I'm Trapped in my Postpartum Body | Postpartum Recovery, Hormones, & Body Image
Tell Me I'm a Good Mom with Lo Bosworth NataleShow Notes
I'm 8 weeks postpartum and I'm not okay. Not in a crisis — but not in the version of this that gets posted online either. I'm in the messy, unglamorous, nobody-talks-about-this middle of it. And I wanted to put it on record, in real time, because I genuinely could not find content that showed me what this actually looks like when you're living it.
I have a retained placenta. A large ovarian cyst. Bleeding that won't stop. Hormones so destabilizing they feel, I'm not exaggerating, like a psychedelic experience. And on top of all of that, a body I don't recognize, clothes that don't fit, and a version of myself I'm still trying to locate somewhere underneath all of it.
The six-week appointment comes and goes and the world acts like that's the end of the story. It is not the end of the story. For a lot of us it's barely the beginning of understanding what just happened to our bodies and who we are now inside them.
I made this episode because I was desperate for it and it didn't exist. Nobody shows you this part. The books don't cover it. The instagram posts skip it. The doctors send you home with almost nothing. I have nearly 900,000 followers and when I asked for postpartum expert recommendations I got four responses. Four.
Here's what I want you to know: the discomfort is not a sign that something is wrong with you. It is a side effect of what your body just did. The hormonal chaos, the physical recovery, the identity shift, the grief, the joy, the confusion of feeling all of it at once. This is postpartum. Very few women get to skip it. And because almost nobody talks about it honestly, so many of us move through it thinking we're alone or behind or broken. We are not.
I'm sharing this because I think new moms deserve more than a six-week checkup and a pamphlet. You deserve to see what this actually looks like in real time, so that when you're in it, you feel less alone and more supported. I know I'm going to be okay. I really do. But right now I'm in it, and I want you to know that it is okay to be deeply uncomfortable. You are allowed to struggle. You are allowed to not have it together. That is not failure. That is postpartum.
You are a good mom.
Tell Me I'm a Good Mom — new episodes every Wednesday hosted by Lo Bosworth Natale — first time mom and CEO of Love Wellness — 📺 Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/@lobosworth 📖 Newsletter: https://substack.com/@lobosworth 🛍️ Love Wellness: https://lovewellness.com 📱 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lobosworth 🎵 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lobosworth — Tell Me I'm a Good Mom is part of the Dear Media podcast network.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
More from Tell Me I'm a Good Mom with Lo Bosworth Natale
This week, I’m joined by my friend, chef and fellow mom Sophia Roe, because feeding your baby somehow comes with more homework than feeding yourself ever did.
This week, I’m joined by Tiffani Thiessen for a conversation about mom intuition, raising teenagers, and a question I’ve been wanting to ask: are all moms actually witches?
This week, it’s just me—and we have a lot to catch up on. I just turned 40, Love Wellness is turning 10, and I’ve been a mom for almost a year. So I wanted to make a little time capsule of how I got here, what I’m proud of, and what I’m still figuring out.
Does having four kids make you feel like you finally know what you’re doing? According to Sarah Wright Olsen: absolutely not. Sarah is an actress, author, co-host of The Mother Daze podcast, and mom of four. I’m still in my first year of motherhood, so I had questions. We talk about the postpartum anxiety she didn’t recognize with her first baby, why the child who made her feel like an amazing parent turned out to be naturally chill, and what changes when baby number two arrives. I also tell her about sobbing on my first trip away from Nelle—which leads us to her new children’s book, When I Am Not With You, and a little reminder I think parents need just as much as kids do.
Who teaches us what to do when we know something is wrong with our baby, but we don’t know what? When Nelle was struggling, figuring out that she had cow’s milk protein allergy (CMPA)—and then finding the formula that finally gave her relief—felt like jumping through hoop after hoop while questioning myself the entire time. In this episode, I sit down with pediatrician Dr. Michael Milobsky to talk about CMPA, how it can look like colic, the formula options available, and how parents can advocate for answers when their baby is uncomfortable. We also talk about our own experience with Nelle, why Neocate ultimately worked for her, and what I wish I’d known when we were in the thick of it.