Smith worked as a model before co-founding KIC and describes her journey as an "evolution". Photo / Supplied
Smith worked as a model before co-founding KIC and describes her journey as an "evolution". Photo / Supplied
Welcome to season two of the Herald's parenting podcast: One Day You'll Thank Me. Join parents and hosts Jenni Mortimer and Rebecca Haszard as they navigate the challenges and triumphs of parenting today with help from experts and well-known mums and dads from across Aotearoa.
Having a baby is life-changing. For new mothers and mothers-to-be, amid the utter joy of welcoming your little one into the world, the impact mentally and physically can be tough, unexpected and overwhelming. And it's made harder by the expectation that a woman can and should just bounce back to her pre-pregnancy body and mindset.
In this week's episode of One Day You'll Thank Me, our hosts speak to mum and co-founder of fitness and wellness apps Keep It Cleaner (KIC) and KICBUMP - specifically for pre- and post-partum health - Steph Claire Smith.
The Melbourne-based entrepreneur and mother to 17-month-old Harvey has shunned bounce-back culture and created a community for mums to feel empowered to slow down and navigate what a new sense of health and wellbeing might look like for them.
Smith reveals she's been contacted by women who feel either fearful of how much pregnancy will change their body or find themselves pressured in their post-partum journey to "bounce back".
Women have reached out to Smith to discuss "... periods in their life where they have really battled with either eating disorders or their body image, and that they're actually really scared to get pregnant ... they really know that they want to be a mum but because of everything they've gone through ... those changes, they're so scared of them that it's stopping them from something as incredible as becoming a mum," she says.
Steph Claire Smith is the co-founder of fitness and wellness apps Keep It Cleaner (KIC) and KICBUMP - specifically for pre- and post-partum health. Photo / Supplied.
"Unfortunately, for a lot of women, because of the noise throughout the media and also maybe because of past experiences that they've had with their own relationship with their body and exercising, food and all that, it could be a little bit more triggering and a bit more difficult to just respect what their body's gone through."
Smith, who worked as a model before co-founding KIC, has been on her own journey, which she describes as an "evolution".
"For someone who, for a long part of my career, my physical appearance was the utmost important thing, it was something that I valued above a lot of other things. And I'm not saying that's a good thing, that was just the way it was.
"I am someone who has struggled with that in the past and has really kind of held myself to a certain level of how my body needed to look and appear."
But after the birth of her son, Smith says removing herself from caring so much about how she looked was made easier than she expected because of the "profound respect for women's bodies and for what I went through ... there are things like new stretch marks or different things that society has told us are now things that we should be insecure about. But really, for me, it was like flipping the narrative on that and being like, well, all of these things are signs that I've created a human and fed a human and kept him alive.
"So they're more like scars I should be proud of," she says.
Steph Claire Smith, pictured with her son, Harvey, is helping women change the narrative around how they approach their post-partum bodies. Photo / Supplied.
"The important thing to remember," says Smith, "is, pregnancy put aside, we all have different genetics. We all have different lifestyles. Our bodies change differently regardless of whether we've gone through pregnancy or not. And then when you add pregnancy to it, post-partum journeys are completely different.
"It could completely depend on the type of birth that you had. It might depend on whether or not you suffered from post-natal depression and other things like that that come up. There are so many factors. So it's just not fair to add to that stress that already happens and worry so much ... because it'll just continue to take such a toll on you."
Smith says she's learned not to try to "hold on to who I was" before she became a mum.
"I'm not trying to hold on to my life before him or the way I was before him. I'm okay with that change because it's something that I wanted and I longed for, for a long time. And it's not like it's a new me or anything like that. I think it's just like an evolution and I think that'll continue to happen throughout life. So I'm just going along for the ride."
To learn more about Steph Claire Smith's approach to navigating post-partum health and wellbeing, listen to this week's episode of One Day You'll Thank Me below.
For women who may be experiencing post-natal depression, contact your midwife or GP. Call or text 1737 any time for support from a trained counsellor Call PlunketLine 24/7 on 0800 933 922 Depression helpline: Freephone 0800 111 757 Healthline: 0800 611 116 (available 24 hours, 7 days a week and free to callers throughout New Zealand, including from a mobile phone) Lifeline 0800 543 35 Samaritans – 0800 726 666
