Postpartum Waist Trainers

waist trainer

I’m just going to come out and say it. I love the Kardashians. Love Kim. Can’t get enough of Kortney. Always root for Khloe. Love Kendall. Get a kick out of Kylie. Kris Jenner is a god damn national treasure. You can agree or disagree, but this family knows how to turn NOTHING into SOMETHING, and they’re entertaining as fahk. I follow them all and consume the content they share with MILLIONS of people. I always think it’s harmless… until it’s not. Kim just launched a waist trainer as part of her @skims line, and the unboxing she shared on her stories hit home. She claims, “I give this to all my friends who just had a baby.” I stopped dead in my tracks, thinking about her 148 MILLION followers being told to wear postpartum waist trainers.

Wrong. So wrong.

My heart broke thinking about how many newly postpartum mothers would suffer through the discomfort of a corset while they tried to breastfeed, rest, and navigate their new life holding their breath, all in the name of “bouncing back” which DOES NOT EXIST.

What a Waist Trainer Advertises

Products like these tout solutions such as:

  • Slimming the waist
  • Fat loss
  • Body sculpting
  • And in a postpartum case, healing a diastasis

While anyone, regardless of their season, may have “results” with waist trainers, I am here to say they ARE short-lived. And anything that works under a specific condition, for a particular amount of time, is NOT proactive, sustainable, and can even exacerbate internal issues.

What Waist Trainers Do Not Do

To be clear, the above is FALSE advertising.

A piece of fabric may temporarily give an illusion of a slimmer physique, but what happens when you take it off? Your body will resume to its previous state. Reshape. Tone. Burn Fat. Define Lines. Melt Fat

Body recomposition, or the process where your body loses fat and builds muscle, is an INTERNAL one. A piece of fabric cannot reshape, tone, burn, define, or melt. If it did, we’d all live in Spanx, never take them off, and then when we DID take them off, we’d throw them away because we’d all have the FAHKING BODY OF OUR DREAMS.

What Waist Trainers Actually Do

Let’s move past the TEMPORARY results discussed above because I think we’ve already determined that a temporary result isn’t a result worth having. Right? Just by being here, I’m assuming you’re a solutions-oriented person, not one looking for a quick fix. It’s a long game.

When you strap on that waist trainer, it stops the natural expansion of your entire core, so when pressure (from cinching) builds up, that pressure only has two places to go: up or down. If that pressure goes up, at best, you’ll get heartburn, and at worst, a hernia. If that pressure goes down, the only place it has to go is your pelvic floor.

A waist trainer, shit, even high waisted yoga pants (!!) has the potential to setback your postpartum progress and healing, and here’s WHY.

Below is a picture of me at two weeks postpartum. Skin. Organs. Muscle. Tissue. They’re all moving and shifting DAILY as your uterus contracts. There’s a lot there, and if I were to “BIND” it, I’d be compressing and constricting a natural and healing shift.

Kate Lemere

Think about it.

  • With every breath, your lungs go in and out.
  • Your ribs expand and contract
  • The diaphragm goes down and up
  • Your pelvic floor relaxes and fires

All of this is spontaneous and happens on its own unless there is an obstruction. It’s a system that regulates your autonomic nervous system, internal pressure, your abdominal canister, and your public floor. If you have a binding of any sort, you’re impeding that process, which is critical to longterm health.

If your diaphragm is unable to sync with your pelvic floor, you do NOT have control of your nervous system. A fight/flight mode is activated, and you’re left stress as FAHK on top of the stress you probably already feel with a newborn. Shallow breathing harms a multitude of functions ranging from sleep quality to sex drive (LOL sex after a baby, fahk me – but, like, don’t.) A deep, productive breath signals your body to chill out and improves every facet of your quality of life.

FURTHERMORE, if you’re unable to get that proper breath, you’re unable to expand your core, which then sets off a chain reaction through your pelvic floor and is a recipe for prolapse. TRUST ME, not okay.

What About Diastasis tho?

If you are 2-6 weeks postpartum, it can MAYBE be a tool to help a severe gap and/or back pain. Still, it should be worn for short periods. But it’s not THE solution.

What about Abdominal Binding for C-Section tho?

Waist training is not to be confused with incision care. MANY moms are issued a hospital-grade abdominal binder after a c-section to protect the surgical incision and to provide compression to decrease postoperative pain. Your doctor is the end all be all in this case, not Kim K.

In Conclusion

Kim’s 148 MILLION followers are consuming content that, when taken out of context, can potentially put them (anyone) in a world of hurt. In ANY season of life, it’s imperative to understand what you want, and how your actions impact your goals. It’s not enough to do something because a celebrity or influencer is telling you to, you have to know what you’re doing. And WHY you’re doing it.

If you’re rehabbing an injury or complication, postpartum or otherwise, the goal isn’t to put a bandaid on the problem. It’s to HEAL. And the good news is it’s OFTEN well within the realm of possibility if you work with a PROFESSIONAL (not a celebrity or influencer) to make sure your rehab is the best protocol for your circumstance.

As always, slide into the DM’s with any questions or concerns.

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