The postpartum fitness journey has been a roller coaster! There are days where I feel strong and like I am making great progress, then suddenly I feel unfit and weak again. I was very lucky to have a very smooth c-section recovery. I was able to move the next day and walk around. I hear from friends that some have intense pain and need to stay in bed so I was very grateful that I felt fine and was totally mobile. I did have to extra careful when I was getting up and to not strain my ab muscles. I hardly had any pain in my wound but the edges of the wound felt a little tender. My doctor gave me panadol and some stronger meds but I did not need to use the stronger meds at all and only a little bit of panadol. After I got home, I was able to hang and fold some laundry. In a week I was also able to cook again! I was able to hold and breastfeed Lex with zero problems. I went back to see my doctor 1 week post op to remove the plaster and 2 weeks post op to put on on a scar minimization bandaid. I really took it easy and did not do much until at least week 6 as recommended by my doctor.

During the months of 2-4, it was mostly quite positive and I felt like I was making good progress. However, I was also feeling stuck on whether I should be pushing myself harder or be taking things slower. I did not want to give myself too much pressure and to give my body some time, but I also like being challenged and enjoyed feeling fit and strong. I decided to create a fitness plan for myself but with some more flexibility to fit in my current fitness and lifestyle as a new mom. I also made sure to track my progress and to have a plan of how to continually improve and increase the intensity or duration of my workouts.

Back when I was training properly for triathlons, I was on a super strict workout regime and basically followed everything to a T. I hardly missed a workout and if I did I might move it to the next day to make up for it. With my postpartum workout plan, it was no longer possible to follow a strict daily workout and instead I made a workout plan that included ranges of what I wanted to achieve in a week such as “1-2 runs” or “1-2 Youtube workouts”. I also did not link each workout to a day because I never know whether that day I will be super busy with Lex or be exhausted after a tough night. I enjoyed having a loose guideline of what my workouts should look like so I had some sense of direction but it also did not restrict or stressed me out too much. My plan was to work out 5-6 times a week but I would not beat myself up if I sometimes only worked out 4 times a week.

By 9 weeks, I was moving into high intensity workouts such as HIIT (high intensity interval training). I was still doing some postpartum workouts but was slowly starting to do regular workouts also. By 10 weeks, I was no longer doing postpartum workouts and was also starting to do the advanced moves in the regular workouts (Bodyfit by Amy gives you lots of options for all fitness levels, I also tried out some fun dance fitness classes on Pop Sugar). I also started training with my postnatal trainer for personal training again at 10 weeks. Around this time of 2-3 months, I definitely saw improvement and noticed how I was able to do lunges for a longer time before getting tired and busting out high impact moves that would totally destroy me before.

By around 3 months, I was ready to incorporate triathlon training back into my workout regime. The bike was always my weakest discipline and I was not looking forward to getting back on the trainer. Bike fitness takes a long time to build and I was feeling a little apprehensive to find out how much fitness I’ve lost. I started doing free rides on my bike on the trainer at first and did short rides of 20-30 minutes. After a few weeks of free riding, I signed up for TrainerRoad again to have more structured training rides. In terms of running, I was able to do two runs during the week, one interval run in my building’s gym and one longer run outside. I slowly built up the longer run to around 4 km and was feeling quite strong and that I was able to push my pace a bit on the uphills!

I still did not feel like I was back at my base fitness, but it was encouraging to see the improvements! It definitely is taking longer than I expected and I did not think I would ever feel this heavy or unfit, but what is most important is that I am getting the work in and slowly building my strength and fitness back!