Labor to Lifting

Labor to Lifting The ultimate postpartum recovery experience. Founder: Abigail Sommer

09/22/2026

If something has felt like it shifted or sits lower since you gave birth, you’re not imagining it and you are... nowhere near alone.

Prolapse is when a pelvic organ moves down into the vaginal wall. It’s graded one through four, and grades one and two are far more common after birth than anyone tells you. Most women never say a word about it, which is exactly why every one of them thinks she’s the only one.

The part nobody leads with: mild prolapse often improves, and surgery is not the automatic answer.

Three levers actually move it. One, pressure management, where your breath goes, how you lift, and whether you’re straining on the toilet. Two, progressive pelvic floor training, guided and gradually loaded, not a hundred random squeezes a day. Three, strength around it, glutes, deep core and hips, because your pelvis is held together by muscle.

Get assessed so you know what you’re actually working with. Then train it. Avoiding everything forever isn’t a plan.

Comment CORE and I’ll send you my free Core & Floor Recovery guide.

09/19/2026

“Breastfeeding will melt the weight right off.” I believed that too, and for a lot of moms it does... the opposite.

It does burn extra calories. It also drives hunger up, and for some women the body holds onto stores while you’re feeding. The research here is genuinely mixed, and it is not the guaranteed fat loss plan it gets sold as.

I fed for two months. I have Raynaud’s, and if you know, you know. It was some of the worst pain I’ve been in. I stopped, felt like a failure for about a week, and then my daughter kept right on growing.

Fed is best. That’s the whole standard. Anything added on top of it is somebody’s opinion, not a rule.

What actually worked for me either way: enough protein, enough food, and strength training. Not a deficit while my body was still healing.

Comment SNACK and I’ll send you my protein snack guide.

09/16/2026

Nobody told me you could ask for half an epidural, and it changed... my entire birth.

Most of us think it’s all or nothing.

Numb from the waist down, or nothing at all.

There’s a middle. Anesthesia teams can dose lower, so you get real pain relief while keeping more sensation and more movement.

Quick note on the words: “half epidural” is my own shorthand because it’s what most people understand. In medical terms it’s usually called a light epidural or a walking epidural, so that’s the language to use if you want to ask your care team about it.

I only knew to ask because my husband is a fourth year med student going into anesthesia. That’s the whole reason I had the option, and it shouldn’t be.

What it bought me: I could feel to push, move my legs, and change position. Which matters, because the other thing nobody tells you is that you don’t have to push flat on your back. That’s the convenient position, not the required one.

Two questions worth asking at your next appointment: what epidural dosing options does your anesthesia team offer, and what positions am I able to push in here. Availability is genuinely different at every hospital, so ask early rather than in the moment.

You’re allowed to have preferences about this. Write them down before you’re in the middle of it.

Comment LABOR and I’ll send you my full birth prep guide.

But at the end of the day.. Heavenly Father looked at you and said “that’s it. she’s the one.” 🫶
09/15/2026

But at the end of the day.. Heavenly Father looked at you and said “that’s it. she’s the one.” 🫶

09/15/2026

You’d train for a marathon. Birth is harder than a marathon and most of us prep for it by... buying a nursing pillow.

Doing nothing and hoping is the worst. Full bed rest for the last month is pretty close. Resting the whole way through makes recovery harder, not easier.

Instead, do things like the birth ball and hip mobility exercises! And of course, we have to train your breath, and do strength training the whole way through.

I hit PRs at nine months pregnant. When your body is working the hardest, that’s exactly when you want it to be the strongest.

Comment LABOR and I’ll send you my birth prep guide.

09/12/2026

Rating the pelvic floor advice you’ve been given, out of ten, starting with the one that’s genuinely... making things worse.
Drink less water so you leak less: 0 out of 10. Concentrated urine irritates your bladder, so you’ll go more, not less.
Hover over public toilets: 1 out of 10. Your floor can’t relax in a half squat, so you never fully empty. Sit down.
Wear a pad and get on with it: 1 out of 10. Leaking is common. It is not something you have to accept for forty years.
A hundred kegels a day: 2 out of 10. Fine if your floor is genuinely weak, actively worse if it’s tight, and most moms have never been told which one they are. Kegels while you drive: 3 out of 10, because timing is the whole skill and random squeezing teaches your floor nothing about a sneeze.
Feet on a stool and stop straining: 9 out of 10. Free, instant, hardly anyone knows.
Exhale on the effort when you lift: 10 out of 10, the most transferable thing on this list. And seeing a pelvic floor PT: 10 out of 10. If it isn’t improving, that’s the shortcut, not the last resort.
Comment BREATHE and I’ll send you my diaphragmatic breathing guide.

09/10/2026

Postpartum is the most marketed-to moment of your life, and almost none of it... actually fixes anything.

Comment CORE and I’ll send you my free Core & Floor Recovery guide.

09/08/2026

If you only do three things in your first month postpartum, skip the ab workouts and... do these instead.

One, diaphragmatic breathing, the foundation of all core recovery and doable from a hospital bed: breathe into your ribs, relax the pelvic floor on the inhale, gently lift on the exhale.

Two, walk, but start tiny: rest two weeks, then ten minutes, adding a few each day.

Three, ask for help and protect your sleep, because recovery happens when you’re not running on empty.

Comment WORKOUT and I’ll send you a free week of beginner-friendly postpartum workouts.

09/05/2026

If kegels aren’t fixing your leaking, it might be because your pelvic floor was never... the weak one.

A weak floor can’t generate force. A tight floor can’t let go. Both of them leak, and only one of them gets better with more squeezing.

Signs yours might be tight rather than weak: pain with intimacy, trouble emptying fully, constipation, and a floor that feels like it never switches off.

Mine was tight. I squeezed harder for months and it got worse. What changed it was learning to relax first, which is why every session in my program opens with breathing and pelvic floor relaxation before anything is loaded.

If it isn’t improving, a pelvic floor PT can tell you which one you’re actually dealing with. That’s the shortcut, not the last resort.

Comment BREATHE and I’ll send you my full diaphragmatic breathing guide.

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