Hayley’s Story

I’ve always loved moving my body and I’ve tried many different types of exercise over the years. Also, being a hairdresser and on my feet a lot, I’ve found the best way to keep good posture and prevent any body pain is to keep my body strong and moving.

So when I fell pregnant with my first daughter, I thought yep I’ll keep exercising throughout to stay moving, stay healthy and keep my strength. But morning sickness had other plans for me.
I couldn’t eat much, or very healthily, let alone muster up the strength to train. Mild walks now and then were all I could manage. So when I did start to finally feel better I was too scared to get back into any exercise as I didn’t want to shock my body.

Because I slowly lost my strength throughout my pregnancy and getting heavier as the baby grew, my posture and being on my feet full time at work resulted in a lot of back, hip and neck pain.

I had my baby via c section, which I knew would be a hard recovery, but that plus my daughter being born with hip dysplasia and in a full body brace at 5 days old, breastfeeding struggles and learning to be a Mother for the first time I struggled mentally.

After I started to physically feel better and move more, we decided to put my daughter on formula full time due to her losing weight, my low supply and also for my mental health. This took a while for me to get through the mum guilt of not being able to feed her myself, but I knew she needed to be fed and that was what was best for her.

I found it quite hard not ‘bouncing back’ as quick as I thought I would. I struggled with the way that I felt about my body, the extra kilos I’d put on and the feeling that I’d lost myself and didn’t really know who my new mum self was. I had to keep reminding myself that I grew a beautiful little human and that my body kept her safe for 9 months.

I managed to do some small workouts at home and lost a little bit of weight so I thought I was doing okay.
But at 7 months post partum, when I returned to work is when the pain returned as my posture was shot from all of the above.

I decided to go to a physio to get some help and after going regularly for months and doing exercises at home, I decided to start up some strength training with him once a week.

He told me due to losing all my muscle tone, my whole pregnancy on my feet, then having a c section, my muscles were only strong in some areas and others so weak that my body was trying to make up for it therefore pain was occurring.

I was 10 months post partum when I started to train with my physio, and it was so hard at first but I started to notice a huge difference within about 6 weeks and the pain got less and less and I got stronger and stronger!

Fast forward 7 months, and I fell pregnant with our second daughter. I was still doing my weekly strength training with my physio, and told him I really wanted to continue throughout my pregnancy this time round.
Although I was even sicker with my second pregnancy in the first trimester, I pushed through and kept up my weekly training with him.
I trained throughout my whole pregnancy up until a week before I had my second daughter. I also gained less weight, but I also put that down to chasing a toddler.

I had to have another c section with her and I was nervous coming out of it knowing how my last post partum experience was.
I unfortunately couldn’t breastfeed again, the mum guilt was still there, but I was able to push past it a little easier knowing how much my eldest thrived after being fed properly and I knew it was what was best for her.

I was and am a lot more ‘go with the flow’ second time around. I wasn’t so hard on myself which was a much better experience mentally.

I recovered really well physically and started back with slow strength training with my physio 8 weeks after having my baby.

My second daughter is now almost 8 months old and I’m still training with my physio once a week. I feel just as strong as I was before I fell pregnant with my second which I was completely shocked at my muscle memory and how my strength was still there.
Although I may be a bit heavier than I was back then, I still remind myself that my body grew my two beautiful girls.

My two pregnancy and post partum experiences were so different- physically and mentally, but they were both still hard in their own ways.
Being a Mum is the best job in the world, but it’s a tough gig in so many ways and we need to be more real and talk about our post partum experiences.

Not only to help ourselves, but to help others too.

-Hayley