I Don’t Recognize Myself: Postpartum Body Image & Grief

If you've ever looked in the mirror and thought, “I just don't recognize myself,” this episode of More Than Mom with Dr. Nichelle Haynes is for you. Dr. Nichelle Haynes, a perinatal psychiatrist and mother, explores the complex realities of postpartum body image, the harmful pressure to bounce back, and the deeper identity shifts that often go unspoken in motherhood.

From hormonal fluctuations and physical changes like diastasis recti, weight redistribution, and hair loss, to the grief of not feeling at home in one’s body, this episode sheds light on how postpartum is a full-body transformation—not just a physical one, but emotional and neurological too.

Listeners will learn:

• The science behind postpartum hormone crashes and how recovery can be difficult
• How societal bounce-back expectations undermine both mental health and maternal identity
• Why postpartum body changes (even at the same weight) can feel so destabilizing
• Practical strategies for reconnecting with the body—through gentle movement, touch, and mindful self-compassion
• How mothers’ self-criticism can unintentionally shape their children’s body image

This episode offers a gentle but honest reframing of postpartum changes as transformation, not loss. Dr. Haynes invites mothers to let go of the myth of bouncing back and instead move forward—with softness, respect, and a renewed sense of self. You don't need to participate in postpartum weight loss, you need postpartum compassion and self-love.

Why Listen:
A must-listen for anyone navigating the emotional and physical aftermath of childbirth—this episode validates the grief, challenges perfectionism, and helps mothers feel seen in the bodies they’re learning to love again.

postpartum body image, bounce back culture, self-compassion, perinatal mental health, postpartum transformation, identity after birth, diastasis recti, postpartum hormone changes, mom identity, gentle motherhood

Transcript

 If you've ever looked in the mirror after birth and thought, I just don't recognize myself, this episode is for you From your body, to your brain, and to your sense of self, postpartum changes, everything. Let's explore why, how, and what it means to make peace with those changes.

  You are listening to More Than Mom with Dr. Nichelle Haynes, A podcast for women in the thick of it all, navigating the messy, beautiful work of finding themselves again in and beyond motherhood. I'm Dr. Nichelle Haynes, perinatal psychiatrist mom and your companion in this space for real, but gentle conversations about identity, mental health, and the deep transformation.

We don't talk about enough because becoming a mother changes everything. And this is your chance to be intentional about that change.

  So when my patients come to me and we're first having the conversations about that, they just don't feel like themselves, which for me is a red flag, what they usually start talking about is their physical body. And that makes sense, right? We live in our bodies. We are here  interacting with them. We see them, we clothe them, we  understand the changes that our bodies have gone through. For the most part after birthing a baby,

I wanna mention here, that this episode is for someone who has noticed changes in their body after giving birth to their baby, but it can also include. People who are not the one to birth their baby, because the physical stress, the emotional stress, the changes in lifestyle that come with adding a kiddo to your life also impact people who are not birthing people. So if you were not the one to birth your child, it's okay. A lot of these things will still apply to you.

We are in our bodies and we definitely notice that there are differences. And I think for me, the big one that came up was not really realizing that the belly that I had when I was growing my babies wasn't gonna go back. The way that it was immediately after, and I knew this, I had been in postpartum clinics, I had been there with birthing people as they had their babies, and they still looked somewhat pregnant after having their babies. I knew these things, but for some reason they just didn't seem to apply to me or something. I don't know. That was a big moment of acceptance to say, oh, my body isn't going back the way that it was. It takes time. Let's talk about some of the other things that actually happened to your body and to your brain.

There is, of course, the intense hormonal fluctuation. This is the largest hormone fluctuation you will ever experience. You go from the highest levels of estrogen and progesterone you'll ever have in your life to the same or even lower levels that you had pre-pregnancy. Yes, it is the amount of hormones that is bothersome. But if you remember pre-pregnancy, those levels of hormones weren't bothersome. It is the change in hormones that's so dramatic for our bodies and our brains, so that can lead to things like night sweats, skin changes. We can also have some relaxation of muscles because. Your body prepares for birth.

It needs to know how to relax those muscles so that it can open the pelvic floor. You can have dilation of your cervix and deliver the baby, but that doesn't necessarily only go for pelvic floor muscles. You may have changes in your abdominal muscles. You may have something called diastasis recti, which is essentially where the left side and the right side of your abs. Don't meet in the center as they used to and create  difficulties there. You can have  hernias through that area. You can have a lot of difficulties with your core and you can have hair loss. We've all seen the postpartum hair videos. I actually think they're really endearing because. We all go through it and it really sucks when you're going through it, but when you see the hair loss videos, for me, it's connecting.

But I understand how when I was going through it myself too, it's like, oh, I wish that I didn't have all these tiny little baby hairs, and they can last for a really long time. Some hair growth just takes a long time we also have of course, changes in weight because when you're growing a baby, you're supposed to gain weight. That's normal, that's expected. If you don't gain weight, there's something we might be worried about, right? Not always, but mostly. And it's really difficult to accept those changes in weight. And even if your weight gets back to pre-pregnancy weight, your body might not be shaped the way that it was before.

I think that's a big one, that you might be the same weight, but you know, you may have lost muscle mass or this area might be. I don't know, more squishy than another one or more squishy than it used to be. Or  you're carrying more here or things like that, that it might be the same number on the scale, but you can definitely tell that your body is different and that's hard for people.

Of course, also, your brain is a part of your body. We've talked about this before. I think we talked about it in episode one. It's a really important topic. You have changes in your neural networks that help you be more responsive and a better parent. It makes you a more vigilant parent, and it makes you better at bonding with your kiddo and being able to meet their needs.

So it's clear that it's not just about vanity or how your jeans fit. It's about maybe not feeling at home in your own body and that happening over a period of time while you were pregnant. And then happening  all at once at delivery. And then the changes after delivery happen slowly and almost in a way that they're worse, right?

With hair loss, night sweats, skin changes, especially if you're breastfeeding changes there too. So that can bring in. Guess what? Grief. So not only is your time, not your time, your body's not your body, or maybe it's a tool for feeding or survival, like this kind of thing that people will say like, oh, I feel like a cow. Or like, I feel like I'm just there to. Feed my kid and they don't really get to be themselves. Or they'll say things like, I just wanna have my body back. And I get it. I get it. No one prepares you for these big physiologic biologic changes that happen in your body and.

Someone who never had body image concerns prior to the postpartum period can have them. We are expected to bounce back and you know, I'm using air quotes and I'm rolling my eyes. I think it's silly. You're not failing because your body change. It's supposed to change, but again, we are given the messages that we are supposed to live in the world as if we're not a mom and be the same person that we were before.

I'm not gonna happen. You might, you know, work really hard and get to a place where your body feels very different, but you're not the same person.

So the whole point of the podcast is to help you find yourself again. So why am I doing a whole episode on body image? Because we live in our bodies. We live in a world where we are perceived and we are judged based on how we look. So if you look different, you're treated different. If. You look different. You might feel different. If you feel different, you may not feel like yourself. Many moms feel invisible. You've seen the Halloween costumes where it's someone's pretending to be a mom, so they put black circles under their eyes. They put their hair up in Dale, they put some grungy clothes on and like maybe they get a coffee cup or something like that, or a robe or something. You've seen it. It's essentially conditioning that if you're a mom, you're supposed to be. Not taking care of your body, not taking care of yourself, disconnected from yourself. That's what happens a lot of time. 

And honestly, truthfully, it's okay to wear spit up all day and not wanna get out of your pajamas.

But what I'm talking about is more. How it feels to not feel like yourself in those moments. 'cause there are times where, you know, like I said, I'm wearing spit up or  I'm dealing with pee of some kind and I don't feel disconnected from myself or I don't feel like my body is the problem. So it's not the close, that's not what I'm saying.

I'm saying just not feeling like your body is your body. We have a lot of internalized narratives about how mom should look, how moms should feel, and there's  this dichotomy of the sexy mom and the kind of like grungy mom who doesn't take care of herself, and we all have. Both of those versions of those moms inside of ourselves, but we don't have to lean into any version of ourself that doesn't feel authentic.

So your body is not just a vessel for others. You don't have to dress in any way that anyone expects you to. Your body is yours.

I think a really important thing to bring in here, and we touched a little bit on it last episode, is that when we are critical of our bodies, when we are picking at them and you know, saying, oh, I look fat, or  whatever we're saying. 

Our kiddos hear that and they internalize those messages that their body has to look a certain way, and we don't want that for them.I know you don't. I know I don't. We want them to feel loved like themselves, that any way that they are is fine. So why are we critiquing ourselves? For not looking like whatever idealized version of a mom you think is ideal when we wouldn't want that for our kids.

I wanna bring you a prompt today, just a moment of reflection.  What would  it feel like to speak to your body? With gratitude or kindness and set of criticism, what could that feel like for you?

I imagine that that brings softness, that brings a different feeling than being critical. And I wanna help you move towards that feeling.

First off, we have to let go of the idea of getting back to our pre-baby self. You're not supposed to be the person you were before you had kids. That's just how that is. That's why you're here trying to find yourself again. Because you are supposed to be different.

I want you to think about ways that you can love your body and respect it enough to take care of it. I am not talking about hitting the gym every single day. If you find joy and purpose. And some emotional benefit from working out. That is amazing. I encourage you to do that. If you are working out to change your body, I hope that you can shift the narrative into being less whatever, fat, to being more of something else. I wanna be stronger, I wanna be more resilient. I wanna be more able to run with my kiddos doing soccer drills. There's something I say to some patients, not all that resonates with them, and that is how can you love something if you don't spend time with it? If you wanna love your body, you have to spend time with it. I know that can be difficult, especially if you come. From a background does not encourage you to love your body, or if you have had trauma, I'm not talking about jumping right in.

I'm talking about mindful compassion for your body. That can look like applying lotion. As an act of self-compassion, I deserve this. I deserve to feel good in my body, and you're putting the lotion on, put it on your hands, put it on your legs, something like that. It could be as little as that.

You can, instead of doing these really intense HIIT workouts. Move more towards gentle movement, that you get to know your body, that you get to be inside of your body without aesthetic goals. Stretching is great. We all have time to stretch. You could stretch in the middle of the kitchen while you're waiting for the microwave to finish.

You could do two minutes of yoga before the end of the day. Gentle movement to spend time with your body. And another thing is changing the narrative around rest that is important for your body to rest. That is also spending time with your body if you do it mindfully. So it's creating some connection.

It's creating some emotional safety in your body. It's mindfully touching your body. Applying the lotion is a great way to  just get to know your body. It's different, but it's still something amazing. One of the reasons I went to medical school is because the body is so fascinating, we know so much about it, and yet we don't know anything at all.

We are so complex. We are so interesting, and I think there's so much opportunity to celebrate that about ourselves. It's not about trying to look a certain way. That's of course a component. We live in a world where that is prioritized and I understand that, but it's more about getting to know your body.

What do you like?

You could even take this if you have a partner, right? Try different sensations. Try different touches    like a light scratch or rubbing your. Scalp or  massaging your back. Just spend some time with your body.

As always, I want to bring you a journaling prompt.

This week's journaling prompt,

What has my body carried me through that I haven't thanked it for?
It's an optional one here. If you wanna add what is the narrative that I am carrying around how my body looks, where did I learn that?

As always with the journaling, I want you to show up. Be messy. Do it however you need to do it. Do not edit. Just let it flow. Let it out. Just write, see what comes up for you. So I know we're trying to find our identity. We're trying to adjust to the transformation. And your body has had one too. Having self-compassion for your body can help you feel better.

You deserve to feel at home in yourself, not just because you bounce back or look the same or look even different, but because you are here and that is truly incredible. You are incredible. Your body has done truly awe inspiring things.

Next week we're gonna be talking about relationship changes after a baby. Not just romantic relationships, but talk about all different types.

If this spoke to something in you, I really hope that you will share this with a friend that you will maybe leave a positive review, send the link over to somebody else. I'd be really grateful. I think it's really wonderful to grow this message and create a community where we are talking about the things that are difficult to talk about.

So thank you so much for being here. Until next time, take care of yourself.