Serve? (Hint: Not You)
Shrinking Isn’t Healing
Treating the postpartum period as a weight loss competition can complicate and prolong healing.
You’ve got far more important things to focus on during this period than how your body looks to other people.
You’re probably navigating long days and longer nights, trying to figure out how to comfort and care for this tiny human that was not so long ago, inside of your body and now relies on your for everything.
You’re also dealing with never ending dirty diapers and laundry.
You might be pumping through the night, like I was, to try and increase your milk supply. And then also waking up to nurse a hungry baby.
You’re likely struggling to do basic things like taking a shower and feeding yourself because your baby only sleeps when they’re in your arms.
You’re navigating what it means to parent and raise a child with another human being if your partner is with you. There’s the ongoing, daily challenge of figuring out “how we are now as parents” vs how we were as partners before we had kids.
You might also be adjusting to what it means to be a mom who goes back to work faster than you want to, particularly in the US where it’s highly unlikely that you’ve got paid maternity leave and no subsidized, affordable childcare.
And in the middle of that storm, we’re told we should “get our bodies back.”
When are you supposed to work out? Or is the idea to just starve your body into submission wile it’s vulnerable and healing?
All of these other things you’re dealing with are more urgent and important to figure out than fitting into your pre-pregnancy jeans.
Your World Got Bigger—Your Body Doesn’t Have to Get Smaller
Bouncing back should not be a fitness goal.
This isn’t to say movement isn’t valuable postpartum—it absolutely is. But let’s reframe the goal.
Maybe you move to reconnect to your body.
To heal and strengthen your core or pelvic floor.
To rebuild your strength and perhaps feel even stronger than you did pre-pregnancy.
To have something that’s just for you.
Not because you’re feeling the pressure of diet culture to get your old pre-baby body back and show the world how little pregnancy, delivery, and motherhood have affected you.
You don’t have to “go back” to an old healthy version of you.
You can create a new one.
Diet Culture Preys on Postpartum Vulnerability
Let’s be real: chasing a pre-pregnancy body as soon as possible is not for our health. It’s to appease diet culture and earn our value back by reclaiming some more ideal aesthetic.
But starving yourself and overexercising while recovering and/or breastfeeding isn’t how we heal. In fact, it can:
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Can wreck your milk supply
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Make you more exhausted
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Increase your injury risk
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Leave you feeling weaker, not stronger
We’re talking about a time in our lives when we need more nourishment, not less. We need support, not stress. We need to feel stronger, not just smaller.
So who benefits when you deprive and exhaust yourself? Not your baby. Not your family. And definitely not you.
What If We Stopped Going Back—and Flourished Forward Instead?
The very idea of “bouncing back” is flawed. You’re not a rubber band. You’re a human. One who has stretched and grown—in body and in life.
Pregnancy and postpartum aren’t about shrinking. They’re about expansion. Your heart expands. Your responsibilities expand. Your capacity for love and exhaustion expands. Your whole life expands. So should your expectations.
There is no bouncing back—there’s a reorganizing. A restructuring.
Motherhood is an Expansion
When you become a mother, your attention has to expand. Your responsibilities increase.
Your community needs to broaden to include more people you can ask for help when you need it and can lean on for support to preserve your mental health.
And your life will continue to widen outward as your child gets older and moves within the world.
Motherhood is the experience of expanding.
To me that suggests we need to get a little stronger, so we can withstand the challenges of parenting—internally and externally.
We need to learn to go with the flow, knowing that when it comes to kids, it’s best to expect the unexpected.
We need to be more agile, moving through the minefield of modern motherhood.
And we need endurance, because postpartum is actually forever. Being a parent doesn’t suddenly end when your kid turns 18.
You can’t go back. You’ve got to grow forward.
The Bottom Line: Flourish Forward
“Bouncing back” is a concept sold to women by diet culture and patriarchal systems that profit from our insecurity. It’s a lie designed to keep us chasing smallness when what we really need is strength and support.
So let’s retire the narrative of bouncing back.
I propose we aim to flourish forward.
It might not have the same ring as “bouncing back” or “getting your body back,” but it’s more true to what your body needs after giving birth—physically, mentally, and emotionally.
Once you have a baby, there will be no going back. Life changes shape—expanding to make space for another human being. You can only go forward.
So let’s keep moving forward in bodies that are wiser, stronger, and far more powerful than they’re ever given credit for.
Flourish forward. That’s the only direction that matters. —Naomi
