Nobody warned me that becoming a mom would apparently require buying an entirely new collection of shoes.
Before pregnancy, I was a size 9½. Now? Size 12.
TWELVE.
I kept thinking my old shoes would eventually fit again because, obviously, pregnancy makes your feet swell. Give it some time, Reyn. Your body is still recovering. Surely your feet will go back to normal.
They did not.
My feet basically packed their bags, moved two and a half sizes away, and never came home. 
I actually looked this up because I genuinely wanted to know if I was imagining things, and apparently this is a real thing. During pregnancy, hormonal changes affect the ligaments in the body, while you’re also carrying additional weight. Research has found that pregnancy can result in a lower arch and longer feet, and for some women those changes can remain after pregnancy. The first pregnancy may even cause some of the biggest changes.
So yes. My son gave me a whole new life, a whole new identity, and apparently whole new feet.
Salamat, anak. Mommy needed new shoes anyway.
I Thought My Body Would Eventually Go Back
The feet are funny to talk about. The rest has been harder.
Before pregnancy, and back when I was still single, I was around 64 kilos. During pregnancy and everything that came with it, I eventually reached around 95 kilos. I’m now down to about 75 kilos, which means I’ve already lost a significant amount of weight, but if I’m being completely truthful, I still look in the mirror sometimes and think about that 64-kilo version of myself.
She’s still somewhere in my head.
I remember her clothes. I remember how things fit. I remember looking at photos without immediately checking my stomach, arms, or face. I remember knowing my size without bringing three different sizes into the fitting room because apparently clothing sizes and my body are now in a complicated relationship.
And then there is my skin.
Oh, my skin.
I used to be known for being fair. Like, that was one of those things people would actually comment on. I look at old photos now and my skin looked brighter and more even, and sometimes I stare at them thinking, Excuse me, where did she go?
Because pregnancy didn’t stop at changing my weight and my feet. My neck got darker. My armpits got darker. Other areas of my skin changed too. They’ve definitely lightened since pregnancy, so we’re making progress over here, thank you very much, but they’re still not completely back to what I remember.
And apparently I am very much not alone.
I went looking for an explanation because naturally I needed to know why pregnancy had apparently adjusted my body’s brightness settings without asking permission. Hyperpigmentation is actually one of the most common skin changes during pregnancy. Research reviews report that it happens in some form to the large majority of pregnant women, and the neck, armpits, inner thighs, nipples, areolae, and other naturally darker areas or skin folds can become even darker. Pregnancy hormones are thought to stimulate the melanocytes, the cells responsible for producing melanin, so your body can basically decide that certain areas need a little extra pigment while it is busy growing a human.
One clinical study of 600 pregnant women even found neck pigmentation in nearly a third of them. And although pregnancy-related pigmentation often fades after delivery, some dermatology literature notes that affected areas don’t always return completely to their exact pre-pregnancy color.
Which honestly made me feel slightly better because at least there is science behind this betrayal.
I thought maybe I had suddenly forgotten how to wash my neck properly.
Nope.
Pregnancy.
Again.
And then, of course, we have the stretch marks.
Oh Yes, The Stretch Marks
I knew stretch marks were possible. I had seen pregnant bellies before. I understood the concept.
Understanding the concept and discovering them on your own body are apparently two completely different experiences.
They appeared as my body stretched to make room for Alan, and after pregnancy they didn’t simply pack up and leave with the maternity clothes. Stretch marks usually fade and become less noticeable with time, but they’re essentially a form of scarring in the skin, so they may not disappear completely.
And mine are still here.
There are days when I genuinely don’t care about them. Then there are days when I’m changing clothes, catch myself in the mirror, and suddenly I’m inspecting my stomach like I’m conducting a full performance review.
Hmm. Okay. So we’re keeping these?
Apparently yes.
The strange thing about postpartum body changes is that you can intellectually understand exactly why they’re there and still struggle emotionally with seeing them. I know why my stomach stretched. I know why my skin changed. I know my body needed to make room for my baby. None of this is mysterious.
But knowing the reason doesn’t automatically make you confident about it.
And yes, I’m still trying to lose some of the weight. I want to feel healthier and stronger. I would like some of my old clothes to fit again, although my old shoes have clearly informed me that they will not be participating in this journey.
But I’ve also started realizing something uncomfortable.
I’ve spent a lot of time waiting to get my old body back.
What if some of it isn’t coming back?
Pregnancy Changes More Than Your Belly
When we talk about pregnancy changing the body, weight gets almost all of the attention. How much did you gain? How quickly did you lose it? Did you “bounce back”? Are you back to your pre-pregnancy weight?
As though pregnancy temporarily borrowed your body for nine months and then politely returned everything exactly where it found it.
That’s not really what happens.
Your body spends months rearranging itself to grow another human being. Your abdomen stretches. Your skin stretches with it. Stretch marks can develop as the skin rapidly expands, and although they often fade, they may remain visible. Hormonal changes can increase pigmentation, particularly in places that were already naturally darker. Your neck might darken. Your underarms might darken. Your nipples and areolae can darken. You might develop the linea nigra running down your stomach or melasma on your face.
Your breasts change. Your hair can behave completely differently during pregnancy and then start shedding after birth. Your pelvic floor and abdominal muscles have been under enormous physical stress. Diastasis recti, where the abdominal muscles separate as the abdomen expands, is common postpartum and can persist for some women.
Even your feet can change in length, width, arch height, and structure. Some changes resolve after pregnancy, while research suggests others can persist. Your body composition changes. Your skin may not look exactly the way it did before.
And sometimes you’re standing there a year later thinking, I agreed to pregnancy. I don’t remember agreeing to a full-body software update.
I knew pregnancy would change my body. Of course I did.
I just don’t think I fully understood that some of those changes could become part of my body now.
And there is a strange grief in that.
I Can Love Being a Mom and Still Miss My Old Body
This is something I’ve had to give myself permission to admit.
I love being Alan’s mom.
I love this little person more than I could ever explain properly. I wouldn’t trade motherhood to have my old waistline, my old skin, my old underarms, or my size 9½ feet back. I don’t regret what my body went through to bring him here.
But I can love motherhood deeply and still feel insecure about what happened to my body.
Those two things are allowed to exist together.
I don’t think we talk about that enough because mothers are sometimes expected to immediately turn every insecurity into gratitude. You mention your stretch marks and someone says, “But they’re your tiger stripes!” You say you miss your old body and someone reminds you that your body created life.
And yes, it did.
That is incredible.
But I still have to live inside this body every day.
I still have to get dressed in it. I still see myself in photographs. I still shop for clothes. I still see my stretch marks. I still compare my skin to old photos sometimes. I still have moments when I’m wearing something sleeveless and notice my underarms before I notice anything else. I still bring three sizes into a fitting room because I genuinely have no idea anymore. I still have days when I feel beautiful and days when I look in the mirror and think, Ay, ano na nangyari dito?
Gratitude doesn’t automatically erase insecurity.
I think both deserve space.
Then There Was My Career
My body wasn’t the only thing that changed when I became a mom.
My relationship with work changed too.
Before motherhood, I could organize my life around work much more easily. If I wanted to stay up finishing something, I could. If I wanted to take on another project, I mostly had to ask myself whether I had enough time. I could obsess over a system, spend hours fixing something nobody else would notice, or sit at my laptop far longer than any reasonable person should because I wanted to finish the thing.
Then I became someone’s mom.
Suddenly my time wasn’t completely mine anymore.
There were feeds, naps, bottles, appointments, sickness, milestones, tiny hands reaching for my keyboard, and days when I had carefully planned my schedule only for my child to look at that schedule and basically say, “That’s cute, Mama.”
Motherhood forced me to reconsider what being ambitious actually looks like.
For a while, I think part of me was scared that slowing down meant I wasn’t as capable anymore. My body had changed. My schedule had changed. My priorities had changed. I wasn’t working exactly the way I used to, and sometimes it felt like I was meeting a completely different version of myself.
There was the Reyn before motherhood.
And then there was… this woman.
Mom. Wife. Business owner. Systems person. Freelancer. Student. The person who knows exactly which cup her child prefers and can also spend an unreasonable amount of time figuring out why an automation isn’t firing.
I wasn’t sure how all those versions were supposed to fit together.
I Started Questioning Things I Never Used to Question
I wish I could say I came out of pregnancy feeling like a powerful goddess who had discovered a completely new level of confidence.
That would make a lovely Instagram caption.
It just wouldn’t be true.
There were times when I felt less confident, not more. I questioned my appearance. I questioned whether I could still build the career I wanted while being the kind of mother I wanted to be. I wondered whether clients would see me differently because my availability wasn’t unlimited anymore. I wondered whether slowing down meant I was falling behind.
And sometimes, when your body doesn’t feel like the body you remember and your life doesn’t look like the life you remember, your brain starts doing this lovely little thing where it questions everything else too.
Am I still good at this?
Am I still ambitious?
Can I still build something big?
Did I lose part of myself somewhere between pregnancy, bottles, deadlines, laundry, and trying to remember when I last washed my own hair?
Motherhood didn’t magically make me insecure, but it definitely introduced me to parts of myself I hadn’t had to negotiate with before.
Maybe I Don’t Need to Become the Old Me Again
This is the part I’m working on now.
Not mastering.
Working on.
I’m still trying to become healthier. I’m still working on my weight. I’m still learning what clothes make me feel good in this body. I’m still looking after my skin and hoping some of the changes continue to settle. I’m still figuring out how to take care of myself while taking care of another tiny human who believes my plate, my drink, my phone, and basically everything I own also belongs to him.
But I’m starting to question whether “getting myself back” should even be the goal.
Because back to what?
Back to 64 kilos?
Back to size 9½ shoes?
Back to my old skin?
Back to being able to work until ridiculous hours without someone waking up and calling for Mama?
Back to a version of myself who had never carried a child, given birth, or learned what it feels like to love another person so much that their fever can make your whole body tense?
I can’t go back to her.
And maybe I’m not supposed to.
I Am Still Strong, Smart and Capable
This is what I’m trying to remember as I step into this next chapter of my life and career.
My body changed.
My priorities changed.
My working hours changed.
My definition of success changed.
But my ability did not disappear.
I am still smart.
I am still capable.
I am still really freaking good at figuring things out.
I can still learn new technology, build systems, manage projects, solve complicated problems, create something from absolutely nothing, and sit in front of a broken workflow thinking, Okay, bakit ayaw mo gumana? until I eventually figure out why it refuses to cooperate.
Becoming a mother didn’t erase the woman I was before.
It added to her.
And when I really think about it, motherhood has required some of the same skills I’ve built my career around. Prioritizing when everything feels important. Adjusting when the plan completely falls apart. Figuring things out with incomplete information. Staying calm while another human is having a crisis. Creating routines. Managing approximately 4,000 tiny details nobody else realizes you’re tracking.
Honestly, motherhood might be the most intense operations role I’ve ever accepted, and the onboarding was terrible.
Strength Doesn’t Always Look Like “Bouncing Back”
I don’t really like the phrase bounce back anymore.
It makes it sound like pregnancy is something your body should recover from without leaving evidence behind.
As if success means becoming visually indistinguishable from the woman you were before your child existed.
Maybe strength isn’t getting back to exactly where I started.
Maybe it’s learning how to move forward from where I am.
I went from around 95 kilos to 75. I’m not where I want to be yet, but that doesn’t mean nothing has happened. My body has already carried me through pregnancy, childbirth, recovery, sleepless nights, sickness, work, stress, and the everyday physical reality of carrying around an increasingly heavy little boy who still occasionally decides Mama is transportation.
That body has stretch marks now.
My skin looks different.
Some areas are still darker than they used to be.
My feet apparently require their own postal code.
But this body carried me here.
It deserves care.
It doesn’t need punishment for not looking exactly the way it did before.
And I am saying that as someone who still struggles to believe it every single day.
I’m Building a Career That Fits My Life Now
The same thing is happening with my career.
I don’t want to rebuild the exact working life I had before motherhood.
I want to build one that fits who I am now.
I still want meaningful work. I still want to earn well. I still want to grow Systems & Snuggle. I still want to learn, build, create, work with amazing clients, and make something I’m proud of.
But I also want breakfast with my son.
I want afternoons where I can step away.
I want room for family trips, sick days, random toddler chaos, and days when life is simply more important than whatever is happening inside my inbox.
I used to think ambition meant constantly adding more.
More clients. More hours. More projects. More money. More accomplishments.
These days, I think ambition can also mean building something good enough that you don’t have to sacrifice everything else to keep it alive.
That’s the career I want now.
This Body Is Coming With Me
I’m still insecure sometimes.
I still have weight I would like to lose. I still see old photos and miss certain things about the woman in them. Sometimes I miss my old skin. Sometimes I look at my stretch marks and wish they weren’t there. Sometimes I wish my neck and underarms looked exactly the way they used to. I’m still learning how to dress this body and feel like myself in it.
And apparently I’m going to be buying size 12 shoes.
Fine.
But I’m trying to stop treating my current body like a temporary version of myself that I’m only allowed to love once I’ve successfully transformed it into something else.
This is my body now.
Maybe it will change again. Hopefully I’ll become healthier and stronger. Maybe some things will get closer to how they used to be. Some things probably won’t.
Either way, I don’t want to spend the next chapter of my life waiting to become worthy of feeling confident again.
Because when I look beyond the number on the scale, the stretch marks, the skin changes, the shoe size, and all the other little things I can pick apart if I stare at myself long enough, I actually like the woman I’m becoming.
She’s softer in some places.
She’s definitely more tired.
Her skin has apparently changed its mind about a few things.
Her feet are enormous.
But she’s also stronger than she gives herself credit for. She’s more patient. She’s clearer about what matters. She’s learning to build a career around a life instead of building a life around a career.
She’s a mom.
She’s still ambitious.
She’s still learning.
She’s still building.
She’s still Reyn.
And maybe I don’t need my old body or my old life back to prove that.
Maybe I just need to keep reminding myself that this version of me is strong, smart, capable, and still becoming.
