Biography
| A journalist for 14 years, Kellie is currently fashion editor of The Sydney Morning Herald. She was deputy editor of Harper’s BAZAAR for three years and executive editor of Who Weekly. In 2005 Kellie became a mother for the first time with the birth of her daughter, Amelia. It was this new journey that inspired her to write her first book My Body After Baby and to create this website as a place for women to share their own experiences as well as find valuable information and support. Kellie welcomed her second child in December 2008 and lives in Sydney, Australia, with her husband. From Kellie Welcome to my website. I must admit this site has been a long time coming. I did plan to have it up and running within three months of the launch of my first book, My Body After Baby, but life, work and motherhood has slowed the process. So I do apologise to those who bought my book at the end of 2007 and have been waiting for the site to launch. |
Author and journalist Kellie Hush.
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| When I became pregnant with my first child, I was like a lot of new mums and armed myself with information. I had two baby bibles, Birth and Baby Love, which discussed the week-by-week development stages of my unborn child, labour, breastfeeding and what to expect when baby first comes home. What I didn't read much about and wish I had is how I would feel after becoming a mum. Again there was plenty of information about how to take care of yourself immediately after becoming a mum - your pelvic floor, signs of postnatal depression and feelings about sex. But nothing was written extensively about how I would feel about myself physically after becoming a mother. How for a few weeks, even months, I wouldn't recognise myself in the mirror. That the body in the reflection didn't resemble the one I'd had nine months ago. The extra weight was one thing but the loss of control over my body and the loss of confidence were what shocked me the most. The thing that I found the hardest after becoming a mum was finding time to take care of myself. I have always looked after myself with diet and fitness. Being fit is important to me - for my self-esteem, wellbeing and mental state. After my daughter, Amelia, was born, for months I wasn't strong enough to run. Then, when I could, I wasn't able to run like I once could. Then the battle to find time to exercise at all made it even harder for me to regain my fitness and pre-baby shape. In hindsight, what I was struggling with most was that I wasn't ready to compromise. I wanted my life and my body to be the same as they had been before I had a baby. I wanted to be a mum more than anything in the world but I also wanted to be the person I was before she was born. I wasn't prepared and I didn't know how to deal with those changes. Everyone has different expectations and those were mine. That brings me to the reason I started writing the book My Body after Baby. I knew from speaking to family, friends and colleagues that I wasn't alone in feeling a loss of control. I interviewed 17 women, including Elle Macpherson, Antonia Kidman, Collette Dinnigan, cosmetics queen Natalie Bloom, fashion designer Pip Edwards, actor Kerry Armstrong and Sass & Bide's Heidi Middleton, who was diagnosed with breast cancer late into her second pregnancy. All had different expectations when it came to their bodies but a common thread was that we all experienced enormous change. Every person, regardless of their concern level about the physical, was affected by the changes to their life and the ability to think about themselves in the same way as they once did. Fashion designer Fiona Scanlan told me that she was "pretty spooked" by how long it took her to get back into shape after her first child, Maisie, was born. "I also always felt very tired. I think I had all these health issues associated with tiredness that were brought to the surface after Maisie was born. I thought that having a child wouldn't change anything. It was when Scanlan & Theodore was full-on, so I was working in the fashion business with a newborn hanging off my hip. Trying to do it all made me tired and stressed, so it took quite a long time to bounce back. I was also the first of my friends to have a child and had nobody with experience to draw from. As I say to some of my friends now, I felt like a pie in the oven with everyone watching and waiting." Like Scanlan, Elle Macpherson was running a business when both her sons were born. She did allow herself a short maternity-leave period and time to get back into her pre-baby shape but she did put pressure on herself to be the perfect mother in other aspects of her life. "I now know you don't have to get everything perfect in those first three, six or 12 months. How I am today with my children on a daily basis is what counts. I don't believe in scaring people by saying, 'If you don't do it all perfectly right after they are born then your kids are going to be troubled.' I don't believe that to be true. I believe that your baby will be fine; it's us, the mothers, who suffer the most in those early days." Television presenter and mother-of-two Sharon McKenzie says she got a few odd looks when she arrived at a rental store heavily pregnant, wanting to rent a treadmill. "For my second pregnancy, the week before Maddie was born, I hired myself a treadmill, knowing how housebound I would be in those first few weeks. "The guy in the rental store was looking at me thinking, 'Here comes another one of these mad pregnant women. She's having a complete berko day and has decided she needs to do something about the weight.' And, yes, I did want to be prepared because I knew what was ahead of me and I wanted to have everything organised. I would get up in the morning, feed Maddie, and jump on the treadmill. If she was unsettled I'd put her in her rocker next to me and she would settle to the noise of me pounding away on this treadmill. And, believe me, I was pounding away. I thought, 'Look, this is something I am doing for myself. I am giving myself to everyone else for the rest of the day, so I just need this half an hour.' It cleared my head and I had more energy." Amelia will be three in November and in December number two arrives. Now I spend more time running around after her than I do at the park. Compared with my life pre-baby there isn't a lot of time for me but my priorities have changed as have my challenges. The big one now is balancing work and family life, which is something every working mother faces. Please email me with your stories and what you would like to see on the website. kellie@bodyafterbaby.com.au |
