Postpartum Exercise: What You Need To Know

Before we go into the article telling you all about what you need to know about postpartum exercise, we’re going to say this: your body is beautiful.

You do not need to change your body to fit in or to look good. However, women often feel the need to reclaim some of their own identity after they have children. It gets lost for a little while, but with the choice to take back something you love – such as running, strength training or cycling – you get a piece of yourself back and feel confident once more – and that’s okay! You must wait for your doctor to give you the thumbs up when it comes to exercising once more, but here are some of the things that you could be doing to feel great within yourself again.

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1. Go Slowly. It’s not a good idea to jump straight into a workout routine once you have a baby. Make sure that you have the right training equipment and are well-equipped to take on exercise, but exercising too hard before 6 weeks can cause you internal damage. Remember, you’ve had a child stretch your uterus to epic proportions. Your organs have shifted back down and your body is bruised. You need to take a moment and go slowly before you do yourself some internal damage. Gentle stretches and a walk is enough to get you started!
2. Consider Lochia. Lochia – the postpartum bleeding you will experience after birth – is indicative of the wound created by the placenta. You can move gently, but while you are still experiencing postpartum bleeding, you need to go easy. In fact, you should wait for it to stop. The body needs time to heal and you need to let it do so in its own time. 
3. Are You Breastfeeding? Yoga, walking and pilates should be the extent of your exercise if you are breastfeeding. Gentle stretching and keeping your heart rate up with brisk walking is going to stop you from losing too much weight while you feed, which is what you want. You need calories, and you need to let your baby burn them off you through feeding as much as possible.
4. Pelvic Floor Exercise. The one exercise with which you should be concerned is your pelvic floor exercises. These will ensure that you avoid prolapse and keep your body healing well. You want to restrengthen all of your muscles; the vagina included.
5. Think About Your Abdomen. Many women experience diastasis recti when they have a baby. That is where the abdominal muscles are pulled apart and don’t quite draw back together. When it’s too severe, you may need to work with a physiotherapist to get your muscles back to their best shape. 

Get Off Social Media. Lastly, the pressure on women to “snap back” comes from social media much of the time. Get off your phone and worry about your own body and what you are doing for yourself. Putting pressure on yourself to do anymore than that will be too hard to cope with long-term, and your mental health comes first.