Many women struggle after giving birth, especially to their first baby. Quite often it is due to your confidence and self-esteem being simply smashed with your whole world changing instantly!
A lot of changes happen to your body after giving birth, some are physical like your breasts filling with milk, and others are emotional like hormonal changes that happen after the baby is born, this could add the feeling of extra stress. Other changes can be things such as the loss of sleep and increased stress that come with taking care of a new-born baby. You are more likely to be affected with negative feelings if you have suffered from depression previously or if it is within family history.
The whole post pregnancy journey is an emotional rollercoaster, a mix of emotions that range from sadness, fear, joy, anger, doubt and happiness. It is clear that your body makes many changes, and you may be left understandably with lowered levels of body confidence, self-belief and self-worth.
You can treat these issues through improving self-care, getting enough sleep, eating well, exercising and taking time to relax. These methods are natural methods to improving your negative feeling after giving birth and things that you have to make time for in your new busy everyday life!
There are other obvious ways to get yourself feeling somewhat back to normal and that is finding yourself some support whether that is counselling or joining groups of people going through same or similar situations to talk with and also getting outdoors in the fresh air, moving and keeping your self filled up with snatches of YOU-Time and not to mention that could be group fitness sessions.
Here are some top tips on how to help yourself:
- Be proud! Focus on what your body has done and ignore what your body looks like, and you will be more satisfied knowing what your body has achieved.
- Focus on the positives, teach yourself to accept yourself for who you are and think positive about yourself and choose to focus on the positives whilst rejecting the negatives.
- Be realistic! No one is perfect although scrolling through social media it may seem they are. Don’t compare yourself to the digital version of them. Look around you in person…
- Be kind to yourself, it is one of those ‘easier said than done’ phrases and yes it does sound easy to do but for all of you new mums to put it into practise, is a lot harder! Naturally you see yourself with such a critical eye seeing flaws, and visioning flaws that may not actually be there, it is just you are being hard on yourself! Look at yourself with positivity and you will feel the change.
- Take your time, this is important yet simple! Everyone is different, with different bodies and journeys. Just focus on your own journey and be patient.
Women have a desire to get their body back to how it was before being pregnant, but with the overwhelming exhaustion that they face from caring for a new born, it leaves you feeling out of control with your own body at times. With thoughts constantly filling your mind it can be easy to be thinking of getting back to your fit old self that you can be confident about, but the thoughts on how to look after your baby and be a mother flood your mind and you may not think any further into how this can be done.
Performance To Summit have introduced a new subscription option to suit all mothers. Having just one session on a Saturday morning or even the three scheduled during the week Monday to Friday, means that it is easy to fit into your busy schedules, take an hour for yourself and destress either once a week or build up to three times per week.
All our fitness subscribers are welcome free of charge to our health and wellbeing workshops which you may also find useful if you are suffering after your pregnancy. Subscribe and come along to join us!
For additional information check out the sources below that we used to broaden out knowledge ourselves:
Author: Performance To Summit Team – Dave Pickles & Fay Burrows