During pregnancy, women gain anywhere from 20 to 40+ lbs, but with that there are also physiological and hormonal changes as well. Once the baby is born, hormones crash (or so it seems) and things take time to get back to normal, or the “new” normal as only another fellow mom can understand.

Over the course of 9 months, your belly grows and causes a lot of stress on your skeletal system to accommodate for the bodily changes that are made. There is a hormone called relaxin that helps the pelvic girdle to widen in preparation for child birth as well as expand the rib cage to make room for the growing baby. But relaxin is not only limited to those areas. It attacks every joint in your body; knees, elbows, ankles etc., making you hyper-mobile. For a lot of women, once the baby is born things never go back quite the same way; clothes fit differently and things are just, well, “different”.

The same can be said for feet. Women are always telling me that their feet grew after pregnancy. This is not necessarily the case. With the added weight of pregnancy flattening the arches of the feet, they rarely bounce back afterwards. So instead if trying to squeeze back into those pre-baby shoes, most women buy a half or even a whole size bigger because comfort is now a priority.

But I would have to say the most common one I here is knee and hip pain. Ahhhh the glamour of motherhood. We have to remember that gaining a large amount of weight in a relatively short period of time can wreak havoc on our bodies, similar to overweight people having aches and pains associated with extra weight load. This weight can cause wear and tear on joints and ligaments and destroy what little cartilage some women may have under their knees to start with.

But let’s not focus on the negative. While some things we can’t control, (like relaxin) weight gain during pregnancy can be managed within healthy limits with proper eating and regular exercise. As for the other stuff we’re left with; just look at it as your battle scars. It’s a small price to pay for making such beautiful children!