I Daydreamed About My Fitness Journey After A Natural Birth But Ended Up With A Caesarean
At 40 weeks pregnant I started daydreaming about how I was going to work really hard after birth to get rid of all my baby weight. The thought that my stomach would be big for a while after birth haunted me at night, but I kept reminding myself that “I can do this”.
I had no idea a caesarean awaited me at the hospital. I went into labour as planned, completely high on gas and air. Eight centimetres dilated with only two centimetres to go. Suddenly my water broke and everything changed. My baby had pooped inside me and was very stressed. I was told a caesarean would be needed to get my baby out. This wasn’t part of my plan but how could I possibly contest when I was desperate to see my baby’s face.
After half an hour the caesarean was complete and my baby was in my arms. But hold on, I looked down and saw my stomach perfectly shaped as if my baby was still inside me. And so, my quest began, I spoke to every nurse on duty asking about how to quickly heal and begin exercising again. Some of the responses were quite annoying, one said “you must not lift anything or do anything as your body needs rest for the next six to eight weeks”. I thought to myself “this lady has no idea that I cannot sit still for more than 5 minutes, better still, she’s hardly in shape so I cannot take her seriously”. After gathering all the information, I told myself that I’d be back to normal in no time.
The next day I was discharged home. The first thing I did was cook myself some lentils to prove to my husband that I was “super woman”. However, reality hit me very quickly when I climbed the stairs and felt pain. For the next two weeks I took care of my daughter to keep active and rested whenever I feel pain. By the end of week two I noticed that my stomach had reduced significantly and I was no longer in pain. Could this be because I drunk two cups of peppermint tea every day? I couldn’t help but smile inside knowing that my recovery process had begun. My health visitors were shocked at how quickly I had recovered and explained that it was due to my history of exercising regularly before getting pregnant.
Deep down I know that staying active for short periods really aided my healing process. I was cleared by my Doctor to begin exercising at two months postpartum. I did light skipping for a few weeks then slowly started doing HITT workouts. In January I decided to work out for 45-60 minutes from Monday to Thursday. It’s nearly six months since my fitness journey started and today my body is back to normal.
