Pregnancy and Body Image

This episode explores the 5 main body image challenges that women often face during their pregnancy and ways that they can overcome them. Pregnancy is hard, but it can also be an amazing opportunity for changing the way you see yourself.

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Rebecca Sigala 0:00

Hello, beautiful, gorgeous, sexy people. This is the 25th episode of the Body Image Revolution. Can you believe it? I think we can safely say that this is a thing. I am so freaking grateful for all of you for these last six months or so that the podcast has been out, and I've been able to get my message out to the world in a very special way, and it's an honor to lead this revolution of women, who are really ready to love themselves, even though it's really fucking hard. Today we're going to talk about a very important and relevant topic for a lot of women. This episode is going to be like a mini masterclass for body image and pregnancy. If you're not yet pregnant or you're trying to get pregnant, or you can't physically have children, or you may never have children, I want you to know that I see you and I'm sending all my love and strength to you on your journeys. If this topic is not super triggering for you, I want to invite you all to come and continue on with us, as I really believe this can be beneficial for anyone and everyone, even men, to firstly understand what a significant impact that pregnancy can have on a woman's body image. But also you guys can all gain tools here too, because a lot of this work is going to apply to any type of quick physical body change that someone might go through. So like an illness or injuries or going through a surgery or anything like that. So personally, I've been pregnant three times. The first two were very close together. I was 21 when I had my daughter, and then just a few years later, I had my son at 23. The last one, our baby Maayan, well, I guess she's not really a baby anymore. She was born almost four years ago and I was 30 years old then. So each of these were very different experiences, especially as my sense of self and my identity has shifted over the years. The last one was much more empowering because of the healing journey I'm on and all of the internal work that I've done. I really felt like I knew myself so much better. I advocated for myself. I created boundaries when it was necessary, and it was really cool because I was able to see my body in an entirely different way than I had when I was pregnant with my son seven years before. I'm not one of those women who are like, oh my gosh, I love being pregnant. I really don't love it. But there is so many beautiful and magical things that can come within pregnancy and birth and come out of it, you know, even months or years later. And I do wanna say that with each birth I really feel like I birthed a new me. And that sounds kind of cheesy, but it is really that identity work that I did that internal work and I began to see pregnancy as an opportunity to redefine myself and my business and my style, like literally everything, and use that time for personal growth and just being who I want to be. But of course, even with all that beauty and growth and good stuff that comes with carrying a child for 10 months, pregnancy is really fucking hard. I personally had serious nausea for like, I don't know, three to five months, and there were definitely moments that I felt like I wanted to die. It was so depressing and isolating, and that really shows how hard it is emotionally, not just physically, especially when you're not able to function or live in the way that you want to, or if you're already struggling with mental health things like depression and anxiety, which I had, and then this just kind of triggers it even more. Then on top of all of those symptoms that you may be experiencing, your body is changing rapidly and it's often really hard for our mind to keep up with all the changes. Something that I feel like I can relate that to is like going through puberty and our bodies are changing the fastest that they ever have, or at least, you know, in the way that we relate to it and it's hard because our identity is changing. When we're in puberty, we're like going from a kid to like almost being a woman in a way. And then when we're in our pregnancy and then we're gonna give birth, we've never been a mom before. We're single or we're married without kids and we're going from no kids to being a mother for the first time, or you're even just going from two to three kids, or maybe you're finally getting pregnant after many years of infertility. Whatever it is, whatever your story is, you know that your life is about to change and you are changing physically and emotionally, and you're getting ready to shift into that new reality. It can be complicated at times. I see body image challenges during pregnancy being broken into five categories, and some of them I already mentioned here. So, number one, your body is growing and changing rapidly. Number two, you might be feeling sick. Number three, the concept of gaining weight and the societal view of that. Number four, our relationship with food. Number five, fear and anxiety about the future. So I'm gonna go through each thing and share what the challenge is, like the deeper challenge underneath it, and ways that we can start to overcome it. So number one, your body growing and changing. This is gonna come up on the deeper level that I mentioned before with shifting into a new identity. You might have to change your mindset or even your lifestyle as you go into this next stage of your life. And so that's a big change. But other ways that it can present as a challenge is just seeing the numbers go up on a scale from one day to the next, or struggling to find clothing that you're comfortable with and feels aligned with your personal style. Let's talk about the scale first. So with the scale, my best recommendation, which I did a few years ago, is throw out your fucking scale. And I know that's gonna be hard for some of you, but I do have to throw it out there cuz really that's my best recommendation. But if you're not quite there yet, if the numbers are something that you worry about or you feel like you need to keep track of, wait until you go to the doctor's checkups and do it there. I don't see any reason that you'd need to weigh yourself frequently during pregnancy. And if it's triggering for you or making you feel badly about yourself, just chuck it. And if you feel like you can't wait for the doctor's checkups, at least try to weigh yourself less. So the other thing I mentioned was clothing, and this is where we need to actually invest in ourselves. When I was younger, in my first two pregnancies, we had absolutely no money to buy new clothing. And even for this last birth, I didn't have the ability to like really go out and buy myself a whole new wardrobe. But if you're able to swing it, girl, you deserve it. Get all the maternity clothing you can get. Have fun with it. Embrace your style and definitely find things that are high quality and feel really comfortable. If you're in a more challenging financial place like I was, that doesn't mean that you have to sacrifice feeling good in or about your body. And this goes for everyone pregnant or not. Personally, I actually really enjoy thrift shopping. Or maybe I just got used to it over the years, but I really do love it. And you can find so many cool things and have the opportunity to get creative with your style. To this day, I'm still up for a bag of clothing that my friends are giving away. And if that's not something that's already established in your community, you could plan your own clothing swap. Just like invite a bunch of friends and tell them to bring their maternity clothing and serve wine and cheese and just like share the love. It's so much fun. I was really grateful to one of my neighbors for offering me two humongous bags of beautiful maternity clothing that I wore all of my last pregnancy. Having such nice quality and comfortable clothing that felt like me really made all the difference. It really sucks not to have anything to wear and feeling like you're stuck without options. We've gotta be resourceful and make that shit happen because we are worth it. Okay, so now to go a little bit deeper, we'll talk about the identity shifts and this kind of work can be really helpful to work on with a coach. You can come join us in The New Sexy next round. Seriously, we do a lot of mindset work to help women work towards their future goals and the vision of their future selves. And what's even more important than getting to that vision is actually letting go of the timeline for that. It might take a year, it might take two years, it might take five years, but that's less important than embracing the process and embracing the woman that you become when you pursue your deepest desires. You level up. It is amazing to witness in someone else, and it's so profound as well when you witness that in yourself. And also, I've just gotta say this, motherhood doesn't mean that you need to be less sexy or less fun or less ambitious. What I would suggest is that you make a decision to yourself right now. Like literally right now that you're always going to be the priority, not just one of the priorities, the priority. And if you're not the priority, no one's going to even get the best version of you. They'll get the tired and burnt out version of you and you'll feel that way. And one day you might wake up and be like, who the fuck am I? This is actually a really cool opportunity. Take your pregnancy and double down on who you are, what you love and continue to invest in yourself. Really, if you're not already doing that, now is a really good and crucial time. So the second thing I mentioned, the second challenge is feeling sick. Oh my God, you guys, anytime I get nauseous, like if I'm in a car or for whatever reason, I'm feeling a little bit nauseous, I'm like, Nope, I'm never getting pregnant again. It's literally the worst feeling ever. And I'm usually sick, like I said, for the first three to five months, and it starts to get better, like three and a half to four months maybe. And I cannot imagine having that condition. I think it's HG, I can't pronounce the full version of it. When you're feeling sick, your entire pregnancy, it just sounds so awful. And if you're going through that, babe, I'm so sorry. You are a rockstar and I cannot wait for you to give birth. When we don't feel physically good in our bodies, it's really, really hard to feel good about our bodies. There is such a strong mind and body connection, so I know that actually goes both ways from the mind to the body and the body to the mind. Generally, you are more likely to be okay with what you see when you look in the mirror. If you are feeling healthy, if you don't have aches and pains or other kinds of Illnesses that prevent you from feeling physically comfortable. I've worked with women who have chronic pain or other illnesses, and they often tell me something similar, maybe in different ways, and the feeling is, is that their body betrayed them. So it's like if you're not feeling good in your body and you have these feelings of resentment or anger or sadness or detachment towards your body, and then you look in the mirror and you have all those emotions. You're looking at your physical body. It doesn't actually give so much room for you to see and appreciate the things that you love, and that just makes so much sense. Same thing with being sick during pregnancy. Feeling so sick for so long can really take a toll on your mental health. I am a huge advocate for mental health, as you might have noticed, and during this time when you're pregnant, it's amazing to be able to create a support team for yourself. Therapist, coach, psychologist, psychiatrist, non-conventional healers. And what I'm gonna say right now is that I truly believe that everybody, literally, everybody can benefit from therapy. Of course, with the right therapist, that's a really important part of it, but there is so much to gain from that kind of container. Pregnancy is not a time to like take a break with all those things or push them off. We need to create a support team for ourselves. There is so much strength and self-awareness in the ability to create that support team, to ask for help, to know what you want and what you need, and be resourceful and get it. If you don't know where to start, feel free to reach out to me, especially if you're in Israel. I can offer you some resources to find a therapist or other mental health professionals. So summing that up, if you're in pregnancy and you're feeling very sick, this is a great time for you to lean into that support team and even create one if necessary. I would also lean into self-care, like a super high level of it, and just ditch the guilt. Like just let it go completely. You are worthy and you deserve your own love. And when you're feeling a little bit better, even if it's just for like, you know, an hour or two or a day, try to incorporate pleasure, whether it's with your partner or with yourself. Orgasms are so good for you. I promise you that. Here are some thoughts that I have that you might want to borrow. If you're sick and tired and pregnant. This is not going to last forever. My worth does not equal how productive I am, how much money I make, or how clean my house is. My body is designed for this. I am badass and I will get through this, and also it's really okay not to be okay. There's a lot here guys. There's a lot of body image stuff that has the potential to come up during pregnancy, and there's even so much more that I can go into beyond this podcast episode, but I really just want you guys to get the gist of it and give you guys tools and ways to start to implement these things right away if and when you need them. And I do wanna mention that every woman experiences pregnancy differently. So if you're not pregnant yet, don't get scared or freaked out. Everybody is so different. And sometimes women even feel better about their body during pregnancy than other times. But what I'm doing here is just sharing things that have the potential to show up, and I really wanna normalize that for all of you. It's so normal and it makes so much sense. So the third struggle I wanna bring up is, this concept of gaining weight, and you might think, well, of course you're pregnant. Of course you should gain weight. But it's not that simple for people who have a complicated relationship with that or. Just most women, because we've been told by diet culture that thin is beautiful, thin people are smarter, better, healthier, more worthy, and it doesn't necessarily just switch when we get pregnant. And when we start to gain weight during pregnancy, sometimes people are really jarred by it, and to make matters worse for them, they can't control it because generally you're going to gain weight. So there's that element of control that is taken from us when we thought before that we could control our bodies. And so letting go of that, like really letting go of that perceived control is very, very healing. And it does take some internal work. Especially with pregnancy and for sure giving birth and being a mother, we can only control the things that we can control. And honestly, so much of life is uncertain. Embracing this surrendering and letting go really helps us be in the moment instead of always forward thinking, planning, controlling, and in this case, not listening to our bodies, and listening to the outside voices that told us that gaining weight is bad. Okay, so now here's another voice and I'm gonna say it. Gaining weight is not bad. In this specific circumstance of being pregnant, gaining weight is super normal, healthy, and supports the life of your unborn baby. Gaining weight is part of carrying a child. Part of that co-creation and miracle, that your incredible body is literally facilitating. How cool is that? And even when we're not pregnant, gaining weight or losing weight is very normal. And it doesn't necessarily mean anything about your health and it definitely does not mean anything about your worth or your beauty or your value as a human being. Let's touch on the health for a second. I'm a big supporter of the health at every size approach. If you haven't heard about it, we'll definitely get into it at some point. Or you can look it up. There's a lot of information out there and it's really, really great. That exploration of health at every size really stemmed from my view of bmi. And if you are doing that, if you're measuring your health based on your bmi, I just wanna say stop. The American Medical Association actually just came out with a statement acknowledging how historically harmful BMI has been and that it's been used for racist exclusion. Now they are supporting alternative ways to measure health, which I'm just like, ugh. Finally thank God that they actually said it and put it out there. So many people, even medical professionals have known this for a long time and although I think that the statement could have been a little less politically correct, I think it was really nice to just get some more widespread acknowledgement of how fucked up BMI is and how much damage it has caused. So in addition to educating ourselves in this area, another thing that we really need to do is redefine beauty for ourselves and not based on society's beauty standards. That's a big thing of what we're doing in The New Sexy right now, and it changes everything. If you're able to see more attributes, as beautiful, you're gonna start to have more love and compassion for your own bodies, and the things that you were once insecure about will start to shift. You're going to shift the way that you see them, and it's such a beautiful process, and I'm just so happy that I went through that journey myself and can now help other women do the same thing. Some of the things I would do to redefine beauty during pregnancy is like, just go online and look at beautiful pictures of pregnant women and make a point when you see them to notice the things that you appreciate about their appearance. You can also follow body positive people online. You could do mirror work, you could create affirmations. There's lots of small things that we can do to make these small shifts, but they're not actually small shifts. They're ultimately huge ones, and they are very, very significant. One thing that really helped me see the beauty in my body during the last pregnancy was doing a maternity boudoir session. Which of course I need to mention. I got some pretty lingerie. I got my hair and makeup done. I went to the beach with my husband, who is a very, very talented photographer and he created some of the most beautiful images I have ever seen of myself. And believe me, when the day came, I really didn't wanna do it. I was tired and I felt like I was about to pop open. So taking the effort to go down to the beach and shoot for a couple hours, just seemed like a really hard thing to wrap my mind around. It was also like August, so it was really hot. But once we did it, it just gave me the space to let go to feel sexy and free and connected to myself and my body. It was amazing and exactly the kind of space that I offer women, so it was so nice to be able to experience that myself. And now I often go back to these photos and they make me really emotional. It was such a turning point for me on my own personal journey, and it was that time of anticipation right before the baby is born and it's just magical. I was obsessed with the way that I looked in these pictures, and of course I knew that they were me, and it was really nice to be able to transfer those feelings that I had during the shoot. And when I looked at the pictures to my body and it felt so good. It was very important to me to not take out stretch marks and Photoshop, which I never do by the way. And I even posted a couple of pictures of me without a bra. My breasts have never been perky, so embracing them on that day and even posting them on the blog really helped me solidify the fact that they are, okay. And they're actually more than, okay, they're perfect the way that they are. I can't explain to you how much that changed things for me, especially when it came to intimacy, because outside of the bedroom, I'm wearing a bra, so it's like not a big deal, and I don't necessarily think about it throughout the day. But when you're intimate with someone, you don't have the bra on. So it was a real huge shift for me to feel even more comfortable in my body without clothes on. If you can do a boudoir maternity shoot like just for yourself, it can really help you change the way you see yourself in that moment, but also like forever, all the way in the future. It's part of that identity shift that I was talking about earlier and. I know that I'm biased, but I'm also right. Boudoir, at least the experiences that I offer women, is the most powerful body image tool that I have ever seen, and I've seen a lot of body image tools. So the fourth thing that I wanna talk about, which definitely comes up during pregnancy is our relationship with food. And of course there is so much interconnection and overlap with food and body image. It's just very, very intertwined. And when we're pregnant, we need more nourishment. We have cravings and aversions, and if you're in a disordered eating place or just deep in the diet culture mentality, it can be really, really challenging because you're gonna push up against this a lot. But it doesn't have to be a negative thing. It can actually be a positive one. In one of my previous episodes I interviewed Esther Taub, who is a body positive trainer. Definitely check out that episode. She is amazing. And something that happened for her was that, she realized that she was like so intentional about nourishing her baby when she was pregnant, and that made her wonder why she wasn't doing that for herself when she wasn't pregnant. And it's a really good question, right? For her, that was actually one of the first steps toward body positivity, and I just love that it started in that place, and I can really relate to it too, because when I was pregnant, I also just let go of that restriction mentality, which I definitely had before I was pregnant, and it was so freeing. It gave me a taste of like, I think how I feel right now with food because I'm able to enjoy things without feeling guilt and I love having that kind of freedom. There's a lot of talk in the health and wellness world about how emotional eating is a bad thing and how food is just fuel because they want to disconnect emotion with food so that you're not reliant on it and gain weight and things like that. But the truth is, is that food is not just fuel. Food is also comfort and culture and family traditions. Food brings us together. Even just thinking about having a cup of coffee in the morning and how nice that is, or licking a Popsicle on a hot summer day. It's emotional and that's okay. Of course, if someone's using it as their only tool or their top tool for emotional regulation, I don't think that would be very helpful. But recognizing the emotional component of food and how we can have and enjoy it outside of just fueling ourselves is really freeing and it's honest. If you are struggling with your relationship with food, I would really recommend looking into intuitive eating. It's really amazing. There are also nutritionists who take a health at every size approach and are anti diet, and a lot of those people know a lot about intuitive eating. I really love it because it's all about getting in tune with your body, your hunger cues and your fullness cues, and it's not about restriction at all. It's about nourishment and enjoyment and freedom. Like real freedom. Okay guys, we are getting to the end of this podcast, and the last challenge that I wanna bring up today is really, really important, and that is fear and anxiety. Googling things, reading pregnancy books again and again, wondering what labor is gonna be like. And of course many women are also afraid of how it's gonna change their body. Like in addition to general weight gain, women are worried about their vaginas, their stretch marks, how long it will take them to quote unquote bounce back. And sometimes they'll wonder if their partner will still find them attractive. What I hear from a lot of women is this concept of babies, quote unquote ruining your body. But none of those things have happened yet, and we just think about them again and again, and imagine a future where we love our bodies even less than we do now. First of all, this is not your fault and it's so normal that you're thinking these thoughts. I hate the bounce back culture of women needing to just like, you know, they have a baby and then they have to bounce back and be a certain way and have their body exactly as it was before, and quote unquote better. Right. I really see. This as an evolution of our bodies, that our bodies will change. They always change. And through pregnancy, yes, our body will change, but that doesn't mean that it's less beautiful than it was before. So I mentioned uncertainty before and the emotional discomfort of that, of not knowing or not feeling in control. And I truly, truly believe that it's the doorway to our growth. It helps us be more present so that we can enjoy the here and now. And generally we think that if we can just control everything, we'll bypass negative emotions. But it's not true. No one gets to bypass negative emotions. We are human beings. That's part of being a human being. But we can work on making the choice to be more present in our bodies and in our minds, whether that's through coaching or mindfulness, or literally just taking deep breaths. If you can start to look for ways to be in the present moment, to celebrate your body, to love yourself right now exactly as you are, that is going to be so helpful to you during your pregnancy and the rest of your life. There is something so special about being pregnant. The potential life is such a cool concept and the way that our bodies adapt and move and change, it's just incredible and miraculous if you think about it. And I know that sometimes just saying that our bodies are a miracle is annoying. Like great. I still have stretch marks, and that's okay too. Wherever you're at with your body is okay. We don't get to bypass negative emotions, and when they come up, we actually have to go through them. We can't just throw toxic positivity on them and expect them to go away. The first step towards loving your body is acceptance and acknowledgement for where you're at right now. Be okay with it. Normalize it. Be curious about it. That's actually where all the magic begins. Okay, my loves. Thank you for tuning in today. If you start to implement even just one thing from this episode, that could literally be life changing. You've got this, babe. See you next week.