Strong Again After Baby: Postpartum Fitness Stories

Inside this volume

Fifty first-person accounts describe returning to exercise after having a baby, from the first short walk to a powerlifting platform. The women include a CrossFit regular who rushed back at four weeks and paid for it, a soldier facing the Army fitness test, a night-shift nurse with a four-year-old and a newborn, a mother of twins born by planned caesarean, a mother of five at forty-one, a nineteen-year-old who had never exercised on purpose, and a cloth seller in Kumasi. They write from Utrecht and Copenhagen to Seoul, Nairobi, Cairo, Lima and Östersund, where one skied with a sled behind her. Many describe the body's surprises: a gap down the middle of the stomach, leaking at a trampoline park, a heavy feeling after high impact, hip and back pain, a wrist hurt lifting the car seat, low iron after losing blood in labour. Pelvic floor physiotherapy, Pilates, pram walks, swimming, yoga in a hallway, dancing in the living room and women-only classes appear, alongside traditions of forty days of rest or a month of confinement. Some stories cover a son's seventy-one days in neonatal intensive care, postnatal depression, a rainbow baby after loss, and gestational diabetes. Hardly any path went in a straight line, and several women were still closing a gap or managing pain when they wrote.

Who it's for

For new mothers wondering when and how to move again, for athletes planning a return to their sport, and for anyone a year or more out whose body still feels different.

Format · Instant download · PDF & EPUB · Fifty first-person accounts · PDF: 235 pages

A collection of personal testimony, offered as companion reading — not medical advice.

• 50 single-author testimonies from real people
• A short, plain-language introduction to the topic
• Editor's note, contents page, and curated resource list
• Professional interior typesetting and an original cover

Every purchase includes a print-quality PDF (best for desktop, tablet, and printing) and a reflowable EPUB (best for Kindle, Apple Books, Kobo, and phones). Files are DRM-free. You can download both instantly from the order-confirmation screen, and we email them to your inbox as well, so your books are always within reach.