Taylor Lautner Has the Perfect Reframe on 'Getting Your Body Back' After Pregnancy

As a millennial woman who grew up in the era of magazine covers featuring freshly postpartum celebrities to glorify the "bounce back", I've never liked the idea of "getting your body back" after giving birth.

The postpartum period is already heavy and hard enough — why are we putting this additional pressure on women to look as though they haven't done this incredible thing? Why are we asking them to bounce back, when what they've actually done has propelled them forward?

But strangely, going through pregnancy myself made me a little bit more understanding of what pregnant women truly mean when they say they want to "get their bodies back" — because when the outside world puts this pressure on women, it's entirely about how they look. When women view their own bodies in this way, I think it's often more about how they feel in their bodies.

Taylor Lautner (who is married to actor Taylor Lautner, yes it's very cute that they share a name), who is expecting her first baby, recently spoke up about what it truly means to want to get your body back on her podcast, The Squeeze, and it's an important reframe.

"When we say that [we want to get our bodies back], I don't think people actually understand, it's actually so much deeper than just going back to the pre-pregnancy weight or the pre-pregnancy body," says Lautner. "It's being able to fit in your shoes again because your feet are little puff pastries and they're so swollen and they can't fit in your shoes...You're just covered in these purple stretch marks and you're like 'whose body am I even looking at right now'?".

I'll admit it: When I heard the first part of this clip, I was prepared to disagree. But as I kept listening? I think she's onto something. I remember looking at my body in the mirror after I gave birth and audibly gasping. The discoloration on my stomach, the swelling of my uterus, the stretch marks...I just remember literally not recognizing my reflection. So much of "getting your body back" is really about feeling at home in it again. Feeling like your body only belongs to you...unfortunately, that's a feeling that lingers in early motherhood, at least in my experience.

But I get what this expectant mom is saying. She doesn't just want to look a certain way again. She wants to move her body freely. To go on walks without feeling completely winded. To flop into bed and not think about the safe and unsafe ways to position herself to keep the baby safe. To not feel at the mercy of those pregnancy hormones and what they do to your mood.

We ought to give pregnant women space to express this — because maybe the real bounce back is about returning to a body that feels familiar.