The Snapback · God's Smile

Monique Jones

22d • General discussion

The Snapback

Giving birth is beautiful.

It is wondrous.

It is holy in the way only creation can be.

You meet your baby for the first time and everything shifts.

Your world becomes smaller and bigger all at once.

You marvel at what your body has just done—feeling broken, relieved, and complete all at the same time.

There is joy. There is gratitude. There is awe.

And then, almost instantly, the world starts waiting for the snapback.

A return.

A reset.

A sense that now you should be “back” to who you were before—as if you didn’t just push your body to the very brink, as if you didn't taste death to bring forth life.

But there is so much more to the story than that.

You can love your baby deeply and still feel unfamiliar in your own body.

You can look put together on the outside while navigating the "surprises" no one warned you about. The way a simple laugh, a sudden sneeze, or a light jog becomes a gamble with your own bladder—a reminder that your foundation has shifted. The reality of peeing yourself like the very toddler you are trying to raise.

You feel the strange, internal movement of your organs finding their way home, and the heavy pressure of a body that is still re-centering itself.

You sit in a small room, nursing or pumping, and you realize that bonding is a revolutionary act of the physical self. It is the most profound form of nurturing there is: your body continuing to be the bridge for theirs. You aren't just giving your time; your child is literally sucking the vitamins, minerals, and nutrients out of your own body to build their own. It is a beautiful, fierce sacrifice—a literal pouring of your physical strength into their life.

Both things are true.

The beauty and the cost.

Nobody tells you the number. They don't mention that it can take five years for a woman’s body to truly recover from the work of childbirth. Instead, they tell you to go home. They tell you to get started on the work of being a mother. They tell you to "get back to it."

But the math of your body doesn't care about the world’s schedule. If you have a child every two years, you are racking up recovery on top of recovery. You are living in a constant state of healing for a decade or more, even as you are expected to be at 100%.

And that five-year window is a fragile one.

Five years assumes safety. Five years assumes rest. Five years assumes support.

Five years assumes no trauma. No depression. No poverty. No homelessness. No constant, grinding stress.

For many of us, five years is not just a recovery—it’s an ideal that life doesn't always allow for. If you are still healing long after your baby was born, you aren't "behind." You are surviving a marathon that the world refuses to acknowledge.

This is why breath and gentle movement matter—not to erase the evidence of motherhood, but to care for the body that carried it.

When you curl inward to nurse or pump, stretching gives your spine and shoulders relief.

When your pelvic floor feels unstable or tired, breathing becomes a way back to trust and strength. It is how you learn to breathe through the stress instead of holding it in.

When the years of giving feel heavy in your bones, movement becomes maintenance—loving, necessary care.

I don’t move for a spiritual experience or to “get my body back.”

I move to stay connected to the physical one that gave so much.

Loving your baby does not require rushing your recovery.

You are allowed to say, “This is beautiful.”

And also, “This is hard.”

You are allowed to admit that your body feels different.

You are allowed to take the time it takes.

When we speak honestly about the physical journey, we stop holding our breath through survival and begin healing with intention.

The real snapback is not about shrinking.

It is about settling.

About your body slowly feeling like home again.