67. Exercise After Kids? with Jen Dugard

Okay.

So when you first reached out to be a guest on your Calm Parenting Path, one of the things you wrote was that it's hard to parent mindfully when your body is in constant survival mode.

And that really stuck with me.

So are you able to talk to that a little bit more?

Yeah, I think, you know, when we become, let's, you know, we've just talked about the beyond a mum.

Yeah.

But in those initial stages or beyond early motherhood, but in those initial stages of I think there's so much pressure on women to be, I'm going to say a good mom and I hate the word good, whether it's related to child or mom or whatever it is, but to be a good mom.

Yet women are thrown into this world with very little, the world of motherhood, with very little education about her body in pregnancy, very little education postpartum and then continuing beyond that.

And if we're trying to, you know, parent mindfully, be present with our children, be the best mum that we can be, but internally things are not feeling right.

Something's going on with our bodies that we don't understand.

No one's told us it's normal or given us any idea around what's going on.

We've got these two conflicting, like, I don't feel right, yet I'm trying to be everything that I can be for this small human.

And at some point, that's going to catch up.

And so when mums come to you, what's one of the first things that they say? What are they needing? What are they looking for? And how do you support them with that?

So for me, I train the trainers that train the mums now.

So it's the trainers, the mum safe trainers that are on the front line.

Let's say like they're out there.

But what I know is that and from years of being the trainer that is training the mums and then obviously having this relationship with our beautiful mum safe trainers that are working with mums every day, A lot of women are still coming to get their bodies back because we've been predispositioned to think as a woman that we should look a certain way and that the number one thing when we're dealing with bodies and babies and sleep and partners and all the rest of it should be to go on this quest to change.

achieve a body that, you know, we can't go back to that body anyway.

So one of the big things that we talk to our trainers about and the big message that we put out into the world at Mumsafe is, you know, we don't talk about getting bodies back.

We don't ask questions or we don't set goal setting around aesthetic goals.

You know, that might be a byproduct of where we're going, but it's not the underlying reason why we're wanting to exercise.

Yeah.

Other things that we also get are, I just want to understand my body.

No one's taught me what I can do next, how to move forward.