bouncing back is not real

And why you shouldn’t feel like you have to.

Somewhere along the way, we started hearing the phrase “bounce back” as if pregnancy was something to recover from, and as quickly as possible. Like once the baby’s out, the goal should be to shrink, tone, hide the evidence, and return to our “pre-baby selves” — physically, emotionally, mentally.

Let’s pause there.

Because that idea? It’s not just unrealistic.

It’s harmful.

Here’s the truth:

You don’t need to bounce back. Because you haven’t gone anywhere.

You have grown a human.

Your body has shifted, expanded, and made space for life.

You’ve stretched beyond anything you’ve ever done before — physically, emotionally, hormonally, and mentally.

And after all of that, the world wants you to “get your body back”?

You never lost it.

Your body is not a before-and-after project.

It’s not broken. It’s not less-than. It’s not a “work in progress” needing to be fixed or rushed into looking a certain way.

It’s a living record of what you’ve just done: create, nurture, and birth life.

The obsession with “bouncing back” steals the focus from where it should be — on healing, adjusting, bonding, and being. Not shrinking.

It also ignores the incredible changes happening within you:

• Rebuilding strength and trust in your body

• Learning to care for a whole new person (while learning how to care for yourself all over again)

• Processing the physical and emotional journey of birth

• Managing sleep, hormones, identity shifts, and sometimes trauma

And that takes time. Gentle time. Time where your worth is not measured by your jeans size or how “together” you look.

Let’s reframe it:

You didn’t bounce back.

You grew forward.

Into a deeper, more resilient version of yourself — one who has experienced transformation in every sense of the word.

So if you’re sitting in your postnatal body, wondering when you’ll “get back to normal,” let this be your reminder:

You are normal. You are whole. You are enough.

This is not the rebound — this is the becoming.

And if you ever need a listening ear drop me a message!

Pooja xo