The Postpartum Pivot
From Delivery Room to Dorsal Glide
It’s World Breastfeeding Week, and there’s a lot of well-earned focus on the bond between parent and baby. But we want to talk about something that gets a lot less airtime: what nursing does to your body.
Let’s be real — breastfeeding is basically an endurance sport crossed with a posture challenge. You’re hunched over, holding a weight in one position for way too long, multiple times a day, often while running on no sleep. Your body is doing a lot of quiet, unglamorous work behind the scenes, and it deserves some attention.
What’s Actually Going On In There
Two hormones are doing most of the heavy lifting here: relaxin and estrogen. During pregnancy, they loosen your joints and ligaments to make room for delivery. Here’s the part most people don’t realize — they don’t just switch off the day you give birth. Research suggests relaxin can stay elevated for months, and in some cases up to a year postpartum, and breastfeeding tends to keep levels higher for longer.
Practically, that means your joints — especially your low back, hips, and pelvis — may still be less stable than usual for a while. Combine that with the classic “nursing hunch” (rounded shoulders, forward head, curled-in posture), and you’ve got a setup for chronic back pain, shoulder tension, and pelvic floor strain if nothing’s done about it.
Recovery isn’t just about resting — it’s about actively supporting a body that’s still recalibrating.
Don’t Skip the Fuel
Making milk takes a real metabolic toll. This isn’t the time to under-eat or skimp on nutrients. A few things worth prioritizing:
- Calcium and Vitamin D — for bone density, since it takes a hit during lactation
- Protein — for muscle repair and maintenance
- Consistent meals, not just whatever you can grab one-handed
Think of it less as a “diet” thing and more as basic infrastructure maintenance.
Three Moves You Can Actually Fit Into Your Day
No gym, no equipment, no extra time carved out of an already-slammed schedule.
1. The Counter-Stretch Right after a feeding session, stand up tall, tuck your chin slightly, and roll your shoulders back and down. Takes 30 seconds. Undoes a lot of the rounded-forward posture nursing creates.
2. Hip Flexor Release While the baby’s napping, drop into a gentle kneeling lunge and hold. Sitting a lot (which happens constantly with a newborn) tightens the hip flexors, and tight hip flexors are a common hidden driver of low back pain.
3. Diaphragmatic Breathing Slow, deep belly breaths, anytime, anywhere. It sounds almost too simple to matter, but it calms your nervous system, supports your core, and works as a genuine in-the-moment reset when things feel like too much.
And on that note — hormonal swings, sleep deprivation, and stress all raise the risk for postpartum mood and anxiety disorders. Movement won’t fix everything, but it’s a legitimate, evidence-backed buffer. Taking care of your body isn’t separate from taking care of your mental health here — it’s part of the same system.
Rebuilding Your Core the Right Way
Forget crunches for now. The priority after birth is rebuilding the deep core system — the muscles that coordinate with your breath and pelvic floor — before you go anywhere near “six-pack” territory. Most providers clear people for this kind of work around 6 weeks postpartum, but check with your own doctor first since every recovery timeline is different.
| # | Exercise | What It’s Doing | How To Do It |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Diaphragmatic (360°) Breathing | The foundation. Reconnects your brain with your deep core and pelvic floor. Also just genuinely helps with stress. | Lie on your back or sit tall. Inhale deeply, letting your ribcage expand in all directions like an umbrella opening. Exhale slowly, feeling your ribs settle and belly gently draw in. |
| 2 | Pelvic Tilts | Gently wakes up the lower abs and loosens up a low back that’s stiff from all that feeding-position sitting. | Lie on your back, knees bent, feet flat. Inhale to prep. Exhale while gently flattening your low back into the floor, tilting your hips slightly toward your ribs. Inhale to release back to neutral. |
| 3 | Heel Slides | Strengthens the deep lower abs without stressing the muscles involved in diastasis recti (ab separation). | Lie on your back, knees bent, feet flat. Do your diaphragmatic breath, engaging your core on the exhale. Keeping that engagement, slowly slide one heel out until the leg’s extended, then slide it back on the inhale. Alternate sides. |
Why start here?
These three are about stabilization and coordination first — the groundwork that needs to be in place before crunches, planks, or anything more intense makes sense. They’re generally considered safe to start once you’ve gotten clearance from your provider (commonly around 6 weeks postpartum), and they’re genuinely useful for managing back pain and diastasis recti.
