Kylie Kelce struggled to fully embrace her postpartum body until she welcomed her third baby in 2023.
During a conversation with fellow mom Ciara on the Thursday, August 14, episode of her “Not Gonna Lie” podcast, Kelce, 33, shared the moment she accepted her stretch marks and post-baby figure.
“To me, I find [postpartum bodies] jarring, and I’ve done it four times. Every single time, like, getting dressed postpartum is an absolute nightmare,” Kylie, who shares four daughters — Wyatt, 5, Elliotte, 4, Bennett, 2, and Finn, 4 months — with husband Jason Kelce, shared.
She continued: “It is because you’re, like, ‘Oh, the baby is out. Like, I should be able to fit in my jeans again,’ and you just … you don’t. And I truly think when we talk about, like, getting to a point where you can appreciate the way your body has changed, the stretch marks that you now have, it is so important to recognize that it’s not that you pushed the baby out and you looked at your body and you were like, ‘You know what? I still got it.’ Because I don’t think … if you had that experience, amazing. That was not mine. It took me until probably after my third baby to be like, ‘You know what? My stomach is never going to look the same.’ And that’s OK, because the tiny humans that I have created with my body … you just have to sit in this moment of gratitude.”
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Ciara, 39, who also has four children — son Future, 11, with ex Future and kids Sienna, 8, Win, 5, and Amora, 20 months, with husband Russell Wilson — agreed, saying she “wouldn’t have it any other way.”
“But it is a build,” Kylie continued. “You might not have the moment that you realize your body has changed, but you can get there.”
Kylie brought up the conversation after praising Ciara for posting a video of herself proudly showing off her stretch marks last week.
“I cannot even begin to tell you how much I love that,” Kylie told the “Level Up” singer.
In the video, Ciara sang along to the melody of “Hokey Pokey” after explaining, “You all know I am a mom of my precious four babies, and they have blessed me with these stretch marks, and I’m like, why am I gonna cover up what I can show off?”
Ciara told Kylie that once she realized her stomach would “never be the same” as she faced diastasis recti — a pregnancy condition where the abdominal muscles separate from the connective tissue down the middle of the stomach — she started to let go of the pressure to be her pre-baby self.
“I used to get stretch mark removal. OK? And so, not all your stretch marks go away but it did help me out a good bit with some spots,” Ciara explained, adding that after her last pregnancy she decided not to do the procedure again. “I’m like, ‘You know what? These are my beauty marks.’ Like, that’s where my whole inspiration from [my album] Beauty Marks came from so, yes, you know, I finally have turned the corner on embracing those imperfect marks on my body, because they do tell a story. They are part of, like, you know, who I am and I can’t change those things. Like, those things actually have, like, depth to them, in reference to where the marks come from.”
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Kylie has used her podcast to be open and honest about the motherhood experience and the toxicity of bounce-back culture.
“You know what’s f***ed up? The phrase ‘bounce back’ after pregnancy,” Kylie said in July. “Here’s the problem: Every single person I’ve seen grow a human being and pop them out have rebounded in their own time.”
She continued: “For all the people who are in the comments saying things like, ‘You look fantastic after having Finn,’ or, ‘You look amazing after having your fourth,’ first of all, I know that you mean that nicely, but at the end of the day, if I looked like this and I hadn’t just had my fourth child, would you say I look tired? Because, yes, I’m very tired.
“My point is that we don’t need to comment on the fact that a woman is postpartum and how she is doing with her postpartum journey physically,” she concluded.
