subject: Body After Giving Birth [print this page] You cannot alter the fact that your body changed whilst you were pregnant, and it will keep doing so even after childbirth.
You will be focused on taking care of the baby and it won't be too long before you forget how your life, and your body, were before the baby was born.
However, there are some things that you can do to help yourself after your pregnancy. The fact that your body changes during pregnancy is inevitable, but you can learn how to take control of it afterwards.
It can be a shock when you find yourself leaving the hospital with your abdomen almost as big as when you were pregnant. You may even feel a little self-conscious, but it is perfectly normal and at this stage you should just accept it and focus on your health rather than your weight.
Let's go over some facts about the way your body changes during pregnancy:
The size of your uterus after childbirth is about the size of your uterus when you were 20 weeks pregnant.
Your abdominal muscles are also stretched out so they have lost the ability to hold your tummy in.
Your weight from pregnancy may be cut down dramatically but you will still have quite a lot around your belly and breasts.
Relaxin is the hormone responsible for the dramatic changes to all your joints and muscles and has a natural (but unpleasant) effect on the abdominal muscles as changes to the connective tissues provide elasticity to the muscle and weaken the tone so that the abdomen can accommodate the growing baby.
If you had stronger abdominal muscles before pregnancy it will allow you to maintain and regain them more easily after you give birth. It is not impossible if this was not the case, but it will require a bit more work.
There are few women who easily reverse the way their bodies changed during pregnancy, but there are those women who have so many body changes that sometimes it becomes overwhelming. Taking control over your body will help but getting back to your pre-pregnancy weight and size may take some time and effort.
You may need to have a little patience because it can take around six to nine months (nine months up, nine months down) before you shed the pounds of your pregnancy weight. You can't control the changes during pregnancy, but you can take control of your body afterwards.
