Pregnancy & Postpartum Belly Changes {Belly Bandit Review}

The evo­lu­tion of a preg­nant belly is cer­tainly an amaz­ing thing! I truly do believe the changes that occur in just 40 short weeks are noth­ing short of mirac­u­lous. See what I mean? Let’s look at it close up (just because I love this side by side com­par­i­son)! LOVE it! Amaz­ing, mirac­u­lous, pre­cious! But, unfor­tu­nately, as any mama knows, those mirac­u­lous changes can take a toll on the body. Things get shifted, stretched, and if you’re really lucky like me, marked! Even though you might weigh exactly the same after preg­nancy as you did before, the old clothes don’t seem to fit the same way. Or worse, you can’t even get the old clothes to but­ton! Unfor­tu­nately, for me, I’m not blessed with great elas­tic skin genes. All the women in my fam­ily could def­i­nitely use a col­la­gen & elastin boost! And, since this was baby #3, I was a bit con­cerned about what my poor stom­ach would like look after­ward! So, I was thrilled to have a chance to try out the Belly Ban­dit.

The first-ever post-partum com­pres­sion wrap, Belly Ban­dit helps you regain your pre-pregnancy fig­ure, restore your phys­i­cal health and renew your self-confidence—so that you can rejoice in being a new mom while feel­ing like your old self again! Belly Bandit’s post-partum com­pres­sion gar­ments are spe­cially engi­neered with inno­v­a­tive tech­ni­cal details and medical-grade, latex-free fab­rics to do what no surgery, core class or crash diet can—naturally, safely, com­fort­ably and conveniently.

Sounds great, right? But the impor­tant ques­tion is, “does it actu­ally work?!” To answer that, I was received the Bam­boo Belly Ban­dit in size medium. There is detailed infor­ma­tion on their site on fig­ur­ing out the best size. I was on the bor­der­line between medium and large. I fig­ured in this case, I’d error on the smaller size (it is a com­pres­sion wrap after all) and for me, that was the right call.  Here’s what the wrap looked like when it arrived: Since Baby Brother came two weeks early, I received it about 5 days post­par­tum (for even faster/better results, it would have been good to have even in the hos­pi­tal)! I started wear­ing it that same day I got it–and it barely came together. Within just a few days though, the fit was much bet­ter (yay for shrink­ing!)! The direc­tions say to wear the wrap 24/7 (with the excep­tion of show­er­ing, obvi­ously) for up to 6–8 weeks for best results.

How­ever, I did not wear mine 24/7. For me, the fit was a lit­tle awk­ward under clothes so  I didn’t wear it out in pub­lic. I don’t think this would be an issue for every­one though. I am SUPER short-waisted (and only 5’3″ on a good day), so I had some puck­er­ing issues at my waist (an issue I have with lots of gar­ments!). I did wear it at home though–a lot. Although it was tight, it wasn’t uncom­fort­able. In fact, the bam­boo fab­ric is actu­ally really soft. And, often times hav­ing the wrap on actu­ally made my back feel bet­ter (my back often hurts for months after deliv­ery). The best part was that every time I took the wrap off my belly felt so much smaller! In fact, I like to still some­times wear it around the house. Can’t hurt, right?

So, even though I didn’t wear it as much as sug­gested, I’m still happy with the results. At 3 weeks post­par­tum (after wear­ing the wrap for about 2 weeks), my belly had shrunk con­sid­er­ably! Take a look:

Pretty good, right?! I think so! So, if you’re preg­nant and con­cerned about how your belly will bounce back after­wards, I def­i­nitely rec­om­mend check­ing out Belly Ban­dit. They have some great other prod­ucts too. I think the com­pres­sion nurs­ing tanks look fabulous!

What are your post­par­tum tips?

Dis­clo­sure: I received the Bam­boo Belly Ban­dit shown above for the pur­poses of review. As always, all opin­ions and expe­ri­ences are my own.