How To Get Rid Of Bad Posture After Pregnancy

Quit making these postpartum mistakes and replace them with good habits to improve your bad posture after pregnancy.

The days after having your baby are passing quickly. And one day in the newborn haze of survival, you suddenly notice that your once aligned posture has become hunched and rounded.

Not to mention your back seems to ache, your shoulders are sore, and your neck is starting to get kinks more often than those old-school curly-wired landline phones.

But don’t worry, it seems that many moms struggle with this bad posture after pregnancy, so you are not alone! In fact, unless you are being preventative I would bet that your posture has broken down to some degree.

Before kids, my days as a trainer was laser focused on posture, my own and my clients. My husband called me the posture police.

Then I had a baby and was suddenly finding myself looking like the hunchback of notre dame! What happened?!

Pregnancy and caring for a newborn happened. A lot of time spent in poor stature led me to what is often called mom posture.

So let’s identify the bad habits that are contributing and I tell you the secret sauce to feeling comfortable and CONFIDENT again.

Why is my posture so bad after pregnancy?

Muscular imbalances created during late pregnancy and encouraged with postpartum habits are giving you bad posture after pregnancy.

The muscular imbalances show in the form of weak back and glute muscles as well as tight hip flexor and chest muscles.

More times than I can count, I have heard, “Kids ruin your body.” Yikes. Don’t get me wrong, pregnancy and childbearing is definitely hard on the body. And pregnancy can definitely change your posture. (You can read all about that here.)

But c’mon! Are our children really to blame for all of the aches, pains, and things we don’t like about our bodies after we have them?

I have jumped on the bandwagon and said it myself after I had my daughter. I went from peak physical condition to feeling when it rains LOL. (Not quite but my body cracked A LOT in the mornings.)

But if we are honest with ourselves, they are not the cause. It’s all of our bad habits that we develop and hang on to postpartum that give us bad posture after pregnancy.

The 7 habits that I have found to be the biggest contributers to my bad postpartum posture are

Nursing or feeding baby without a pillow for support
Shifting my hips forward or laterally while standing to carry baby on hip
Sitting in a reclined position without lumbar support
Not enough strength training
Watching myself pump (THE ABSOLUTE WORST!)
Side/belly sleeping
Not wearing a support band/clothing immediately postpartum

These are all things that can lead to muscular imbalances that show in the form of mom bod.

What is mom posture?

Mom posture can be identified as a rounded shoulders, forward head posture, and a tucked butt. Specifically, it is the combination of Upper Crossed Syndrome and a Posterior Pelvic Tilt.

Upper Crossed Syndrome is basically a forward posture of the upper half of the spine. You can identify it by a weak upper back and tight front deltoids, chest muscles, and suboccipital muscles (the neck muscles at the base of your skull). This imbalance draws the chin forwad and caves the chest in.

A Posterior Pelvic Tilt is when the butt tucks under and drives the hips in front of the shoulders. (Pssst! That’s where your booty went LOL.)

It happens because our hamstrings are tight and our low backs are overworked and not properly supported. Typically, it happens from the abdominals and hamstrings being stronger and more active or even overcompensating for the change of center of gravity.

After pregnancy, we are holding our hips in this position so often and usually for long bouts. I had a hard time with this because I was sitting with a tucked butt so I could curve my spine around baby to nurse.

Both of these imbalances can cause some long term effects. You may experience a (low) back that feels ready to give or maybe even spasms when you bend forward.

You may get nagging shoulder pain and sciatica. It may feel like your Diastasis Recti is taking even longer to heal. Making you to feel like getting in shape after baby is just not happening.

(Check out my post here to see if you have Diastasis Recti and learn how to fix it!)

I have been there ladies! With all of my children. I wrote it off to having 3 under 3 and not making my fitness a priority before the 2nd pregnancy.

But truthfully, I was kind of ignoring these major imbalances and daily patterns. When I openned my tunnel vision from just getting my body back to actually solving the problem, I really started to see and feel the results.

I was feeling strong again. I recongnized my body a little more everyday as I shed my mom bod. ( Check out my other post INSTANTLY Fix Your Mom Bod For Good for more tips on mom posture.)

How can I fix posture after pregnancy?

Being aware of your spinal alignment throughout the day along with corrective exercise that is designed specifically for postpartum moms.

The most crucial and easiest way to start is with constant habits. Checking your posture as you stand, sit, walk, hold your baby, pick up toys off the floor, cook dinner, and everything else you do day in and day out. To be more specific…

Nursing or feeding baby with a pillow for support
Wearing baby instead of carrying on my hip
Sitting with proper lumbar support during nursing sessions
Intermittenly looking down while pumping
Back sleeping
Wearing a support band/clothing postpartum

These daily habits will do wonders to get you back on track. And honestly, the hours and hours of these little behaviors will add up for a big difference.

Along with daily mindfulness, following a proper workout program that focuses on rebuilding core strength and stability with corrective exercise will help you feel normal again.

Remember, using both mindfulness of posture as well as corrective exercises are equally important to seeing long term success when improving your posture.

You need the wheels for the car to move, but the car can’t move if it doesn’t have an engine. Both of these elements are critical for progress and will be supportive to the improvement of the other.

Stretches and exercises for bad posture after pregnancy

When correcting muscular imbalance be sure to slow down and really asses your movement in real time while you connect your mind to muscle with proprioception awareness (just knowing where you “are” in space.) These usually focus on activating very small, specific muscles in a full range of motion.

Corrective exercise will gradually adjust your movement patterns by strengthening weakend and underactive muscles, and releasing the overactive muscles.

The muscles you want to focus on strengthening are your back, glutes, pelvic floor, and deep core. You can do this with:

Bent Over Row
Birdog
Reverse Fly
Glute Bridge
Glute Kickback
Fire Hydrant
Clam Shell
Kegal
Vacuum
Pelvic Tilt

The muscles you will want to focus on stretching are chest, hip flexors, and hamstrings. You can do that with:

Kickstand Hinge
Runner’s Stretch
Chin Retractions
Pectoral Stretch

If you want a structured workout plan that will do all the heavy lifting for you, you need my 4-Week Postpartum Workout Program. My program is designed for new moms with easy-to-follow at home workout videos.

Over four weeks we will rebuild total body strength and cardio with a gradual apporach as we focus on rebuilding core strength and stability while improving bad posture after pregnancy.

No planning required, guided full-length workouts, PDF download with clickable links for easy access, and it comes with my Meal Plan for Busy Moms as well as Accountability Tools to help you stay on track with our community of fit moms.