The Core You Had Is Not the Core You Have

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There is a moment, somewhere between three months and a year postpartum, when a woman tries to do something she used to do — pick up the toddler with the baby still on her hip, run for the bus, jump on the trampoline — and her body answers in a language she does not recognise. Something leaks. Something domes. Something feels hollow where it used to feel held. The first time it happens, most women assume it is a passing thing. The second or third time, they begin to suspect it isn't.

This is the part of the postnatal story that doesn't get the airtime it should. The pregnancy is documented. The birth is documented. The first weeks are documented in exhausting detail. And then, somewhere around the six-week check, the medical system politely lets you go, and you are left with a body that has been through one of the most significant physiological events of your life and very little guidance on how to train it.

The Movement for Mummas class at Infuse Health exists for that gap — a postnatal class in Newcastle built around what the pelvic floor and core actually need after pregnancy. This is a piece about why the class exists, what's happening physiologically, and what training for it should look like. 

A full-term pregnancy stretches the abdominal wall substantially and loads the pelvic floor with the weight of a baby, a placenta, and several litres of additional fluid for the better part of a year. These are not injuries. They are normal physiological adaptations. But they are adaptations, and they don't reverse on their own timeline simply because the baby is out.

Three changes matter most for training.

The linea alba — the connective tissue that runs down the centre of the abdomen — thins and widens. In late pregnancy, almost all women have some degree of separation between the rectus abdominis muscles (Mota et al., 2015). This is called diastasis recti, and it is universal in the third trimester rather than a sign that something has gone wrong. What varies is how the tissue recovers afterwards, and how well the deeper layers of the core learn to manage pressure across that midline once the baby is born.

The pelvic floor — the layered hammock of muscle and fascia at the base of the pelvis — is loaded under tension for months and then, in vaginal birth, stretched substantially in a short window. Caesarean birth changes the picture but does not exempt the pelvic floor from forty weeks of progressive load. Either way, the muscles need to relearn the timing of contraction and release, and the connective tissue takes longer than the muscles do.

The whole pressure-management system shifts. In a well-functioning core, the diaphragm at the top, the deep abdominals at the front and sides, the pelvic floor at the bottom, and the deep spinal stabilisers at the back work together to manage the pressure inside the abdomen. Pregnancy disrupts the geometry. Postnatal recovery is, at the deepest level, the process of these four surfaces re-learning to work as a coordinated system.

If the system doesn't relearn — and it often doesn't relearn on its own — pressure escapes through the path of least resistance. That path might be the pelvic floor (leaking when you sneeze, jump, run). It might be the linea alba (doming or coning when you sit up, lift, or hold a plank). It might be the lower back (dull ache that won't shift). The symptom looks like a local problem. It is usually a system problem.

The instinct, when the middle feels weak, is to train the middle harder. Crunches. Sit-ups. Planks. The instinct is reasonable. The application is often counterproductive in the early postnatal months.

Movements that produce high intra-abdominal pressure across an under-recovered linea alba can drive the doming pattern they're meant to fix. Movements that load the pelvic floor before it has restored its base contraction-and-release coordination can entrench the leaking they're meant to resolve. This is not a moral judgement on traditional core work — those exercises have their place once the foundation is back. It is a sequencing problem. You cannot load a system that hasn't yet relearned how to manage what it's already carrying.

What postnatal core training requires, in the first phase, is not more force. It is the restoration of timing. The diaphragm needs to descend on the inhale; the pelvic floor needs to lengthen with it; the deep abdominals need to recruit on the exhale; the pelvic floor needs to lift in coordination. None of that is loud work. All of it is foundational.

Movement for Mummas is a 50-minute postnatal class at Infuse Health, in Adamstown. The class blends strength training, calisthenics, and yoga, and it runs the same shape every week — a coached session that asks the deep core and pelvic floor to work, then builds out into whole-body strength and movement, with a yoga component that brings the breath and the nervous system back down at the end.

The structure is the same for everyone in the room. What changes from one mum to the next is how the coach scales the movements and where she points your attention. A woman six weeks past her clearance might be cued into a slower exhale on every press and a smaller range on the squat, with the same shape held by the woman next to her at twice the load and full depth. Both are doing the class. Both are getting what the class is built to give. The work does not need to look the same between two bodies for it to be the same work.

What this means in practice is that you do not arrive into a class designed for the most fragile person in the room, and you do not arrive into a class that ignores the recovery you are still in the middle of. You arrive into a class that has been programmed knowing both kinds of body will be there, and a coach watching closely enough to give each one the version that fits.

The class is coached by Sara — our Studio Manager, a movement and yoga teacher, and a mum herself. The room is small enough that she can see what's happening at the midline when you exhale on a press, whether you're holding your breath on the way up out of a squat, or whether your ribs are flaring when they should be stacking. None of that tells her directly what your pelvic floor is doing — the pelvic floor is internal, and no coach sees it from across the room. But those external signs are the proxies a good postnatal coach reads, because they're how pressure management shows up on the outside. Catching them is the difference between a postnatal class that works and a postnatal class that just looks like one. 

The other thing that's different about this class: babies and toddlers come too. Sometimes they're tearing around the studio while their mum works through a kettlebell complex. Sometimes they need a cuddle mid-set, and the baby becomes the load — squats with a wriggling ten-kilo human are a session in themselves. The class always includes something for the little ones — think Hokey Pokey or Head Shoulders Knees and Toes — folded in alongside the work. None of that is a compromise on training quality. It's the design.

This is not a clearance to skip seeing a pelvic health physiotherapist. If you are in early postnatal recovery — dealing with leakage, prolapse symptoms, persistent pain, a significant diastasis, scar pain from caesarean or perineal tearing, or any symptom that worries you — a pelvic health physio is the right first call. If you don't already have someone, Female Focus Physiotherapy in Newcastle is who we'd point you towards — they specialise in women's pelvic health. Their assessment and ours sit on different parts of the recovery: theirs diagnostic and hands-on, ours strength-based and applied. The class does not replace the work a physio does, and where a physio has set you a program, we'll work with that rather than around it.

This is also not a class that demands you be a year postpartum, or six weeks postpartum, or any particular distance from birth. It demands that you have your six-week check. After that, the program meets you where you are.

Movement for Mummas runs at the studio in Adamstown on Monday and Friday mornings at 9:45am. If those times don't fit your week, or you're looking to train more often, we'd point you towards a few classes on the timetable that work well for mums for the same reasons Mummas does — small rooms, coached scaling, and a pace that suits people who didn't get a full night's sleep. Longevity on Thursday at 9:30am is the closest in pace and shape. The lunchtime Movement & Strength sessions at 12:15pm on Tuesday and Thursday are the next step up in intensity, and a few of our mums move into those once they've been training a while. None of these are formal postnatal classes — Mummas is — but they're rooms where you'll be seen, scaled, and looked after.

If you have just had a baby — first, second, third, fifth — and the body that's come out the other side does not feel like the body you went in with, that is not a failure of effort and it is not something you have to figure out alone. There is a way back, and it is more specific and more sequential than the internet tends to suggest.

If you'd like to come and see what the class is like, the simplest way in is a trial class for $10 — book here through Momence. You can also call the studio if you'd rather have a short conversation about where you're at first; either way, the program will be set from there.

Infuse Health is a boutique movement and wellness studio at 4/10 William Street, Adamstown. You can start with a 4-week intro, a personal training session, or a single class — whatever fits what you're working with. Bookings through infusehealth.au.