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I love growing my family. I am deeply grateful that I can get pregnant, carry my own children and experience birth. I know that privilege. But gratitude doesn't cancel out the physical and emotional cost of pregnancy and postpartum, especially for women. 

My husband loves me. He tells me he supports my body and appreciates everything it does. And yet, after giving birth, I still feel insecure living inside it. 

After my first baby, there was a kind of naivety. I didn't know what postpartum would really feel like. And once I lived it, I realised how foreign my own body felt. Suddenly, nothing looked, felt, or functioned the same. 

My nipples were sore and unfamiliar. My breasts were huge, heavy, and permanently needed by someone else. My stomach was soft and squishy, carrying extra weight, I couldn't shift, while slowly trying to build strength back up.

Then came the hair loss, the stretch marks — even in places I didn't know stretch marks could appear — the exhaustion, mood swings, the total depletion of energy. And suddenly I felt too tired to bring my personality to life. Like a zombie. 

I felt two things at once: an enormous respect for my body for what it had done, and an equally enormous insecurity every time I looked at it. 

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Yes, eventually things ease. You're allowed to exercise again. Breastfeeding demands lessen once solids are introduced. Your breasts slowly reduce in size. You start to feel more like yourself. Extra weight starts to fall off (slowly!), but some things don't go back.

Stretch marks fade, but they don't disappear. Breasts don't sit where they once did. Pre-baby boobs and post-breastfeeding boobs are simply not the same. 

And I know my husband notices. How could he not? 

That realisation brings a strange mix of loneliness, fear, and guilt, guilt for even having these thoughts about my own body. For God's sake, I brought life into the world, it does all of this for me, and I still have the audacity to have negative self-talk. 

For 12 to 18 months, my body felt like it belonged to someone else. And while it never truly feels like my old body, I am learning to accept this new version.

In many ways, I am fitter and stronger than I ever was before my first baby. 

But there's also resentment, and I hate admitting that. My husband gets the joy and excitement of becoming a parent, while his body stays largely the same. If anything, with consistent training and his daily fasting routine, he somehow gets hotter.

Meanwhile, I feel like a blob, sacrificing my body for our family while being the only one whose physical identity fundamentally changes. 

As much as I want to write that I love my postpartum body, respect it, and am amazed by it, only two of those things are true. 

I didn't love my postpartum body. For the first 12 months, I felt uncomfortable. I barely fit into clothes twice my previous size. I lived in "grandma" breastfeeding bras that turned tight tops into saggy hammocks after feeds.

If I wore anything slightly tighter for a bit of lift, I risked mastitis (which I did get, twice!), painful lumps, or intense discomfort between feeds.

Postpartum, I lost a lot of my independence. And maybe that's where the deeper fear sits, the fear that without that independence, I'm less attractive. Less desirable. Less me. The thought that when I finally needed my husband, it would put him off. 

And to be clear: my husband is a 10/10. Truly. He's supportive, kind, and loving. And somehow, every time I finally get fit again — I end up pregnant with another baby.

Please don't read this as ungrateful. I am endlessly thankful for healthy pregnancies and births. But I think we can all admit that postpartum doesn't exactly make you feel sexy or flattering, and all of your focus is on your tiny humans. 

What scares me most about doing it all again, is the fear that it will be harder to 'bounce back' the second time. Breasts that have already stretched and deflated will feel even more defeated after another round. 

My husband always says confidence is what he finds sexiest. But how do you summon confidence when you don't feel it on the inside? When you're breastfeeding on demand, sleep-deprived, covered in baby vomit, forgetting to brush your hair, and on some days, even your teeth? 

One thing that truly helped me was carving out a small pocket of 'me' time every day. With a newborn, the goal has to be realistic, nothing elaborate, nothing time-consuming.

For me, it was a shower at night, completely alone. No baby to worry about, no rushing. Just warm water, a quiet moment to process the day, and time to take care of my body.

It sounds small, but that time mattered. It gave me space to breathe, reset, and gently wash away the heaviness of the day. 

I still remember one moment clearly. When my baby was 13 months old, my in-laws looked after him while my husband and I went to the races. I'd finally dressed up for the first time in months. As I arrived, my mother-in-law said, "Oh, now I remember why he married you — you actually can still look good." 

It was meant lightly. But it landed heavily. It made me wonder: if he fell in love with how I looked then, what happens when that version fades? What happens when you don't recognise yourself anymore? At that moment, I realised that people had noticed how different I looked during the postpartum period, and that realisation didn't sit well with me.

If anything, comments like that have only made me more anxious the second time around, more aware of how vulnerable that season can feel. 

Or comments from friends and acquaintances who have never had children themselves and somehow feel the most entitled to judge. I remember one friend asking me, "Aren't you supposed to lose weight when you're breastfeeding?" 

There's an unrealistic expectation, often from men, but a lot of women too, that women should just go back to who they were before pregnancy. And yes, some women do. I envy them. But many of them have enormous help, don't breastfeed, or are paid to be in shape; fitness influencers, athletes, professionals whose bodies are their job.

For most women, it's just not realistic. 

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My husband fell in love with an independent, ambitious woman who took pride in her appearance and never skipped basic self-care. During pregnancy and postpartum, those things take a back seat. And sometimes I fear that my worth drops, that I'm no longer the version he chose.

So yes, I want another baby. But I'm scared my husband won't be attracted to me postpartum. That fear makes change feel unsafe. It makes me anxious and self-conscious. 

I hope we can all be a little more honest and a lot more compassionate towards women navigating body changes through pregnancy, but especially postpartum. Because loving your children and struggling with your body can exist at the same time. And neither cancels the other out. 

So if you're having these thoughts about your postpartum body, and you will, especially on the days you're running on broken sleep, cold coffee and a nervous system hanging by a thread, please know this: this is a season, not your forever.

You have your whole life to feel strong, to move your body in ways that feel good, to 'bounce forward' in your own time. 

Right now, your body is doing exactly what it needs to do, to keep another human alive. When the baby becomes less reliant on you, when breastfeeding ends, when you're healed enough to exercise, eat normally and think clearly again, strength and confidence can often come in a new, deeper way. Until then, be gentle with yourself. 

You are not failing, you are becoming. And this version of you deserves just as much kindness as the woman you were before.

Feature Image: Getty.