Is Postpartum Body Acceptance More Difficult During the Pandemic?
In this week's podcast episode, I speak with Kelly Fitzgerald Junco.
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Whenever a woman got pregnant on TV or in a movie, I feel like the joke “well, now you can eat for two!” was ever-present.
But when I got pregnant, I read in various pregnancy books that this advice wasn’t actually accurate. Instead, women are told to eat a bit more but not that much. I think there was some sort of calorie recommendation and a list of fruits and vegetables to eat more of, but I didn’t really pay attention to that in between sessions of nausea.
🎙 PANDEMIC MAMA Episode 2.03: Navigating Postpartum Body Acceptance with Kelly Fitzgerald Junco
Although I never actually “ate for two,” I did stop worrying about what I was eating during my pregnancy. I was too tired or too moody or too nauseated or too anxious or too something else to care as much as I thought I would care before pregnancy. Instead, I just kind of lived by day and ate the best food I could stomach.
My doctor, thankfully, didn’t give me any shit when I gained a bit more weight than the so-called recommendation. Even though I really didn’t stress about my weight during pregnancy, I was still a little disappointed to find that I was 20 pounds heavier than my pre-pregnancy weight after I gave birth to my son.
At the time, I remember thinking that maybe I would be one of those lucky women who dropped all the weight through breastfeeding, but that didn’t happen. I tried not to think about it.
To be honest, during those early months of dealing with learning how to be a mom, make sure to keep my baby alive, and stay safe in the first few months of the pandemic, I couldn’t deal with much else. This was spring 2020.
🎙 PANDEMIC MAMA Episode 2.03: Navigating Postpartum Body Acceptance with Kelly Fitzgerald Junco
As time went on, I kept not losing weight and kept mostly trying not to care about it. It didn’t matter for the first six months of my son’s life because I pretty much walked around the house in oversized shorts and breastfeeding tank tops.
Eventually, though, I had to face up to the fact that my body had changed. I was a bit softer all around, I weighed a bit more… and a lot of my clothes just didn’t fit.
Instead of losing weight, because I honestly didn’t have the patience to try to “count my calories” while still freaking out about the pandemic daily back in the fall of 2020, I wanted to buy some new clothes that might fit, look good, and maybe even make me feel a bit more like myself. But you know what you can’t do during a worldwide pandemic? Go to a store and try on clothes.
I know this might be a silly thing to say considering that there were certainly much, much more difficult things going on at the time (and still), but it was a frustrating part of my life as I adjusted to motherhood.
And although I eventually found clothes that fit and got a bit more comfortable in my postpartum body, the thing I realized through this experience is how this damn pandemic has made even the tiniest of things more difficult. Like clothes shopping.
In this week’s PANDEMIC MAMA podcast Episode 2.03, I talk with returning guest Kelly Fitzgerald Junco about her postpartum struggles with learning how to be an athletic mom whose body no longer looks the way it did. We discuss how CrossFit is crucial to her mental health and sobriety, the struggles of searching for daycare in. Florida, and so much more. Click here to listen!