This sounds so stupid and im well aware. So the baby is in the stomach and after it leaves the skin cant magically shrink right back to size again. So its like if you put a watermellon in a bag. Then took out the watermellon. You still have the huge bag (stomach). So is it like a deflated ballon or is it like some magic.
In: Biology
As the fetus grows in the uterus, it expands from being pear sized to watermelon sized. This growth happens over the pubic bone which pushes out the abdomen causing the “pregnant” look. After delivery it takes 6-8 weeks for the uterus to shrink back down to pear sized again. The abdomen will shrink back into place as well.
Some women get stretch marks. Some women have more elastic skin that pretty much pops back to normal. Sometimes stretch marks are just discoloration. Sometimes it looks like crumpled tin foil or cottage cheese.
It is a slow, multi-week process of about 6 weeks, for the uterus, which has stretched over the pregnancy, to “unstretch”. Everyone is different, and some may return to what looks like basically their torso before, other may have stretched skin. There is elasticity in the skin that accommodates this process. Almost everyone has stretch marks , but they pronounce differently for different people.
The baby is in the uterus, and it (and the abdomen) gets bigger, it has nothing to do with the stomach. The uterus becomes considerably smaller after the baby is born, and the top of the uterus sits at about the level of the belly button, and then gradually get smaller over the next few weeks.
The abdomen as a whole, or as can be seen from the outside, may go almost straight back to a pre-pregnancy appearance but this is less common. Usually, the abdomen will loose the big “watermelon” shape and the woman will look only a couple of months pregnant, or they might have a little “pot belly”. Everyone is different though
The baby sits inside the womb. The womb stretches. When the baby is born, the bump still exists because the womb has stretched, and it gradually shrinks back down to a normal size. It isn’t instant, even with a C sec. It also never goes fully back to its original size, picture stretching an elastic band.
In a nut shell, deflated balloon. After a few weeks it shrinks back although you might be left with stretch marks.
When i gave birth, it was in an operating room with forceps. So i was only minimally able to push. But at the key moment I happened to have my hand on my belly as he was born and i will NEVER forget the way it felt. My tight hard baby-filled belly suddenly deflated and kind of slopped back down all wobbly like a blancmange. It took several days to stop literally flopping when i stood up and even 9 years later my belly has never returned to its prepregnant state. Its been flat for years, but the skin and subcutaneous fat doesn’t seem internally attached in the same way. What was really alarming and weird was feeling my uterus contract during breastfeeding.
Abdomen is not just stretched with the baby. Womb itself increases in size (thicker walls), other organs move to make room, joints between bones soften and widen, there’s extra fluids in the mother’s body. My sister’s ribs broke apart to make room. There is a lot to reverse beyond there no longer being a baby in there. So it takes a while, and never is quite the same.
Both times I gave birth I think I must have had a “fast” recovering uterus because the nurses would come in to massage it back down and they would have trouble finding it because it had already moved closer to its normal position than they were expecting.
They started very high and moved progressively lower until it seemed like they were pushing where it usually is and they were all “wtf” but I was like “yeah, I thought you were aiming too high but you guys are the experts.”
I got a lot of comments about it so I suppose it’s unusual for it to go back down that quickly.
Everyone’s body is different though. I didn’t show until very late in my pregnancies and didn’t get stretch marks so maybe my skin and organs are more elastic than average? My stomach went back to being flat after losing all the pregnancy weight but some people have diastasis recti where their abdominal muscles separate and it might not necessarily go back without physical therapy. It all depends on how many babies you carried, how big they are, how much weight you gained, how you carried, your age, etc. Some women never “snap back” all the way without surgery, others are wearing their pre-pregnancy clothes 2 days after labor. It all depends on the individual situation.
Elastin within the skin gives it a ‘stretchy’ quality, if you are young and a healthy weight to carry a baby (not too thin) it typically ‘deflates’ back (an example of elastic-deformation) the same way an elastic band would – rather than the way a plastic bag would.
If you are on the thin side, have twins, or just a big ol’ baby then you can expect some loose skin, but this is normal for a woman who has given birth. The baby does not create a cavity or anything of the sort where the space forever lives, it just stretches an already existing cavity (uterus) which can return to the same size. You can think of it like a larger version of a bladder if that makes more sense
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