Postpartum Exercise: Creating Your 3rd Body
Recently, while talking with some moms in our postpartum exercise class, DTP’s Mom-Baby Fitness™ program, I realized it has been a while since I have addressed the notion of what we call “the 3rd body.” This stems from the idea that before you are pregnant, you live in your 1st body; then, while pregnant, you live in your 2nd body. After giving birth, many women feel their options are to try to get their first body back or live in what they are left with after birth. We suggest another way: create your 3rd body.
We discovered this 3rd body in working with women to gain the fitness necessary to have a healthy recovery and enjoy motherhood. What we found was that women were often becoming more fit than they had been before pregnancy, with less body fat and more muscle, yet their clothes did not fit the same. Sometimes the flaring of the ribs and/or hip bones made for a larger waist – despite less fat!
Many clients also feel a new, deeper sense of their core developed. In fact, over time they realized they actually liked this body better in some ways! After all, they came into the world with the pre-pregnancy body, but this body they actually created out of the profound experience of the physical self that pregnancy and birth provide. It extended the empowerment of birth into motherhood.
Extending this metaphor even further, of course, leads to the 4th and 5th bodies, if you have another child. Eventually, there are more bodies as women go through perimenopause, menopause, post menopause, and what I like to call the phenomenal wisdom stage. Each body represents a new opportunity to become someone strong and profound.
I figure I am to body #8 now, and in each stage I have found something incredible that I could not have at other stages. Long ago I gave up looking for my past bodies. Each one has been brilliant in some way, but in the end it had to be left behind if I was to enjoy life’s path to the fullest.
Living in the moment does require knowing where you are in time, space and energy. So, discard your past bodies with delight and move on. Use your energy to create yourself in the present.
It’s a process and you won’t fully live in your next body until you own the toll of the last one. A postpartum mom may experience hair loss, bigger feet, a mal-aligned spine, constant thirst if she is breastfeeding, exhaustion and a jelly belly. But, all these things will pass with time, if you eat right and exercise regularly. Oh, and you can bring the baby, who will have a blast meeting other babies!!
