Let me preface this post with saying I have had Hashimoto’s since I was 16, and it was managed all throughout my pregnancies. Before I had Caia, I was told “the baby weight comes right off.” I thought, okay great, I can do that. Well lucky for me, the weight did not come right off after giving birth. I remember looking at myself in the mirror after Caia was born and wondered who was this person staring back at me. I didn’t look like me at all anymore. To be honest, my new postpartum body contributed a lot to my spiral into postpartum OCD. It’s really hard to be happy when you aren’t very happy with how you look.

I watched so many people on social media/celebrities get their bikini bodies back so quickly after giving birth. I know comparing myself to others is never good, but it is hard not to when that’s all we see on the internet. After Caia was born, I put so much pressure on myself to try to lose my baby weight that I think it became counterproductive. I started walking on the treadmill within two weeks after giving birth, even though it made me bleed more. At the time, I was just desperate to feel like myself again, and this was the only way I thought I could control that. The harder I tried to lose weight, the less it would budge.

When I was around three months postpartum with Caia, someone told me that I needed to get my thyroid checked, with the intention of that comment meaning I needed to lose weight. Having someone say that to me was really hurtful. I felt so self-conscious and sad. I didn’t want to go around other people because clearly other people were noticing how far away I was to my pre-pregnancy body. Truly, I could not understand how so many other people were able to lose their baby weight, and I just could not.

Dealing with postpartum OCD symptoms kept me from being myself in so many ways. The stress I was feeling on top of the extreme guilt and anxiety that came with postpartum OCD really did not help me start looking like myself again. If anything, I think the extreme stress kept the weight on me. It wasn’t until I started therapy for postpartum OCD that I started feeling lighter and happier. The weight started coming off a little easier. By the time I found out I was pregnant with Emmi a year later, I was ten pounds away from my pre-pregnancy weight.

After Emmi was born, I decided I was not going to put any kind of pressure on myself to look “perfect” postpartum. I just grew a human for nine months, and I was breastfeeding. That would be so unjust and unkind to myself to expect that out of me. I waited the full 6 weeks after giving birth to start any physical activity, started pelvic floor therapy, and I made sure I was eating enough to sustain my milk supply. I am 13 months postpartum with Emmi, and I am nowhere near my old before babies body. As hard as that realization is sometimes, I am trying to do this the healthy way this time. So no, I do not need to get my thyroid checked.