The lie women are told about 'getting your body back' after giving birth.

The day I did my first positive pregnancy test was the first day I can remember that my body didn’t feel quite like my own. 

As it happens, I was halfway through a glass of lukewarm white wine at the time. When the shock finally started to subside, I tipped the rest of it ceremoniously down the bathroom sink. That was the first decision I made on behalf of what I came to think of our "shared accommodation" - the body which had always been my house but was now, suddenly, also my son’s. 

Women understand that pregnancy and birth are physical experiences. They take over your entire body, both metaphorically and literally: there is almost nothing that we do to our bodies during pregnancy which we don’t consider as also being done to our babies in one way or another. 

While you're here watch the horoscopes as new mums. Post continues after video.

We monitor what we eat and drink, what medications we take, the beauty products we use, the way we move our bodies. For months on end, we restrict caffeine, cut out alcohol, abandon strenuous exercise, and swear off sushi. We test the limits of the stretch of our skin, the elasticity of our stomachs, the outside edges of sleeplessness.

And then, in a final gargantuan effort, we either push, or have pulled, this baby out of us, in what can only be considered the single most physical, most bodily, act on earth. 

And then – afterwards? Then I expected the physical part to be over. Without ever buying into the narrative that women need to "bounce back" to their pre-partum figures, I took it as a given that I would "get my body back" in the most literal sense: it would belong to me again, and not to anyone else.

In the months leading up to my son’s birth, I was told many things about the "fourth trimester". Over and over, I heard the same mantras: that my sleep would be disrupted, that breastfeeding might be difficult, that babies can be hard to settle, that I might get "touched out" by the ceaseless necessity of holding my baby close. 

I heard those things, but I didn’t put the whole puzzle together until he was finally in my arms: the physicality of being a mother isn’t over the moment your baby enters the world.

Listen to Mamamia's Me After you podcast, On this episode, you’ll be hearing from comedian Veronica Milsom who realised how confronting it can be when your body changes. Post continues below.

The reality of being a new mother is every bit as physical as pregnancy. It’s the bodily exhaustion of sleep deprivation, the aching arms, the swollen breasts, the knots in your shoulders, the carrying, rocking, picking up, putting down, picking up, rocking, putting down, picking up, rocking, shushing, swinging, putting down again.

Those first few months at home with your baby are sweaty, leaky, bloody and snotty. They’re heavy limbs and tossing and turning in bed and bending yourself every which way to get a latch (maybe, just maybe, if you lie upside down and the baby is on their tummy at a 45-degree angle with their right leg in the air, you can make this breastfeeding thing work?). And when you cry, in those early months, it’s a physical task too, a high-intensity interval, an exorcism.

Being a new mother is mental work, an attitude readjustment, a personality transplant, but more than anything it is a full-body workout. Forget HIIT: try the sheer effort of heaving an uncooperative pram into the boot of your car while humming a hysterical lullaby. Forget pumping iron: try the phantom weight of your baby in your arms, even when they’re in someone else’s. Forget Zumba: try the slow swaying side to side in the shower until you realise, with a dawning understanding, that you are quite literally losing your mind, that there is nobody to sway for in those precious stolen minutes. Forget marathon running: try long walks with the pram on feet you can barely feel, and still can’t really see, wearing clothes either too tight (pre-pregnancy) or too loose (maternity), and with no time or inclination to replace them. Forget yoga: try the insurmountable weight of simply balancing your head on your shoulders, which you’re pretty sure - almost certain, actually - used to be effortless, and now takes the whole strength of your neck. When you’re a new mother, tiredness isn’t something you feel but something you heave around with you, like an enormous baby bag you can never set down.

And then, as your baby grows, you become a one-woman show: all-singing, all-dancing, all-the-bloody-time. Like a champion weightlifter, your baby packs on the pounds and you muscle up to compensate. Now you’re lifting them in and out of the bath, now you’re rocking a bouncer with one hand and cooking dinner with the other, now you’re throwing them in a carrier on your front and heading out into the world to get things done. Now your once placid baby is biting, scratching, kicking, kneading at you, every waking moment of every day.

You might be losing weight or gaining it. You might look the same as you did pre-pregnancy, or entirely different. But no matter what well-meaning friends might say, you don’t "have your body back". Not yet. Maybe... not ever.

Image: Supplied.

As I write this, my first baby is 10 months old. No matter what the magazines say, my body belongs to him as much as it ever did when I was pregnant. He flops bodily across my thighs and is practicing his first tentative tip-toe steps across my stomach. He considers everything I wear, and every accessory I own, his personal playground. He grabs, pinches, sucks, pulls, and stomps. He lives in our house, but in reality he lives on me, at me, attached to me, one pudgy hand and then two reaching out to touch my thigh through the bars of his cot as he settles himself to sleep knowing that I am within reach.

There is nothing about this I would change. Being my baby’s home is the best feeling in the world. I hope I can be his safe space forever. 

But my "post-baby body"? Well, it isn’t quite the way I imagined it. The truth is, it still isn’t mine at all.

Feature Image: Supplied.