Making Peace with my "Mom Bod"

This post originally appeared as a Guest Blog Post on Motion Melissa .

Major, unplanned abdominal surgery was not how I envisioned meeting my daughter. 

I did expect that my body would look and feel different after growing, nourishing and caring for a new life. I expected my clothes would fit differently, and that there would be no “bouncing back” because my body would be fundamentally and irrevocably altered from the process of becoming a mother. But I wrongly assumed that after 12 weeks, maybe even after just six, I would be ready to resume teaching group fitness full time, and that I would feel like my strong and capable self.

My Unplanned C-Section meant severe damage to my Transverse Abdominals and the nerve endings that give feeling and function to that region of my abdomen, and blooming scar tissue inhibited mobility. I was numb and lifeless - there was no way I was doing a plank, let alone leading classes. Instead of celebrating my “Mom Bod” for all that it could do and all that it was, I found myself grieving the person I had once been, and fixating on feelings of inadequacy. 

But there are tools we can draw upon to cultivate some peace with our bodies: 

• Tune out the noise: ever notice when the media you consume activates your inner critic? Have those friends in your circle who seem to bring out the worst, most jealous and insecure parts of yourself? Notice when you get stuck in a cycle of comparison. Mute, unfollow, and if need be, block. Don’t give your attention, time, or hard-earned dollars to those selling you the message that something is wrong with you.

• Instead, curate your community of support: follow and connect with those who make you feel good exactly as you are. Find like-minded Mom Squads (like Motion Mamas!) that foster support and empowerment through connection, not competition. 

• Tune in to your own, most essential self-keeping needs: as new moms we can easily get wrapped up in tracking our baby’s feedings, diaper output, and bathtime, but forego our own most basic needs. Check in. Have you eaten recently? Do you need to use the bathroom? When was the last time you washed your hair? Bottle washing can wait, so can that load of laundry;  your self-care can’t. 

• Really get to understand and celebrate the magnitude of what your body has done: did you know we have three layers of muscle that comprises our pelvic floor, and that no matter your birth, they stretch and grow in amazing ways to accommodate your growing baby?! See a Pelvic Floor Physical Therapist, no matter how your baby is born. At the guidance of my Physical Therapist, I used scar tissue massage and gentle, functional movement to restore feeling, mobility, and strength to my damaged abdomen. Get to know your body all over again, with curiosity and grace. You’ll learn so much about your body, and likely be in awe of just how amazing you are. 

• Take it slow: give yourself permission to ease back into your regular routine, instead of beating yourself up for not performing at your pre-pregnancy level. Find workouts that give you a sense of spaciousness.

• And celebrate all that your Mom Bod does with ease and love: while a workout may no longer entail box jumps and sandbag circuits, I lift all 20 pounds of my baby over and over and over again in the course of our day, to her glee and delight - so much more rewarding than a dumbbell, huh? 

• Bask in the beauty of your baby: look at their perfect round belly, their beefy forearms, and impossibly rolly thighs. Observe the tender adoration you feel for them - notice the lack of shame, revulsion, and judgment, notice how abhorrent it would be to project that body shame onto your child, yet observe how you cast it on yourself so easily. 

• Remember that peace is a process, and a practice, not a fixed destination.

In pregnancy I came to love my ever-expanding belly, because I loved the baby growing safe and sound inside. And eight months after my daughter’s birth my belly is big and soft and doesn’t at all fit the mold of what a woman’s shape “should be” to be considered beautiful or perceived as strong. All of this reconciliation of my expectations with my lived reality, and confronting and unpacking the narratives we face about what and how we “should” be as new moms, is enough to rob anyone of their peace. But as I gaze at my own daughter in awe and wonder, I’m rediscovering a new and whole kind of peace - the impossible perfection of my love for her - enough to accept and embrace any imperfection. 

It's my body and I'll wean if I want to.

While there are a plethora of sources to support establishing and sustaining lactation and breastfeeding, there’s a paucity of information when it comes to stopping, and this process, like so much else when it comes to motherhood, is couched in secrecy and shame.

Last night, in desperation and frustration to end the clogs, the leaking and engorgement, the utter physical depletion, and because I’ve had enough with being more responsive to a pump than to my own daughter , I googled “how to wean from breastfeeding,” and the very first result lead me to a page from a widely known breastfeeding support organization, an organization I’ve used the services of many times in fact, both during my pregnancy and in my early days home from the hospital. This is one of the most recommended support groups for body feeding in the nation, and hoooo boy was I ever appalled at the language of their weaning post. 

It came down to ‘here’s how to wean: are you sure you’re ready to stop? Sometimes it can be overwhelming but there’s no reason to stop. What about just cutting down the number of times per day? If you so wean, your baby will miss the comfort of ‘their’ soft breasts at the offering of cold, hard plastic bottle. The very first time you offer your baby a bottle, you have begun weaning.’ (This is paraphrased, but y’all get the point, right?) 

Um, what 🍼 the 🍼 fuck 🍼?!

By this logic, exclusively pumping, does not constitute breastfeeding. By this logic I actually weaned months ago, when my baby became unable to latch and withdraw milk from my breast. By this logic I have irreparably  damaged my baby, despite the fact that switching course from nursing to feeding expressed milk has been a wonder for her health (hint: because she’s no longer starving). By this logic, I may only access the information I’m seeking only after enduring shame for that choice. Despite the fact that I knowingly and intentionally googled “how to wean,” which is the title of this prominently linked page, I must not know my own physical and mental needs, since the language of this post erases, dismisses, minimizes, and bypasses the autonomy of the reader. Furthermore, these needs are not my own, because my breasts are actually my baby’s, not mine. 

Why is there so little support to cease or suppress a bodily process it took me, and so many others, such a battle to achieve? Why is the information on how to undertake this process provided only after paragraphs of language that shames the desire to do so, and erased and negates the varied ways in which babies are fed breast milk? Why is so much of motherhood like this? 

Here’s the thing, it’s my body and I’ll wean if i want to. It’s my body and I’ll wean when I want to. I’m ready to wake up in the morning and run to pick up my daughter who’s babbling away merrily, rather than immediately run for the pump because my breasts are distended and throbbing. I’m ready to put down the portable pump I wear in a hip pack all day, and pick up my squirmy, silly, always-on-the-move daughter instead. I’m I’m ready to be responsive to my own needs, and to Alma’s far more beautiful and varied needs and desires than consuming one kind of milk over another. 

Please, check your sources

Dear people of the internet, please, I’m begging you, check your sources. 🙏🥺

Whether you’re a FitPro and there’s an inspirational quote that resonated with you and you want to share it with clients via your professional platform, or you’re reposting aspirational content to your personal page or story as a means to find guidance and seeming clarity in these trying times, please, I’m asking you to dig in before you hit share, I’m imploring you to be a critical consumer and less reflexive reposter, and to think about your captive audience and reach, however small you think it might be. The same goes for the content that you’re liking, saving, and sending. 

Becoming a new mom in the era of a global pandemic means I’ve been utterly dependent upon virtual support - my community is right here, behind my screen. We are all spending an unprecedented time at home, often in isolation, forging and seeking community in online spaces. In the past few months, weeks, and days, my timeline and my stories have been inundated with baseless conspiracy theories about the origins of the ongoing COVID-19 crisis and the public health response to it, and with posts encouraging us to “awaken” to the recent inevitable push for racial reckoning and justice by deliberately turning away from it. I’ve seen these posts spread from all ends of the political spectrum; they all invoke the same rhetoric, engage in the same logical fallacies, predate on our shared collective fears and anxieties in a moment of national sociocultural vulnerability, and have the same dubious origins. 

Most recently, it’s been post after post telling followers to “wake up” to COVID as a “false flag” conspiracy to distract from the ongoing crisis and tragedy of child sexual exploitation. These posts have sprung up in relation to an entire larger universe of COVID “truthers” schilling pyramid scheme wares as magical panaceas for this global pandemic for a novel - read: NEWly discovered - strain of the human sars coronavirus. I’ve seen these posts from peers and friends, from influencers whose work I have long followed, and especially from folks working in the larger fitness and wellness industry - so forever altered by this pandemic. A few clicks on the source material for these widely disseminated reposts belies the true intentions of their creators - to disseminate disinformation rooted in racism, antisemitism, and white supremacy. These posts spread and gain popularity because they prey on our collective and individual anxiety in this uniquely challenging and trying moment of time, where we face intersecting and compounding crises day after day, with no clear end or solution in sight. These posts offer us hope, however twisted, that we can wish it all away by adhering to a different narrative. Just as a movement practice asks us to pause and notice, to grapple and reckon with our experiential embodiment, pause too, in the messaging you absorb and distribute. 

 When you come across or are sent a post making sensational claims of blame or offering a too-good-to-be-true solution, here are some basic things to watch for to ascertain legitimacy and value and interrogate their origin and intention: 

•  Distrust, delegitimization, and demonization of accredited experts within the field 

• Failure to maintain appropriate scope of practice: content originator does not possess qualifications to speak as an authority in this arena, or claims them falsely  

• Scapegoating - especially pinpointing an ethno-religious minority or representatives thereof, i.e. specific references to George Soros, “globalist cabals,” or vague claims of orchestrated global elites etc.

• False equivalencies (i.e. comparing longitudinal health outcomes rooted in America’s broken food systems as equivalent to social distancing, masks, and other sanitation measures taken in the midst of a global respiratory pandemic) 

• Harnessing of Cognitive Dissonance as a means of division: (claiming the reader cannot care about other social problems in the midst of a global pandemic, depiction of two social problems as mutually exclusive)

•  Deployment of racist tropes: see especially the terms “Black on Black crime,” “race war,” “race baiting”

• Spiritual Bypassing and Toxic Positivity: claiming a pie-in-the-sky “higher consciousness” without acknowledgment of and agitation against material inequities here on earth

• Confirmation bias and accusations of fact checking whether individual or institutional as equivalent to censorship and “proof” of an orchestrated conspiracy

• Ignores conflicting data and/or only engages with divergent source material and opposing evidence via ad hominem attacks and Whataboutism, rather than engage in substantive, evidenced-based debate

• Claimed martyrdom and victimhood by someone in actuality holding power and capital, whether material or sociocultural

• Conflation of coincidence or causation with correlation 

• Use and reliance of anecdote over evidence in research methodology

• Origins of claims for personal enrichment 

This is by no means a comprehensive post, it’s an attempt for me to gather the pained pieces of my brain and heart. To learn more about the spread of disinformation on social media, and to curate an evidenced social feed, I highly recommend the following links and accounts: 

The Great Unlearn: @thegreatunlearn

Check Your Privilege: ckyourprivilege

The Anti-Defamation League: @adl_nationa

So You Want to Talk About: @soyouwanttotalkabout

We are vulnerable to the media we consume and the rhetoric it espouses. With each save, share, and repost we widen the reach of toxic content, we exacerbate harm, we fail ourselves and our community. Let’s show up more effectively in our shared online spaces, and do better. Our lives, and the lives of those far, far more vulnerable quite literally depend on it.