What the Selfie Doesn’t Show: The Hidden Reality of Postpartum Recovery

Ten days after the birth of my third child, I caught my reflection in the mirror as I walked by with my little nugget on my shoulder and admired my relatively flat belly. “Look at me!” I thought, “I’m bouncing back so fast!” I snapped this photo to post on Instagram later with a witty caption to show everyone how un-pregnant I was looking.

But thankfully, before I had time to post it, I realized that this photo was a lie.

It’s not that the image wasn’t real: that’s my body, in normal lounge clothes, no make-up, no hair-do, bed unmade. In many ways, this photo is a lot more real than many you see of women with their newborns. But the lie would have been in the impression my un-pregnant-looking body would give—the impression that pregnancy, labor, and delivery were all distant memories and I was back to my “old” self.

Belly or no, at ten days postpartum, I was not recovered. I had not “bounced back.” The only bouncing going on that day was the jiggling of the baby required to coax a burp from her full stomach and maybe the bounce of my head when I started to fall asleep sitting up.

Images like this one that emphasize a “pre-baby” physique tell us the lie that the woman in the picture has physically recovered from the ordeal of pregnancy and delivery. In reality, any woman days out from labor is, regardless of how she may look, engaged in a multi-faceted and incredibly taxing process of healing that will take much longer than ten days—or ten weeks, or even ten months.

Images like this one tell us the lie that how we look after giving birth is indicative of how we are doing, that the size of our bellies demonstrates the pace of our recovery.

Images like this tell us the lie that our recovery is purely physical, ignoring the immense emotional work that is required to adapt to our new lives and new selves, to recover from the trauma of delivery, which seldom goes the way we had hoped or anticipated, and to navigate the psychological and physiological changes that can make our inner worlds unrecognizable.

Images like this tell us the lie that a woman can and should “bounce back”—that an important goal for a new mother is (along with giving her baby a Pinterest-perfect childhood) to regain her pre-pregnancy body, to return to her pre-pregnant shape and size quickly and completely, get “back to her old self” or “back to normal.”

In reality, there is no going back, for a woman will never return physically or emotionally to the person she was before she grew and birthed another human. Scientists have found that fetal DNA persists in the mother’s body indefinitely after a pregnancy, so biologically speaking, she is forever altered. Emotionally the impact is even greater.

But even to the degree that we can find a new normal—our bodies healed and strengthened, a new emotional equilibrium evolved out of the chaos—even this will take far, far longer than most of us expect.

You see, it’s not a question of going back; it’s a question of finding our way forward into the new person we have become. That adventure takes time. It takes courage. And no photo can accurately indicate a woman’s progress on that perilous, miraculous journey.

A Marathon, Not a Sprint

The postpartum stage is generally understood to last anywhere from 6 weeks (how long it takes your uterus to return to its pre-pregnancy size) to 3 months (the end of the “fourth trimester”), with some sources now recognizing that it can last up to 6 months and a few even extending that to 12. But the reality is that full recovery can take much longer. Jessie Mundell, expert in pre- and post-natal exercise, shares that many of the moms she helps are still dealing with pelvic floor dysfunction even though their babies are 5 or 10 or 20 years (not weeks, not months) old. The truth is that, while some recovery happens automatically, full recovery only occurs when a mother takes the time and effort to care for herself in ways that few moms manage in the first months and years—or sometimes ever.

And yet the message is that we should be pretty much all better after a few weeks or months. Even in circles where new moms are supported with meal trains and offers of childcare and friendly visits (which is so wonderful!), this support often tapers off pretty quickly after the first month.

Yet that is in many ways when things really start to get hard. The first weeks are incredibly intense, for sure, but there’s a good bit of adrenaline that keeps you going as well as the soul-tingling wonder of having this miniature person, still “trailing clouds of glory,” suddenly present in the world next to you with those impossibly tiny toes and unbelievably soft cheeks. But eventually, that adrenaline stops flowing and the mundane reality sinks in. You realize that this is a marathon, not a sprint, only the toll on your resources so far has been total: you’re ready to cross that finish line and collapse on the grass in a sweaty heap, except that your race has just begun.

After my first baby (and to a lesser degree with all of them), it was right at about three weeks postpartum that the excitement started wearing off and the bone-deep exhaustion setting in, and I found myself looking around for my receipt to check the return policy (yes, to return the baby; in my defense, I was dealing with some postpartum depression, though I didn’t realize it at the time). On my better days, I was desperate at least for a vacation. The relentlessness of motherhood hit me like a tsunami. I needed a break, badly. And the realization that no significant break was coming anytime soon was, at times, utterly overwhelming. My body was still a wreck—bleeding, sore, swollen, and weak—and my emotions? I may have ceased suddenly crying for no apparent reason each evening (thanks, hormones) and moved past the trauma-induced insomnia of the first few nights, but a current of panic buzzed just under the surface of the innumerable diaper changes and clusterfeeds as I struggled to piece together an understanding of who I was now that my life had changed so dramatically, all while trying to figure out how to care for the mysterious and constantly evolving needs of my infant. The demands of our two bodies were slightly less acute after a few weeks of recovery, but now they had the dull, despair-inducing ache of the chronic.

Simultaneously, the meals that had been sustaining me (and for which I was so very grateful) stopped coming, and the inquiring, encouraging texts trailed off. It was just me and the baby and another bowl of cereal for dinner. The message I received was that the really hard part was now over, or was supposed to be, that I should have it figured out by now: people had moved on, and I was on my own.

Perhaps partly because of this, I found that second month to be harder than the first. You’re still dealing with many of the challenges of the early weeks, but now new ones are presenting themselves as well: you’re still sleeping for only a few hours at a time between night feedings, but now your spouse or whoever you (hopefully) had to help you is back at work, and you have to get up even when the baby is still sleeping to deal with the other children and can no longer nap; your nipples may not be cracked and bleeding anymore, but you’re dealing anew with engorgement or even mastitis as your baby starts to go longer stretches between feedings, and now you’re trying to figure out pumping or having to adjust your diet because your baby is reacting badly to something you’re eating; and then the baby starts to “wake up” from the newborn sleep-all-the-time-wherever stage and to fight sleep with heart-wrenching cries, resulting in hours of rocking and patting or emotionally draining sleep training (after countless hours of reading about all the different methods and agonizing about which one will be least likely to permanently scar your child). And then, all too soon, if you’re a mom who works outside the home, you have to navigate the myriad logistical and emotional complications of returning to work, from actually finding childcare to bottle-feeding and schedules and transportation to the nagging guilt of leaving your tiny, sweet baby with a stranger and the shock of re-entering the work world as a sleep-deprived, milk-leaking, emotional mess.

I’m coming up on 10 months postpartum with my third baby as I write this, and while many things are much easier now (she’s finally sleeping through the night, praise God!), there are also new challenges, and it is by no means easy. Most of my physical healing has been accomplished, but I still have months if not years of rehabilitation for my weakened pelvic floor and abdominal muscles in order to reduce the constant pain in my hips and back, and my life is still dominated by the needs of my sweet baby. If anything, I’m more emotionally exhausted now than I was during those first weeks.

The point is, the process of recovery is neither quick nor easy. It’s complicated. It’s slow. And it can be really damn hard.

The Hidden Reality

There are also, of course, many wonderful, precious, breath-takingly beautiful moments in those postpartum months: those first toothless grins and giggles (quite possibly the best sound in the entire world), the expression of utter contentment on her face as she nestles into your arms to nurse, the squeals of delight when she masters the art of playing peek-a-boo with the floor-length curtain and then scoots into your outstretched arms. And those should be celebrated—cherished and shared and saved for posterity.

But to share only these moments—to post only the shiny, smiling, adorable moments with some kind of sanguine caption (#blessed)—is to do a disservice to all postpartum women: to diminish the intense bodily sacrifice that we make in carrying and birthing a human and to disregard the pain, time, effort, and strength of will required for that body to heal properly. Not to mention the emotional battles most of us wage simultaneously, from “run of the mill” overwhelm to serious postpartum mood disorders (which are estimated to affect 20-25 percent of mothers).

It’s so easy to look at a picture of a slim, beatific woman holding her newborn baby, not a hair out of place, and think that she (and others like her) must have something you lack: that motherhood is easy for her. That the baby weight just melts off. That she delights in each middle-of-the-night diaper change and savors every moment with that precious, cherubic infant (who probably never cries). That she is never frustrated with or resentful of her baby, never doubts whether she is cut out for this job, never cries into a burp cloth as her baby screams inconsolably because she just can’t figure out what is wrong or how to fix it.

But that is simply false. Behind those perfect images are realities far more complex and far less picturesque. Some women certainly have it easier than others, true, but it’s not easy for anyone.

That’s part of what makes the postpartum stage so hard: most of what we go through remains unseen and therefore unknown, and so we suffer in silence, adding feelings of aloneness to the already heavy emotional burden and isolating circumstances of a new mom.

So the next time you see one of those perfect postpartum pictures and start to feel the nauseating mixture of shame and envy rising in your gut to name you a failure by comparison, remember what does not show. Remember that this picture doesn’t show the ache in her neck and shoulders from holding the baby for hours each day and craning over to make sure she latches properly each time they breastfeed, doesn’t show the painful engorgement and the burn of plugged ducts, doesn’t show her newly scabbed-over nipples or her struggles with the guilt and shame of being unable to successfully breastfeed. Remember that the picture doesn’t show the sanitary pads she has to wear every day or the adult diaper she wears to sleep because she’s tired of dealing with blood-stained sheets or maybe wears in the daytime too because she never knows when a sneeze or laugh or let-down may make her pee her pants. It doesn’t show the mess of spit-up and urine and feces that her baby seemingly constantly emits, often landing all over her, which leaves her smelling just a little “off” pretty much all the time. Remember that the photo doesn’t show the stitches she has in the tenderest of places or closing a deep wound across her belly, or her worry over how that intimate landscape may have been altered by the recent trauma. Remember that she too has struggled to find an outfit that de-emphasizes the extra squish on her belly or that fits at all, and she too has wondered if she can send her family to the pool without her so that she doesn’t have to reveal her stretchmarks, sags, and scars in a bathing suit.

Remember that—even if it doesn’t show in that lighting at that moment—she too is exhausted, that she too is often overwhelmed by the monumental task set before her and the endless barrage of decisions she alone must make for this helpless, tiny person for whom she is responsible. Remember that she too will feel needed every second of every day for months and will have to fight to detach physically and emotionally to escape those demands for even a few minutes before they come rushing back in. Remember that she too will sometimes forget how to listen to herself because the constant clamor of other voices—both sweet and shrill—drown out the voice of her heart.

Remember that the photo does not tell the whole story, not even close.

Remember that you are not alone.

Remember that you are not a ball, and you are not meant to bounce and certainly not back.

Remember that you are a human being who has survived, who is still surviving, one of the most physically and emotionally draining experiences known to (wo)man—who is adapting, transforming, becoming.

This was never supposed to be easy. Meaningful, beautiful, thrilling, rewarding yes, but not easy.

Be kind to yourself. Take care of yourself. Ask for and accept help (really. this one is so very important and so very hard sometimes). And if you can, try to laugh about it all—the postpartum stage can be utterly and hilariously absurd sometimes, if you can get some perspective.

There is no going back, sweet mama, only forward. The path may be dark, but the sun will (eventually) rise on a woman who is stronger and more beautiful than she could ever have imagined.

As a little gift, I made you this postpartum bingo game. My hope is that it can help bring some levity to those hard, hard days when all the things are going wrong. I also hope that it can remind you to prioritize some self-care (see the corners), even—especially—in the midst of those worst times.

Click here to access the full-sized image if you want to download it for printing, etc.