Should birth be treated as an injury?

Should birth be treated as an injury??

I recently gave a talk about training the pregnant + postpartum population at a local CrossFit gym and SUCH a great question came up.

One of the owners of the gym asked:

“is it fair to tell a new mom to treat postpartum as if its a rehab from a shoulder surgery? Because someone who got shoulder surgery would know not to just jump back into their normal exercise and instead focus on rehab. Could we say birth itself is considered an injury?”

I LOVE this – with a little tweak.

Birth itself is not an injury.

HOWEVER – during birth, your pelvic floor muscles (mainly for vaginal births) and/or your core (mainly for c-section births) definitely sustain an injury.

For that reason, treating the postpartum period as a rehab phase from injury can sometimes be sooo helpful MENTALLY for us in the athlete / CrossFit / fitness world.

We would never expect to get out of the surgery room, do nothing for 6 weeks, then expect to have full capabilities at 6 weeks postpartum without any symptoms whatsoever.

Yet that’s exactly what we’re told when it comes to having a baby.

Birth is natural – but just because it’s natural doesn’t mean it doesn’t do some tissue damage or doesn’t require focused rehab afterwards.

Hoping this mindset can help my early postpartum moms and moms-to-be!

And if you’re looking for a program to help rehab you back to full strength in the gym, my FIGR:Postpartum program will help you with just that!

There are three different starting points to cater to wherever you’re at in your own postpartum recovery journey.

So whether you’re one week postpartum or 10 years down the road, we can get you into your strongest self one day at a time!

I got you,

Katelyn