TikTok Doctor Shows Why We Need To Stop Expecting People to 'Bounce Back' After Pregnancy
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A Portland OB-GYN strikes back on "bouncing back" with a visual lesson on what actually happens to the uterus during pregnancy.
Updated on August 30, 2023
Dr. Lincoln/TikTok
Thanks to the prominence of diet culture, pregnant and postpartum people are constantly inundated with advice about how to "bounce back" after pregnancy. It seems that you can't even get a minute to recover from giving birth before you start seeing ads promising to help you shed the baby weight in days or having high school acquaintances reach out to help you "lose those extra pounds" in a one-week workout group.
But here's the truth: There is no such thing as "bouncing back" after pregnancy, and no previously pregnant person should ever feel any pressure to do anything but heal after pregnancy. Not convinced? Here's what the experts say.
The Simple TikTok Video That Fights Bounce Back Culture
Jennifer Lincoln, MD, IBCLC, an OB-GYN, author, and executive director of Mayday Health sums up exactly why the notion of "bouncing back" after pregnancy can be so harmful on her TikTok account.
In the video, the Portland, Oregon doctor presents a model uterus and emphasizes how small its starting size actually is. She then holds up a different, much larger model as she explains how much the uterus has to stretch during pregnancy. And after birth? That same uterus has to do a lot of work to contract back down to pre-pregnancy shape.
Instead of "bouncing back" to your pre-pregnancy size in a matter of days, the uterus alone needs at least six weeks to physically contract back down to a pre-pregnant size. The rest of your body will need time, too.
The Importance of Education
Many of the comments on Dr. Lincon's video demonstrated how important it is for postpartum people to see what their bodies have been through in order to understand why the pressure to "bounce back" can be so harmful.
"I am 5 days postpartum