The workout had already been interrupted three times before it properly began.
First a snack request. Then a toddler needing help in the bathroom. Then a baby waking early from a nap. The dumbbells sat in the middle of the living room floor while the laundry waited and dinner still wasn’t planned. Half the workout done. Maybe.
If that sounds familiar, you’re not in early postpartum anymore. The acute recovery is behind you. You’re past the weeks where simply getting through the day counted as enough. You’re somewhere more complicated than that — somewhere most fitness advice doesn’t really cover.
Not the crisis of early motherhood. The years after it.
Nobody warned you it wouldn’t get easier
There’s a belief a lot of mothers carry in this phase, and it’s quieter than the postpartum version. It’s not “I should be recovering faster.” It’s something harder to name: I should have figured this out by now.
Whatever “figured out” even means, after a body has grown and birthed children, adjusted to years of broken sleep, and kept functioning through a level of physical and emotional demand that doesn’t really have an official name.
Nobody tells you that motherhood doesn’t end after postpartum. Neither does the relationship with your body. For a lot of women, it just quietly keeps asking for attention, years after everyone stopped checking in.
The load you’re carrying that nobody sees
Children need to be carried, comforted, fed, watched, soothed, answered, and entertained — often all at once, often while you’re already exhausted. That’s the physical load.
Then there’s the other one running in the background: groceries, school forms, birthday presents, appointments, meal planning, spare clothes, laundry — everything it takes to keep a household functioning, still landing heavily on many mothers whether or not it’s ever actually discussed.
This is why movement can feel so supportive in this phase — not just physically. After a whole day of being touched, climbed on, and needed, a workout can be one of the only moments where nobody is asking you for anything. Less about fitness, more about coming back to yourself.
It also explains why your body might still be asking for support, even years later — leaking during a run, hip pain, tight shoulders, a lower back that’s never quite settled since. That’s not damage. That’s the physical toll of years spent carrying, lifting, and leaning forward for everyone else, rarely recognised as the labour it actually is. And it’s not too late to address any of it.
Three beliefs worth dropping
- “If it’s not the full session, it’s not worth doing.” It’s worth doing. A fifteen-minute session that actually happens beats the perfect hour that keeps getting postponed.
- “Wanting to feel better in my body is vain.” Most mothers just want more energy, less pain, and to feel like themselves again. That’s not vanity. That’s maintenance.
- “Good mothers put themselves last.” Caring for yourself isn’t separate from caring for your family — it’s how you stay someone who has something left to give.
What training actually looks like now
Nobody hands you a peaceful, uninterrupted workout in this phase, so stop waiting for one.
A toddler climbs across your mat. A baby needs feeding mid-set. A nap-time session ends at fifteen minutes because someone woke up early. Some days movement happens while you’re simultaneously watching, carrying, and comforting in real time.
None of that makes it less meaningful. Learning to train inside imperfect conditions isn’t a lesser version of training — for a lot of women in this phase, it’s simply what training is now. Not because you stopped valuing it. Because life asks for more flexibility than it used to, and the version of strength that survives here is the adaptable kind.
If you’re finding it isolating — and plenty of women do, in this exact phase, when old routines and communities quietly disappear — a mothers’ strength class, a walking group, or even one other mum in the same season can change everything. Sometimes movement becomes community. Sometimes it’s the only hour in the week that’s actually yours.
Where the fifteen minutes actually comes from
Nobody hands you free time in this phase. You have to go looking for it, or build it yourself. A few places it tends to hide:
- Nap time, claimed on purpose. Not the whole nap — just the first fifteen minutes of it, before the laundry and emails pull you away.
- While they’re eating. A toddler in a high chair with breakfast is a genuinely workable window for a few sets of squats or a resistance band circuit.
- Baby-wearing sessions. A carrier turns “I have no childcare” into “I have added resistance.” Squats, lunges, step-ups, and carries all work with a baby on board, and for a lot of babies the movement itself is soothing.
- Outsource the babysitting, briefly. You don’t need a full evening off — you need thirty minutes. Ask your husband, a grandparent, a neighbour, or another mum for a straight swap: you watch her kids on Tuesday, she watches yours on Thursday.
- Mothers’ strength classes and postnatal groups. Look specifically for ones built around this — some run alongside a play corner, some are baby-friendly by design, and a few (more common in parts of Europe) are attached to gyms with proper daycare on site. Worth asking directly if your gym offers this, even informally.
- Trade “later” for “now.” The instinct is to wait for a better window — nap time will surely come, or the weekend, or when things calm down. It won’t reliably arrive. The fifteen minutes available right now, imperfect as it is, beats the perfect hour you’re still waiting for.
None of these need to happen every day. Two or three sessions a week, however they get squeezed in, is enough to feel the difference.
You’re not failing. You’re adapting.
If none of this feels like it’s “getting easier” the way you assumed it would by now — that’s not a sign something’s wrong with you. It’s a sign nobody told you the truth about this phase in the first place.
You don’t need the perfect hour. You need permission to work with the fifteen minutes you actually have.
If this resonates, the first chapter of my book — Strength Through the Messy & Beyond — is free to read right now. It’s an honest look at why so much fitness advice was never built for the reality of women’s lives, motherhood very much included.
Daniëlle van der Leest
Women’s Strength & Wellbeing Coach | Founder of ActiveWomen | Mum of 3
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