An Australian Pilates instructor has debuted her incredible postpartum body just eight weeks after giving birth to her first child, crediting her strength training for the rapid ‘bounce back’.
Karlie Andrews, who runs a successful online workout platform called That Pilates Passion, took to Instagram on Friday last week to share a photo of her body two months after a natural labour.
‘Two months working on being the strongest, happiest and healthiest version of myself so I can also show up as the best mum I can be,’ she captioned the photo, which compared her body to the day she left hospital after giving birth to daughter Lily Maree.
Karlie spent her first week postpartum working on a number of core exercises to help with her 1cm abdominal separation and pelvic floor.
These included spinal waves, bent knee fall outs, glute bride waves, the cat and cow stretch, knee lifts and ‘bird dogs’, all of which can be found in a typical Pilates class to warm up.
Doctors warn postpartum mothers to wait until their baby is six weeks old and they’ve had a check-in with their GP before engaging in any strenuous exercise.
For this reason Karlie focused on taking Lily for daily walks, before more recently attending ‘mums and bubs’ Pilates classes.
She also has a reformer Pilates bed at home for doing light stretches on when she has the energy.
Karlie was exercising right up until the birth of her daughter at 37 weeks.
Many of her fans credited her consistent training regime before the birth for her ability to ‘bounce back’ so quickly.
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‘What these pictures tell us is being healthy and taking care of yourself (nothing religious, just consistent in different ways) helps the body repair and recover after childbirth much quicker, as it also does with any other situation that our bodies endures in life, it definitely helps us,’ one woman said in response to the photos.