Postpartum Body

As I noted a few times before giving birth, especially when I was crazy hormonal and anxious in the last few weeks, I was a little concerned about my postpartum body.

What would I look like? Would I ever get my body back? How would I live with stretch marks? Gah.

While it has only been 7 weeks and I have a long way to go, here are my thoughts so far.

Let's start at the beginning.

Above all else, my biggest fear in giving birth and recovering was tearing. I was sure that would be the worst.thing.ever and that I would feel it specifically during delivery. Welp, if you read the birth story you already know, I tore a teeny bit when my body decided to keep pushing my baby's shoulders out with no effort from me. I did get stitches and guess what? I didn't even know I had torn until they told me they were going to need to give me a few.

Afterward in the hospital, I was sore, but not unbearably so. The ice packs that they make to put in the huge mesh panties you have heard about everywhere were awesome for that. Once we came home, I followed the advice of many moms before me and lined my underwear with Tuck's pads. Great idea. I was also totally afraid of going to the bathroom for the first few times after giving birth, but that was mostly making a mountain out of a mole hill too. Trust. Use the squirt bottle of water and all will be well.

I would say the soreness lasted for a few days, but was mostly gone within the first week. And now, everything is totally healed and awesome. I even finally got up the guts to check out the situation down there with a hand mirror, and I look totally the same as before baby. Yay! (TMI? hey now, I have always been honest on this here blog).

Shortly after that, the bleeding stopped as well. I know some women have bleeding for much longer, but I was lucky enough to have it stop pretty much within the first two weeks following delivery. I don't know if that's because I bled so much in the hospital or what, but I was glad to see it go!

When I came home from the hospital I expected to look about 6 months pregnant still, since that what others had told me. I thought I looked smaller than that! (Thankfully. Though, I was ginormous at 6 mos preggo.) I may have weighed the same, ha, but I felt smaller. Mainly, I was just excited to see my ankles back to normal size! Looking back now, even when I thought I wasn't that puffy, I totally was. Yeesh.

Throughout the last few weeks, my belly has been going back down, which is great, though things are not quite back to normal. When I look at myself in the mirror with no clothes on I think, "Hey, not bad!" But when I have clothes on...it's a different story. Things just don't fit right quite yet. I am still in the in between stage where my pre-pregnancy clothes go on and button, but they don't look all that great. Thank goodness it's summer so I can rock some dresses!

My husband bought me a treadmill for my birthday - which I totally wanted and asked for, so don't go hating on him - but I haven't been able to use it yet since I don't want it set up in the middle of the living room for the Sip and See. After Saturday though, it will take up residence in our living room for a while so I can get rocking on my fitness! In the meantime we have been enjoying walking Ev around the neighborhood in the evenings, doing round the clock breastfeeding and all this doing-everything -while-carrying-baby has to be helping as well, right?

All in all, I will say that I feel totally back to normal, even though I don't quite look it yet. (The bags under the eyes don't help either!) But, I know I will get there, and I think and hope how happy I am being a mommy shines through all of it in the meantime. That is definitely my main focus these days.

Plus, I have an adorable new companion accompanying me everywhere! Ev definitely gains me some cuteness points!


Evelyn is 7 weeks, 2 days old

...and I happily haven't weighed myself since Ev was born.