What Pregnancy Really Does to Your Body

Baby weight is just one of the ways your body changes after pregnancy. (Photo: Jose Luis Pelaez Inc/Getty Images)

Women are often inundated with images of celebrities who look amazing mere weeks after giving birth. But for most moms, that’s far from the reality of what a post-baby body looks like.

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That’s why it’s refreshing when a celebrity is honest about her own postpartum experience. Back in March, actress and straight-shooter Olivia Wilde penned an essay for Shape magazine describing how her body changed after giving birth to her son Otis. “The photos of me in this magazine have been generously constructed to show my best angles, and I assure you, good lighting has been warmly embraced,” she wrote. “The truth is, I’m a mother, and I look like one.”

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Wilde also got real about her lady parts. “First of all, you haven’t seen your vagina in months, even though it’s all her fault you’re in this situation,” she wrote. “Now that you can finally confirm that she is, in fact, still there, she isn’t the gal that you remember, and would rather you back off and give her some space (and an ice diaper) for the time being, thank you very much.”

So true. Here’s more on how your body changes after having a baby.

Your vagina may (or may not) feel different: You’ll feel super sore after a vaginal birth, particularly if you tore or needed an episiotomy, but don’t necessarily believe the rumor that your vagina will be permanently stretched out. “There is a myth that once you have a baby, you can ‘drive a Mack truck through your vagina,’” Hilda Hutcherson, MD, professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Columbia University and author of What Your Mother Never Told You About Sex, tells Yahoo Parenting. “Or that it will never be the same size again or that it won’t give you pleasure. Having a vaginal birth is not going to destroy your vagina. Your vagina will bounce back.” That said, if your vagina feels different, Kegel exercises (repeatedly squeezing the pelvic floor muscles that control the flow of urine), can help tighten things up.

Sex will hurt like hell at first: Your obstetrician may give you the green light to have sex 6 weeks after giving birth (the amount of time generally needed to allow the cervix to close, tears to heal, and postpartum bleeding to stop) but that doesn’t mean your vagina is ready. Nearly 9 out of 10 women find that having sex for the first time after childbirth hurts, even if it’s months later, according to a 2015 study published in BJOG: An International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology. And women who had C-sections aren’t off the hook — the study found that both groups of moms still experience painful intercourse at 18 months postpartum.

Blame it on fluctuating hormones, especially if you’re breastfeeding. “When you’re nursing, a drop in estrogen makes your vagina so dry that it feels like someone is sticking a knife into you during sex,” Shieva Ghofrany, an OB-GYN at Coastal Obstetrics and Gynecology in Stamford, Connecticut, tells Yahoo Parenting. Bottom line: Don’t rush sex and when you’re ready, use a thick, silicone-based lubricant.

You’ll pee on yourself: Don’t be surprised if you ruin a few pairs of underwear. “When you cough, laugh, or sneeze, you may pee on yourself,” says Ghofrany. That’s because both the pressure of carrying a baby, as well as labor and a vaginal birth, can weaken pelvic floor muscles. The issue usually resolves itself once the muscles have healed, but Kegel exercises can help you gain better control.

Your stomach will be squishy for a while — or forever: Unless you won the genetic lottery by having elastic skin that snaps back into place (and if you do, please don’t tell the rest of us), most women find that their stomach is softer, squishier, and has looser, lumpier skin than before. “It’s easy to understand why, when you think about how much those muscles stretch in order to accommodate a growing uterus and baby,” says Hutcherson. “Your stomach is never going to be quite the same.” Maintaining a healthy weight and strengthening stomach muscles before, during, and after pregnancy (with your doctor’s OK) can help some, but not all women.

Your breasts may deflate like leaky balloons: When you’re pregnant and nursing, breasts become engorged from the milk, but eventually, “that breast tissue atrophies and shrinks and you get floppy, deflated breasts, sometimes with stretch marks,” notes Ghofrany.

Your feet will expand: You may have to part ways with your favorite shoes. During pregnancy, ligaments throughout your body, including your feet, relax. This causes your feet to spread and may force you to go up one or two shoe sizes — and stay that way. “I have shoes that I’ve hung onto for years and now my daughter is getting them — I’ll never wear them,” says Hutcherson.

Whatever changes your body experiences post-pregnancy, the hardest challenge may be accepting yourself as is. Actress Kate Winslet keeps things in perspective. “I so didn’t want to be one of those ‘Oh wow, she’s back in shape after 12 weeks!’ women,” she told Harper’s Bazaar UK in February. “…My body will never go back to what it was, and I wouldn’t expect it to after three babies. To my mind, life is just too short to be spending time focusing on things like that. I want to keep my health and my sanity and be well and feel happy.”

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