The first picture is the moment that came to mind when I was at my 6-week postpartum appointment (for my first baby) and my doctor said
“You’re all clear. You can go back to whatever exercise you did before. Just go easy.”
The second picture was taken a few months before I got pregnant at the end of the last race I did before getting pregnant.
This race, I ran a trail half marathon in less than 2 hours. I was at the very beginning of my training career, occasionally writing workouts for my friends or helping them train for running events. I trained hard, was religious with my workout schedule , and had no idea how quickly I’d be thrown out of my fitness routine.
Fast forward to me sitting in the doctor’s office, utterly exhausted, still healing from a long, traumatic delivery (My stitches hadn’t even healed yet), near tears because I desperately wanted my body to feel familiar again.
After getting the green light from my doctor, I joined a gym, dressed in my husband’s oversized clothes, and rushed out the door at a time meticulously coordinated with the baby’s nursing schedule.
I was so unbelievably uncomfortable walking into that gym. I avoided making eye-contact with anyone and hurried over to a treadmill tucked in the back corner.
“Ok, I’ll just jog a mile”, I thought. “Go easy.”
I pushed the numbers on the display to 4.5 mph. As the pace picked up, I felt shooting pain in both of my hips, my low back seized up, I felt like my insides were falling out.
I lasted less than a minute, and feeling completely defeated and in so much pain, I rushed to the locker room where I sat and cried. I had no idea what to do next.
That moment was the catalyst for the work I do now.
Helping mom’s navigate returning to activity postpartum (no matter how long ago they had babies), letting them know about resources available to them (like pelvic floor physical therapy!), and helping them feel confident and strong in the new version of their bodies is so deeply important to me.
If I could go back and tell myself something as I was crying in that locker room, it would be:
“You’re not broken, you’re healing. It’s going to take time and patience, but you will recover from this. We just have to train smart and differently from before for now. There are resources and support out there to guide you. Be nice to yourself, you’ve been through so much.”