Words by Catherine McMaster
It was early summer in Milan, Italy. After seven adventurous years in London, my husband and I moved to Italy. It felt like the right kind of creative chaos for us.
July hadn’t quite arrived, and that insidious, unbreathable, and occasionally unbearable heat that engulfs European cities during the midsummer months had not yet reared its head.
My one-year-old daughter played on the rug as I began to stretch getting ready for my online Vinyasa class. I have been practicing yoga for many years and have always found solace and comfort in the poses and process. My frenetic, busy mind rests, and I enjoy the global community that yoga has blessed me with.
I began my class and moved into a flow surprising myself when I could hold a decent plank. After giving birth twelve months earlier, my core – like so many mothers– had suffered and never fully recovered or regained its former strength. My arms lacked the muscle to hold or lower my body to the mat. But this time, I could. I smiled. I had finally regained some of the confidence and strength I’d lost postpartum. As I flowed through the class, I considered how much pressure women still place on our bodies — even when we pretend, we don’t.
By 2025, thankfully, the expectation that women must “bounce back” after having a baby has begun to fade. Yet the subtler messages lingers — the “hot girl summer” posts, the sun-soaked reels of mothers who’d seemingly shed every postpartum trace in time to enjoy a bikini-and-spritz summer.
My first European summer, three months postpartum, was far from glamorous. I struggled to find any swimwear that fit me. I was breastfeeding and my boobs defied all containment by a bikini. My stomach — which had never been flat — was untoned and bloated. I didn’t feel sexy. I didn’t feel hot. I just felt swollen.
Things started to change six months postpartum. We returned to Australia. We went for long walks, we swam, I practiced yoga on the beach, even jogged a little. I wasn’t chasing aesthetics — I just wanted to feel in tune with my body again. To feel like me.
After birth, the emotional and mental changes were immense — and so were the physical ones. For nine months, my body had adapted and transformed to carry and grow a living human being. Afterwards, my emotional and mental health felt fragile and fractious, and I never really stopped to consider how my physical self was coping. Truthfully, it wasn’t.
The traumatic birth had left me with a substantial perineal tear and scar tissue that healed slowly. I battled near constant mastitis during those first six months. The physical strain of breastfeeding shouldn’t be underestimated. But by ten months postpartum, I began to feel like my former self again — my perineal tear had healed, breastfeeding had become more regulated, and my old clothes fit. My mental health shifted too; I began to feel like me. Not the sleep-deprived, unwashed, feeding-on-demand new mother — but me.
A friend recently said how rarely we talk about the physical and emotional identity shift of motherhood — and she’s right. Motherhood is wonderful, and something many of us aspire to, but it’s not our entire identity. For 32 years, I had built a life before my daughter arrived. After her birth, that identity understandably shifted — I had brought life into the world, and I was responsible for it — but my former self didn’t vanish.
At ten months postpartum, I had finally regained a small shred of independence — and with it, a flicker of my old confidence. I went on a date night with my husband. I started my skincare routine again. When I could, I went for a morning walk alone. I began to write. I didn’t need to return to my former physical self — that would be forever changed by birth — and I was proud of what my body had endured. But I longed to reclaim some semblance of me: my ability to think clearly, to write, to engage with the world beyond the all-consuming cycle of nappies, feeds, and bedtimes. That is not selfish. No new mother should ever feel guilty for missing those vital parts of herself. As my Italian mother-in-law always reminds me, “You are a mother, but you are also a woman.”
That feeling lasted for two months.
One morning at the park as I watched my twelve-month-old play with other babies, I felt a wave of nausea. I pressed my hand to my stomach — sharp pains. My period was a few days late, nothing unusual. But the nausea was eerily familiar. I resisted the urge to gag.
On the way home, I stopped by the pharmacy and bought a test. Surely not. We weren’t even trying. I was still breastfeeding.
Back at home, I stared at the unopened test, my heart pounding. Anxiety and disbelief tumbled through me. How would I manage two under two — in a foreign country, far from my home, still living in our one-bedroom apartment? I was a stay-at-home mum, and my husband travelled often for work. Logistically, emotionally — how could I cope?
And yet, beneath the panic, another feeling crept in: excitement. Anticipation. A tender nostalgia for those first newborn moments — clasping my daughter against my chest, breathing in that sweet, milky scent, witnessing her first smile, her first steps, the first time she whispered “mama, papa.”
Positive.
A flood of emotions — elation, joy, shock, anxiety, panic. I had been so sick during my first pregnancy, and honestly, the sobering thought of enduring that again, while caring for a toddler, filled me with fear.
I circled back to anxiety around my body, my physical health. I remembered the nausea, the exhaustion, the diarrhea and endless vomiting I had endured when pregnant with my first. I felt selfish for indulging in these thoughts, but they reared and remained trapped in my brain. I had only just begun to feel strong again – now I was to undergo another physical and emotional transformation. How would my body change this time? How would I cope?
I am now halfway through my second pregnancy, and it hasn’t been easy. Navigating pregnancy with a sixteen-month-old is hard. The nausea returned, the vomiting followed, and I had to visit hospital twice with severe sickness. My mental health has been fragile, and I feel the exhaustion more acutely this time.
The joie de vivre I’d reclaimed postpartum is being tested. Yet there’s still something so magical about life growing inside of you. I never take that for granted. My belly is much bigger this time, my little girl touches it with wonder. In the evening, as we read, she likes to place her head on my swollen stomach, listening to her sister’s heartbeat.
Through the sickness, the nausea, the emotional dips, it’s these pure, simple moments that make it all worth it
As women, we possess extraordinary mental, physical, and emotional resilience — and we should never underestimate or doubt ourselves, or our fellow sisters. Our bodies are a marvel. We carry and bring life into the world; we sustain it. For nine months, our bodies stretch, adapt, and transform, cultivating a softness and a strength that no former version of ourselves could match.
When I look at my body now, I see stretch marks, sagging breasts, a soft belly — and while I sometimes feel disheartened, I’m reminded that this is the most beautiful version of me yet. I carried life. I birthed it. The female body is nothing short of miraculous, and yet we’ve been conditioned to believe that thinness, tightness, and visible muscle are the only versions of sexy.
But a woman’s ability to stretch, to grow, to expand both physically and emotionally — that is its own kind of beauty. We should be proud of our bodies in all their shifting forms and imperfections. It isn’t always easy, but we are, in every way, extraordinary.
And this summer, I’ll have two little girls by my side — and that, undoubtedly, is the hottest version of me yet.
