Highlight: Dealing with Post-Partum Criticism

Today's highlight is on Emily Harrington's postpartum journey, including her rapid recovery and return to climbing and skiing.

Emily faced criticism for her decision to resume physical activities soon after giving birth, but she stood firm in her belief that it's essential to do what feels right for oneself.

Join us as Emily opens up about the challenges of navigating postpartum life, including the emotional and physical toll of breastfeeding and the pressures of body image.

Topics Covered:

• Birth Experience and Early Postpartum Period
• Challenges of Body Image and Breastfeeding
• Return to Climbing and Skiing

The Lattice jingle is brought to you by Devin Dabney, music producer of the outdoor industry who also hosts the American Climbing Project.

Transcript

Emily Harrington (00:00)
I think my entire labor experience was six hours. So it all happened very fast. But as a result, it was like really, it was like from zero to 100.

Mina (00:06)
Oh wow.

Emily Harrington (00:12)
like incredibly, incredibly painful. But other than that, it was a very normal birth experience. I did have some tearing, so I had stitches, but otherwise it was pretty just, you know, I don't know, basic average birth experience, very average size baby. Go ahead.

Mina (00:15)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, sure. Sure, sure. Yeah.

Cool, and so when you returned to kind of like that initial postpartum period, what did that look like for you in terms of like returning to climbing and also skiing and things like that? Was there like a long period of time where you were just focused on kind of the basics of recovery before going back to sport specific stuff or did you go back quite quickly? How did that look like? What did that look like for you?

Emily Harrington (01:05)
I mean, I tried to be patient and I tried to, you know, be gentle with myself, but I did get back fairly quickly. I got back to climbing within a few weeks, just pretty mellow, what I would consider mellow climbing. And then skiing, we actually had the best season of snow. Like basically my...

Arrow was born and it just started snowing in Tahoe and it didn't stop snowing. And it was essentially the biggest winter of our lives. And so there was a lot of stoke around skiing. And I definitely pushed it on that front. I went skiing, I think, like 10 days after giving birth. And it was, yeah, it was like, yeah. You know, and granted it was like pretty mellow.

Mina (01:42)
Hehehehehehe

Whoa, good effort.

Emily Harrington (02:01)
You know, it was relatively mellow, relatively shorter days, but I did get back really quickly. And that's actually where I got the most negativity on social media and all of that from other moms and other women was like, you're going back too fast. Like you're, you know, you're gonna ruin your uterus. Like all of these, like, again, just like random things that were a little bit insulting and.

Mina (02:13)
interesting.

Emily Harrington (02:29)
That was kind of the hardest, honestly, with people telling me that I shouldn't be doing what I'm doing. And I was like, I'm just trying to feel sane and do my thing and I have a baby and just figuring it out. It's like everyone else. Yeah, that was an interesting one, actually. I got a lot of negativity for climbing too soon or skiing too soon, all of those things. But ultimately, you gotta do what feels good.

Mina (02:36)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

That's so interesting that it's that side of things that you got more criticism.

Emily Harrington (03:00)
Yeah, it was. It was surprising. I think that's why I was, I think that's why it affected me, is I was a little caught off guard. Because I was like, wait a minute, like, why is everyone telling me what I should be doing? After I have a baby? Yeah.

Mina (03:09)
Yeah.

Yeah, definitely.

Emily Harrington (03:19)
but I don't know, I think there's this whole, and I get it, I actually kinda get it. I think there's a whole getting back to, getting back and getting your body back, and there's this whole culture behind that, and maybe I think there's this idea that as female professional athletes coming back really soon perpetuates that ideal and puts pressure on women and all of that, but I was just trying to do what felt good, and I'm naturally someone who's gonna push it.

Mina (03:21)
And then.

Emily Harrington (03:50)
Ha ha!

Mina (03:52)
Yeah, yeah, and also I think as a community we have to understand that there's a range of experiences. There's a range of birth experiences, there's a range of postpartum experiences, and all of those things. And there's so much complexity that goes into how you feel postpartum that there is gonna be this range of when people go back and when people feel safe and comfortable going back. And it should be acceptable at either extreme of that really and anywhere in the middle.

Emily Harrington (04:13)
Yeah, absolutely.

It should, yeah. Yeah, but I do kind of understand. Like if you had a really traumatic birth and it was really hard postpartum physically to get back, I think that there can be some sort of like, put, you know, a little bit of, I don't know what the word is, like resentment or kind of like a little bit of, yeah, just kind of feeling shitty when you see other women kind of getting back at it really quickly.

Mina (04:29)
Mm.

Emily Harrington (04:46)
I think because there is such a wide range of experiences and it is so emotional and you're kind of going through so much, I think that when you're struggling, it can be hard to see on social media when it looks like someone is having an easy time, which it wasn't easy. It's not easy raising a child and having a newborn and being postpartum, but sometimes I think you can kind of gather that from that tiny little sliver of social media that you see.

Mina (04:46)
Yeah.

Mm.

Yeah, it's that classic Instagram highlights issue, isn't it? That we don't see the full picture. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Emily Harrington (05:19)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, which maybe I could have done a better job of telling the full picture, but I didn't feel terrible after giving birth. Like I was more or less just, I think, middle of the road, normal.

Mina (05:34)
Mmm, yeah.

And I wanted to ask you about a bit about body image because you've openly discussed kind of body image previously on podcasts. And of course there was the film Light directed by Caroline Treadway that you took part in. And how did that kind of history of feelings and behaviours interact with your experience postpartum? Because obviously it's a time of like huge bodily change. I mean, I remember after my son, I was like, oh, I still look six months pregnant but there's no baby in there anymore. And things change really rapidly.

Emily Harrington (05:44)
Mm-hmm.

Mina (06:05)
but you know, I certainly felt like my body was really alien to me, and there was certainly a bit of like, whoa, what's going on here, and what does the future look like?

Emily Harrington (06:17)
Yeah, it was hard. It was really hard. I, you know, I thankfully had this little crew of women who were going through it pretty much at the same time as me, or, you know, they were six months ahead of me. And we have this little WhatsApp group that we were kind of chatting on and it was really helpful to have that support to be able to talk about those things to be able to be really vulnerable and be like, I don't

Like My body feels totally different. I don't know if it's ever gonna be back to how it was before. I miss it. Like, you know, I'm really struggling. And it was just kind of, it was hard. It was really hard. I think as an athlete, it's really hard. to kind of, even though, you know, You can say all the right things, like female bodies are amazing and we are amazing and we do amazing things and postpartum is this amazing time, but...

multiple things can be true at once. It was this beautiful, magical time, but it was also really hard emotionally and physically, and just hard to feel not like myself. And I think one thing that I really underestimated was the whole like breastfeeding process and how hard that would be and how taxing and how time consuming and how sort of like trapped I would feel by it.

Mina (07:40)
Hmm, yeah, especially in those early days where it can be like, you know, periods of cluster feeding and just, it can feel like, like you say, a mixture of this amazing bonding experience and just like overwhelming at the same time. It's a lot.

Emily Harrington (07:57)
Totally overwhelming. And so, so much. It's so much. Yeah, I really underestimated it.

Mina (08:07)
Yeah. And actually you mentioned on social media that you stopped breastfeeding quite recently. Was it November 2023? So quite recently.

Emily Harrington (08:14)
Yeah, I think end of October, yeah, was when it was kind of, it just naturally, I wanted to go a whole year, but Arrow was kind of not as into it anymore. And it was, you know, getting to the point where I just wasn't breastfeeding him very often. It was like maybe a few minutes every day. And yeah, it just, it just kind of naturally tapered off, which I think was again, like a very, you know, a very fortunate process. Like we were both sort of over it.

And it totally changed everything. My body changed, my brain changed, like my energy levels changed, everything shifted. And it was kind of crazy because I kind of just had accepted that I was, I think I almost didn't remember what it was like to not be pregnant or postpartum or breastfeeding. It's kind of like two years. And I didn't realize how...

Mina (08:55)
Mmm.

Emily Harrington (09:12)
tired I was and how much energy I was expending. And yeah, it was just this crazy realization of, oh my God, like I kind of feel like I used to feel, I think, but that was so long ago.

Mina (09:25)
Yeah, it's like you're recognising this old version of yourself or your energy levels that suddenly comes knocking and you're like, oh, that was missing.

Emily Harrington (09:29)
Yeah, it was so funny. Yeah, you like, I didn't even remember that was missing. I just thought I was, I just thought this is how I am. Like this is, this is who I am. This is what it's gonna be like. And then as soon as I stopped, I think women, I think all women have, again, have a very different experience with breastfeeding and with stopping breastfeeding. And for me, it was this dramatic shift.

Mina (09:57)
Yeah, I've certainly heard that and that there can be quite an emotional like come down almost as well from the kind of hormonal changes

Emily Harrington (10:03)
Yeah, yeah, and I didn't experience that, but I've had friends that were like really terrified to stop breastfeeding because they got so much like serotonin from the act of actually breastfeeding, but that wasn't me. So when I quit, it was just like, I just felt like I had more energy and I felt like I had my body back in a way.

Mina (10:14)
Mmm.

Yeah, it's so interesting. It's amazing how such a kind of biological process can be so varied for different people. Just like some women are horrifically sick for nine months when they're pregnant and some women feel great. Like, you'd think that there would be a bit more like of a standard experience, yeah. Which makes the whole thing really hard because you don't know what you're committing to.

Emily Harrington (10:41)
Yeah.

Consistency, yeah, totally. And I guess, yeah, it does because it's hard. You don't know what you're gonna get and then you don't know what kind of kid you're gonna get, like what kind of infant or newborn you're gonna have. And I think that's why, that's the biggest lesson I've learned is you cannot compare what you're going through to what anyone else is going through or what they will go through. Or if you have another and go through a second pregnancy, that also could be

completely different than the first. So I think the biggest lesson I learned through all of this is to just never

Mina (11:20)
Yep.