My baby had just stopped crying. My mother and I had just called a ceasefire on one of our daily arguments, centered around the division of power over the baby and kitchen. (If you have ever had your mother temporarily move in to help you with a newborn, you know.) Exhausted and emotionally depleted, I decided to go on a run, my first attempt at cardio exercise since I had given birth to my daughter four weeks earlier.
I squeezed into my pre-pregnancy leggings and sports bra and turned on my Nike Run Club app, still frozen on the last run I had attempted on the West Side Highway in the sixth month of my pregnancy, before realizing that my protruding belly had graduated from mere nuisance to liability. I stretched. I pushed off, took a few strides, and then stopped. What were these enormous sandbags attached to my chest? Ah, yes, they were my new breasts, which, after weeks of supply-related stress, had finally filled up with enough milk to accommodate my daughter’s hefty demands. My old sports bra flattened them down to form two matching pancakes, while my leggings squeezed my postpartum belly jiggle over the top of the waistband, creating an effect resembling that of an overflowing ice cream cone. My clothes were against me, my body was against me—hell, at that moment, it felt like the whole world was against me.
As I ran through my new Los Angeles neighborhood, I vaguely wondered if the tears streaming down my face were the result of hormones, exhaustion, or self-pity. (Or, maybe, a mixture of all three.) When I got home, my daughter had woken up and was demanding to be fed immediately. I had no choice but to pull the sports bra up above my chest, thereby cutting off my blood circulation for a good 40 minutes while we played our usual game of pull-and-latch. This was my official introduction to postpartum fitness.
By the time a box of Nike (M) workout gear arrived at my doorstep two weeks later, my running skills had advanced. My mother had gone back home, and I had quickly come to realize that working out with a baby and no help meant spending the majority of your day in your workout clothes. To be precise, it looks somewhat like this: you leave the baby with your partner (who may or may not be on a Zoom call), you run, you return home and do a chore, you feed the baby, you do another chore, you put the baby down for a nap, you do yet another chore, and then maybe—maybe—you top it off with a quick minute Melissa Wood Health flow or Jillian Michaels circuit to “complete” the workout. (Don’t ask me when you shower. You don’t.) I had also come to realize that working out postpartum was even more challenging than I had anticipated: on one hand, you need to be gentle with your still-recovering body; on the other, you need to push yourself—really push yourself—just to complete a two-mile run. Throw in some sleep deprivation and hormonal changes, and each workout feels like a triathlon.