After Baby Weight Gain: How I Found GLP-1

Everyone said the baby weight would “just fall off.” It didn’t.

My daughter Zara is the best thing that ever happened to me. She’s two now — chattering, running, climbing everything, laughing at everything, an absolute tornado of joy. I would do it all again for her in a heartbeat.

But I need to be honest about what “it all” included.

A pregnancy complicated by pre-eclampsia. Bed rest for the last ten weeks. A weight gain of 55 pounds. An emergency C-section. Six weeks of recovery where I couldn’t lift anything heavier than my baby. Breastfeeding that made me hungrier than I’d ever been in my life. Postpartum depression that took three months to diagnose and another three to stabilize.

And then, when the dust settled and I finally had the bandwidth to think about my own body again, I was 18 months postpartum, 40 pounds over my pre-pregnancy weight, and so tired I couldn’t imagine adding one more thing to my plate.

Everyone — my mother, my sister, my coworkers, random women on Instagram — had told me the baby weight would “just come off.” Breastfeeding burns 500 calories a day, they said. You’ll be chasing a toddler around, they said. Give it time, they said.

I gave it 18 months. It didn’t come off.

Your experience may differ from mine. This is my personal story, not medical advice.

The Numbers

Before pregnancy: 147 lbs at 5’6”. I was a runner. Not competitive, but consistent — three or four miles, three times a week. I ate well. I felt strong. I liked my body, which I realize now was a privilege I didn’t fully appreciate.

End of pregnancy: 202 lbs. Fifty-five pounds gained. My OB said the normal range was 25-35, but the pre-eclampsia, the bed rest, and the swelling pushed it higher. She wasn’t concerned about the weight itself — she was focused on keeping my blood pressure from killing me and the baby.

Six weeks postpartum: 186 lbs. I’d lost 16 pounds immediately — baby, placenta, fluid. The rest stayed.

Six months postpartum: 189 lbs. Gained three pounds while breastfeeding, despite everyone’s promise that breastfeeding would melt the weight off.

Twelve months postpartum: 188 lbs. I’d started walking again, nothing aggressive. No change.

Eighteen months postpartum: 187 lbs. One pound lost in six months. Forty pounds over my pre-pregnancy weight.

One pound. In six months.

That’s the moment I realized “just wait” wasn’t a strategy. It was wishful thinking.

The Breastfeeding Hunger Nobody Warns You About

I want to talk about breastfeeding and weight, because the myth that it causes automatic weight loss did real damage to my expectations.

Yes, breastfeeding burns approximately 300-500 calories a day. But here’s what nobody mentions: it also makes you ravenously hungry. I don’t mean “I could eat a snack” hungry. I mean “I just nursed my baby and if someone doesn’t hand me food in the next three minutes I’m going to eat the couch cushion” hungry.

I was eating more calories to fuel the breastfeeding than the breastfeeding was burning. The math was never going to work.

During the months I was nursing Zara, I was grabbing whatever was closest. Granola bars. Crackers. String cheese. The leftover mac and cheese from her tray. Whatever required zero preparation and could be consumed one-handed while holding a baby.

This is the postpartum eating pattern nobody prepares you for: survival feeding. You’re not choosing meals. You’re consuming calories to keep functioning on three hours of sleep while keeping a small human alive.

I weaned Zara at 13 months, partly because she was ready and partly because I desperately needed my body to be mine again. The hunger decreased after weaning, but the weight didn’t budge. My body had settled into its postpartum size, and it seemed perfectly content to stay there.

Postpartum Depression and the Body Connection

I need to address the PPD because it’s part of this story, and leaving it out would be dishonest.

At about three months postpartum, I realized that the crying wasn’t normal. Not the baby crying — my crying. In the shower. In the car. At 2 AM while feeding Zara. A constant, low-level despair that I couldn’t explain because I had a healthy baby and a supportive husband and everything was supposed to be fine.

My OB screened me, diagnosed postpartum depression, and started me on sertraline (Zoloft). It took about six weeks to kick in, but when it did, the fog lifted. I could function. I could enjoy Zara instead of just enduring the days.

But here’s the thing about sertraline: it can contribute to weight retention. Not dramatically, but it’s a known side effect. So I was taking a medication that was keeping me sane while potentially making the weight harder to lose.

I wasn’t willing to stop the antidepressant. My mental health came first. But it added another layer of frustration to the weight situation.

By the time Zara was 18 months old, I was stabilized on sertraline, done breastfeeding, and ready to address the 40 extra pounds I was carrying. I just needed someone to tell me how.

My OB Finally Gave Me a Path

At my annual visit, I brought up the weight directly. Not hinting, not hoping she’d mention it — I said, “I’m still 40 pounds over my pre-pregnancy weight at 18 months postpartum, and nothing I’ve tried has worked. What are my options?”

Dr. Ogunwale — my OB-GYN — was thoughtful about it. She said the combination of significant pregnancy weight gain, bed rest deconditioning, breastfeeding hunger patterns, PPD, and sertraline had created a situation where traditional diet and exercise might not be sufficient.

“Have you considered GLP-1 medication?” she asked.

I’d heard of Ozempic and Wegovy but hadn’t thought of them as relevant to me. I associated them with people who’d been overweight for decades, not postpartum women trying to get back to their pre-pregnancy baseline.

She explained that GLP-1 medications were increasingly being used postpartum — after breastfeeding ended — for women who couldn’t lose pregnancy weight through conventional methods. The mechanism was straightforward: reduce appetite, improve satiety, and let the body find a new equilibrium.

She stressed two things:

1. This was only appropriate because I’d finished breastfeeding. GLP-1 medications are not recommended during pregnancy or breastfeeding.
2. She wanted me to go through a provider who would do a thorough medical assessment, given my history of pre-eclampsia, C-section, and current sertraline use.

She mentioned telehealth as an option. I went home and started researching.

Finding Remedy Meds

My research process was efficient because I had approximately 45 minutes of free time per day (Zara’s afternoon nap) and couldn’t afford to waste it.

I compared three telehealth GLP-1 providers. Remedy Meds stood out for a specific reason: during the assessment, they asked about pregnancy history, breastfeeding status, and postpartum mental health. That told me they’d seen patients like me before. A provider that asks the right questions is a provider that knows what they’re dealing with.

The video consultation was thorough. My provider reviewed my full timeline — the pre-eclampsia, the bed rest, the C-section, the breastfeeding, the PPD, the sertraline. She confirmed with my OB that I was cleared for the medication. She started me on the lowest dose of semaglutide, 0.25 mg weekly.

“We’re going conservative,” she said. “You’ve had a complicated postpartum course, and I want to make sure your body tolerates this well before we increase.”

The medication arrived in four days. I put it in the refrigerator behind the oat milk and Zara’s yogurt pouches and stared at it for two days before using it.

My husband, Marcus, gave me the injection the first time because my hands were shaking. He’s a paramedic, so needles don’t bother him. He did it in about three seconds and then handed me a glass of water like it was nothing.

Month 1: The Mom-Specific Challenges

Starting weight: 187 lbs

Let me tell you about the specific challenges of weight loss medication when you have a toddler, because they’re different from what any other demographic faces.

Challenge 1: Eating your kid’s food. Zara is in the toddler phase where she takes two bites of everything and then throws the rest on the floor or pushes it toward me. Before semaglutide, I was eating her leftover peanut butter sandwich, her half-finished banana, her remaining goldfish crackers, and the three bites of chicken nugget she rejected. That’s probably 200-300 extra calories a day of food that’s barely food.

The medication reduced my appetite enough that I stopped doing this almost immediately. The leftover chicken nuggets went in the trash. The half-banana went in the freezer for smoothies. I stopped being my toddler’s garbage disposal.

Challenge 2: No time for meal prep or gym. I work full-time as a dental hygienist. Zara is in daycare from 7:30 to 5:30. By the time I pick her up, make dinner, do bath time, and get her to bed, it’s 8 PM and I’m done. The idea of meal prepping on Sundays or going to the gym at 6 AM sounds great on paper and is laughable in practice.

The medication helped here because it didn’t require time. One injection per week. That’s it. No meal plans to follow, no workout programs to schedule, no appointments to keep. The medication worked in the background while I lived my life.

Challenge 3: Sleep deprivation. Zara is a mostly good sleeper, but “mostly” means she still wakes up once or twice a week at 3 AM screaming for water or because she lost her stuffed elephant. Sleep deprivation increases ghrelin (the hunger hormone) and decreases leptin (the satiety hormone). So on bad sleep nights, my appetite was higher regardless of the medication.

I learned to accept that weight loss wouldn’t be linear. Some weeks I’d lose. Some weeks the scale would tick up after a bad sleep stretch. Over time, the trend was downward, and that’s what mattered.

Month 1 side effects: Mild nausea for the first five days, then it eased. Some decreased interest in food that felt alarming at first — like, I’d forget to eat lunch — until I realized that was the point. I set alarms for meals so I wouldn’t skip them.

End of month 1: 181 lbs (down 6 lbs)

Month 2: The Emotional Part

The nausea was mostly gone by month two. I’d moved to 0.5 mg, had about three days of queasiness, and then leveled off.

But something emotional surfaced that I wasn’t prepared for.

I was getting dressed one morning, and I caught my reflection in the bathroom mirror. My body was changing. The belly was slightly smaller. My face looked a little less puffy. And instead of feeling happy, I felt a wave of sadness so strong it stopped me in the doorway.

I was sad for the version of me that had carried this weight for 18 months while everyone told her it would “just fall off.” Sad for the woman who’d eaten leftover mac and cheese standing at the kitchen counter at 10 PM because she was too tired to make herself a real meal. Sad for the body that had grown a human being and then been abandoned to figure things out on its own.

I cried in the bathroom with the door closed while Marcus got Zara dressed in the next room.

Then I put on my scrubs and went to work, because that’s what moms do.

I brought this up with my therapist (I’d been seeing one since the PPD diagnosis, separate from the sertraline). She said this kind of grief response was common with postpartum weight loss — a recognition of what you’ve been through, and mourning for the time you lost feeling uncomfortable in your own body.

End of month 2: 174 lbs (down 13 lbs)

Month 3: The Mac and Cheese Moment

I was cleaning up after dinner. Zara had eaten approximately four bites of her mac and cheese before declaring “all done!” and smearing the rest across her tray.

I picked up the tray. Looked at the leftover mac and cheese. And scraped it into the trash without a second thought.

Six months ago, I would have eaten every bite while standing at the sink, not even tasting it, just consuming it because it was there and I was tired and wasting food felt wrong.

This time, I didn’t want it. My body was satisfied from my own dinner. The automatic “eat whatever’s leftover” reflex had been replaced by an actual awareness of whether I was hungry.

That moment — scraping mac and cheese into the garbage — felt like more of a victory than anything the scale showed me.

Marcus noticed the change too. “You’re not eating her leftovers anymore,” he observed one evening.

“Nope.”

“I’ve been wanting to say something about that for a year,” he admitted.

“Why didn’t you?”

“Because you were dealing with enough, and telling a postpartum woman to stop eating wasn’t going to go well.”

He was right about both things.

End of month 3: 167 lbs (down 20 lbs)

Month 4: Getting Close

End of month 4: 156 lbs (down 31 lbs)

Month four was when the results accelerated. I’d moved to 1.0 mg, tolerated it well, and the weight came off faster than any previous month. Whether that was the higher dose, cumulative momentum, or just my body finally cooperating, I don’t know. Probably all three.

At 156 pounds, I was nine pounds from my pre-pregnancy weight of 147. Close enough that I could see it, but honestly? I wasn’t sure I needed to get there.

My body had been through something. It grew a baby. It survived pre-eclampsia. It recovered from major surgery. It fed another human being for 13 months. The idea that it needed to return to its exact pre-pregnancy state felt like an unreasonable demand.

At 156, I felt strong. My scrubs fit comfortably. I could chase Zara around the playground without getting winded. I had energy left at the end of the day — not a lot, because toddlers are relentless, but enough.

My OB ran bloodwork at my annual visit. Everything looked good. Blood pressure (my concern after pre-eclampsia) was normal. Thyroid was fine. No nutritional deficiencies. She was pleased.

“How do you feel?” she asked.

“Like myself again.”

The Body Image Reckoning

I want to be honest about postpartum body image, because it’s complicated and I don’t think enough people talk about it.

Before pregnancy, I liked my body. Appreciated it. Felt comfortable in it.

During pregnancy, I accepted the changes as necessary. My body was doing something incredible. Weight gain was part of the process.

Postpartum, I hated my body. That’s a strong word, and I mean it. I looked in the mirror and didn’t recognize myself. The stomach that wouldn’t flatten. The stretch marks. The C-section scar. The weight that clung to my hips and thighs like it had no intention of leaving.

Instagram was toxic. “Bounced back” celebrities in bikinis three months postpartum. Fitness influencers doing ab exercises with their newborns. The implicit message: your body should recover from pregnancy quickly, and if it doesn’t, you’re not trying hard enough.

I wanted to throw my phone into the bayou.

The medication helped with the weight. Therapy helped with the body image. Both were necessary. Losing 31 pounds didn’t automatically make me love my body — it gave me a body that felt more like mine, and then I had to do the emotional work of accepting the parts that had changed permanently.

The stretch marks aren’t going anywhere. The C-section scar is forever. My hips are wider than they were before. These are the evidence that I made a person, and I’m learning to see them as exactly that — evidence, not damage.

What I Want Other New Moms to Know

1. “The weight will fall off” is not universally true. For some women, it does. For many of us, it doesn’t. The factors are complex: genetics, hormones, breastfeeding hunger, sleep deprivation, stress, medication, and the sheer impossibility of prioritizing yourself when a tiny human depends on you for everything.

2. Wait until after breastfeeding. This is important. GLP-1 medications are not safe during pregnancy or breastfeeding. I didn’t start until Zara was fully weaned at 13 months AND I’d been cleared by my OB at 18 months. Don’t rush this. Your baby needs nutrition more than you need the scale to move.

3. Get cleared by your OB. Especially if you had complications. My pre-eclampsia history, C-section, and PPD all factored into the decision. A provider who knows your full postpartum history is essential. The Remedy Meds provider coordinated with my OB, which gave me confidence.

4. Mental health first. I stabilized my PPD before addressing my weight. If you’re struggling postpartum, the weight can wait. Get the help you need for your mind first. The body will follow when you’re ready.

5. Eating your toddler’s leftovers is a real calorie trap. I know it sounds trivial. It’s not. Three chicken nuggets, half a grilled cheese, and a handful of goldfish crackers is 300+ calories that you consumed standing up, not enjoying, and didn’t account for. The medication made it possible for me to stop doing this. That alone was worth it.

The Financial Piece

I’ll be brief because other stories in this series cover cost in depth.

$199/month for compounded semaglutide. We factored it into the budget. It replaced roughly what I was spending on DoorDash and delivery meals on the nights I was too exhausted to cook. The net impact was almost neutral.

My insurance didn’t cover it. Most don’t for weight loss. The compounded option through Remedy Meds made it accessible. Pricing can change, so check current rates.

If you’re interested, you can take Remedy Meds’ free assessment to see if you qualify. I specifically chose them because they asked about pregnancy and postpartum history during the assessment, which told me they understood my situation.

Where I Am Now

Four months on semaglutide. Thirty-one pounds down. 156 pounds — nine pounds from my pre-pregnancy weight and, honestly, content to be right where I am.

Zara is two. She’s a wild, beautiful, exhausting, hilarious little person who makes me want to be healthy enough to keep up with her for the next several decades.

I’m still on the medication. Still on sertraline. Still in therapy, though we’ve moved to monthly sessions. Still working full-time. Still tired most of the time, because that’s just what having a toddler means.

But I’m not carrying the extra 40 pounds anymore. My body feels like mine again — changed, scarred, stretched, and mine.

I’m not “bouncing back.” I’m moving forward.

Last weekend, Marcus took a photo of me and Zara at the park. She was on my hip, laughing at something, and I was laughing too. I didn’t suck in my stomach. I didn’t angle my body away from the camera. I just stood there and let him take the picture.

I posted it.

First photo of myself I’d posted in two years.

The baby weight didn’t just fall off. I had to make a decision, do the research, take the medication, and give myself permission to ask for help.

But it did come off. And that’s enough.

Aisha T. is a reader in Houston, Texas. She submitted this story in February 2026. GLP-1 medications are not recommended during pregnancy or breastfeeding. Always consult with your OB-GYN before starting any weight loss medication postpartum. Individual results vary.