Restoring Your Postpartum Core from the Inside Out
Part One: Restoring Your Postpartum Core from the Inside Out
Part Two: Can You Get Rid of a Lower Belly Pooch Years After Having Kids?
Part Three: Can You Get Rid of a Low Belly Pooch Without Surgery?
Part Four: How to Fix Your Postpartum Low Belly (Without Doing a Single Crunch)
You're six months postpartum. A year. Maybe even two. You've lost the baby weight. You're back in your pre-pregnancy jeans. But your stomach still looks pregnant.
You're doing everything they told you to do: ab workouts, cardio, HIIT, cutting carbs, drinking more water, taking the supplements and yet, nothing seems to change when you look in the mirror. The bloat. The pooch. The separation. It’s still there.
As a pelvic floor physical therapist, I hear this frustration from nearly every mom I work with. And I want you to know: it's not your fault, and you're not doing anything wrong. The reason your stomach hasn’t flattened isn’t because you’re not trying hard enough. It’s because your core isn’t weak. It’s disconnected.
What you’re seeing is the result of three specific systems that had to adapt during pregnancy to support your baby... but have not yet fully restored their original function postpartum. Let’s break down the real reasons your belly hasn’t gone down, and how to begin healing from the inside out.
Reason 1: Your Breathing Pattern Changed During Pregnancy and has Not Yet Reset
During pregnancy, your growing baby shifted everything. Your diaphragm was pushed upward, your ribcage expanded, and your body adapted by switching to shallower breathing patterns just to make room for breath.
Unfortunately, most women never return to full, functional breathing after birth. Instead of breathing into the lower ribs and sides of the ribcage, they stay stuck in a pattern where the diaphragm drops, leading to short, shallow, compressive breaths that lower your organs and never fully engage your abdominal wall or pelvic floor.
Why does this matter for your core? Because your breath isn’t just for oxygen. It’s the foundation of your functional 24/7 core activation. Your diaphragm and pelvic floor were designed to move together, rhythmically, with every breath:
-
On inhale, your diaphragm expands and turns into the shape of a dinner plate, and your pelvic floor relaxes slightly.
-
On exhale, they rise together, reflexively activating your deepest core muscles and fascia reflexively.
This natural, automatic rhythm is what gently holds your belly in and keeps that nice flat shape we all want; not force, not crunches, not constant bracing. It’s the quiet automatic coordination of your inner core that does the heavy lifting. Literally.
But when your breath stays shallow postpartum, that reflexive activation never kicks in, and your core muscles don’t “sync up” again. And the result? A belly that stays distended, not because it’s weak, but because it’s disconnected.
The good news? Your body remembers. She just needs the right conditions to reconnect. Inside The Core Recovery Method®, I guide you through gentle, science-backed breathwork that restores this natural coordination of your core muscles. You’ll learn decompression and hypopresssive breathing, techniques that reduce pressure, activate your deep core reflexively, and turns each of your 20,000 daily breaths into healing for your postpartum belly.
Get Started Today With My FREE Guide: What Every Woman Needs to Know About Her Pelvic Floor
Reason 2: Your Abdominal Fascia Lost its Structural Integrity
Fascia is the connective tissue that wraps around your muscles and organs like a bodysuit. When it’s healthy, it provides subtle but essential tension: the kind that gently holds your abdominal wall in place without conscious effort.
But during pregnancy, that fascia had a big job to do: stretch. To make space for your growing baby, your abdominal fascia lengthened far beyond her normal capacity. And after birth? It doesn’t automatically snap back.
Even if you’re doing a bunch of "core exercises", loose, overstretched fascia can’t hold your belly in. Your muscles might be stronger, but without that foundational fascial tension, your organs and tissues continue to press outward, and your belly stays distended.
Here’s why this happens: Fascia adapts to the positions and forces it experiences most consistently. If your belly remains protruded day after day, your fascia memorizes that position. It adapts by staying loose and long, gradually losing even more tension over time.
This is also why many women say: “My stomach looks okay in the morning, but by the end of the day, it’s bulging again.” Gravity is taken out of the equation at night and your fascia can finally rest and start heal, so the belly goes back in. But without restored fascial support during the day, gravity pulls everything forward and down, and the low belly protrudes more and more as the day goes on.
The good news? Fascia responds beautifully to the right kind of input. Inside The Core Recovery Method®, you’ll learn exactly how to realign your posture and movement patterns to give your fascia the mechanical stimulus it needs to restore its proper tension again. When you stack your body in the right way and move with intention, your fascia starts to “remember” how to support your belly again, naturally and without strain.
Reason 3: Your Core Muscles Lost Their Reflexive Activation Pattern
Before pregnancy, your deep core muscles activated automatically in response to movement, breathing, and postural changes. You didn't have to think about engaging them. They fired reflexively to stabilize your spine and hold your belly in throughout every activity.
Pregnancy disrupted this automatic activation pattern. Your muscles had to adapt to constant changes in load distribution, organ position, and breathing mechanics. By the time you delivered, your nervous system had completely reorganized how it controls your core.
After birth, without specific retraining, your core muscles don't remember how to fire reflexively. They wait for conscious engagement instead of activating automatically. This is why you can "suck in" and make your belly flatter temporarily, but it protrudes again the moment you stop thinking about it.
Your core muscles (the pelvic floor, diaphragm, and abdominals) should activate slightly before every movement you make. This pre-activation stabilizes your spine, organs and holds your belly in. Postpartum, this anticipatory firing pattern is often completely absent. Your muscles react to movement instead of preparing for it, which means they're always a step behind and can't provide adequate support.
Your body was never meant to be consciously managed in this way. She was designed to self-regulate, to respond reflexively, to hold you together without constant conscious control.
The Core Recovery Method® retrains this reflexive activation pattern through breath-led movement techniques. You'll learn how to reconnect the communication between your diaphragm, pelvic floor, and deep abdominal muscles so your core fires automatically again, the way it did before pregnancy.
When your breath, fascia, and reflexive core activation are restored, everything changes, from the shape of your waist to the way you feel in your own skin. Healing your postpartum core isn’t about doing more. It’s about working with your body, not against it.
That’s exactly what Emily discovered when she used The Core Recovery Method® after her second birth. Her experience is proof that when you give your body the right inputs, healing can happen faster, and deeper, than you ever imagined:
"I have been to about 6 other physical therapists and your program was the only thing that worked. Thank you for your incredible physical therapy support. My body felt better three months postpartum than it did one year postpartum with my first. The biggest change I noticed was in my waist. After my first pregnancy, even though I’d returned to my pre-pregnancy weight within a year, my waist always felt puffy.
But this time, after starting your program just three days postpartum, the puffiness disappeared, and my waist quickly returned to its hourglass shape. I could also feel my organs settling back into place, which made a big difference in getting my digestion back to normal. I have been telling everyone I know about your work. Thank you!"
Emily Wofford, Mother, Somatic Therapist, Kauai, Hawaii
What These Three Systems Need to Function Properly Again
Your breath, fascia, and deep core aren’t isolated parts, they’re a unified system. And healing one without the others rarely works. That’s why so many traditional postpartum workouts fall short: they ignore the deep coordination your body depends on.
To truly flatten your belly and restore your core, you need a method that speaks your body’s language: one that rebuilds breath mechanics, restores fascial tension, and reactivates reflexive core support all at once. This is exactly what we do inside The Core Recovery Method®.
You’ll learn a proven, step-by-step approach to reconnect these systems from the inside out- without crunches, without force, and without wasting time on strategies that don’t address the root cause.
Because here’s the truth: Your postpartum belly isn’t permanent. No matter how long it’s been since you gave birth, your body is wired to recover. She just needs the right tools, and the safety to remember.
