In most of our eyes, pregnancy is about the bump. We are of course not referring to parenthood through today’s article, but more about the concept of how your body physically goes through changes.
Unfortunately, the bump is just the tip of the iceberg. There are a whole host of changes that will happen to your body during this period – some which are more renowned than others. To rest a few fears, not all of these changes are bad either, some are actually quite positive !
However, to highlight just what happens to your body during this period, we have penned today’s article. Let’s now look at some of the primary ways in which your body will change after you give birth.
You will start to lose your hair
Remember we just touched on some of the benefits that happen to your body during pregnancy? Well, in a funny sort of way, this first point links very well.
When you are pregnant, you actually lose less hair than you normally would. Ultimately, the hair on your head is thicker than ever before – and this is music to a lot of women’s ears.
However, in the postpartum stage, normality returns. It means that you will be losing this additional hair – potentially for the first six months.
After that, things start to calm down again, but if you do notice that your hair is starting to drop there’s a very good reason for it.
Your breasts will sag
This is one of those changes that a lot of women fear the most. After you give birth, your breasts change shape as they start to become full of milk.
Over time, this shape starts to reduce though. Your skin had to stretch to accommodate these “fuller breasts”, but this means that when they do return to a normal shape they will have sagged much more. This is a reason why breast lift surgery is so common amongst new moms.
You suffer with back pain
Something else that a lot of new moms struggle with is back pain. Again, there is a completely logical reason for this and it relates to your abdomen muscles. These will have weakened during pregnancy, meaning that your body tends to put more weight on your back to compensate.
Ultimately, for as long as your ab muscles take time to strengthen, this back pain is going to continue. Generally speaking, this will last for around six weeks, although there are some exercises which can speed up the process.
You will start to sweat a lot at night
This final side effect isn’t necessarily going to affect all new moms, but it’s still quite common. During pregnancy, it won’t come as a surprise to hear that your body stored a lot of additional fluids.
Now that you have entered the postpartum stage, it somehow needs to rid itself of these fluids. This is where sweating enters the picture and a lot of new parents find that they tend to sweat the most at night.