Meghan Trainor opens up about rebuilding confidence after giving birth: ‘Hardest thing I’ve ever had to do’
Meghan Trainor has spoken candidly about how challenging it was for her to rebuild her confidence after giving birth to her son, Riley, in February 2021.
The 28-year-old singer shared her thoughts on body positivity during a recent interview withYahoo! Life, for the publication’s “It Figures” series. She went on to recall how, after seeing her body change throughout pregnancy and after giving birth, she had to work with a therapist to regain her confidence.
“My therapist was like: ‘You need to stand in the mirror naked for five minutes a day and stare at your body,’ which is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do,” Trainor recalled. “By the third day, though, I started to like what I see and start believing it.”
She went on detail what she learned from this experience, explaining: “You start really looking at yourself and being like, it’s crazy that I could make a human being, like I made eyelashes.”
Trainor then said that, although she was dealing with gestational diabetes during her pregnancy, the birth of her child, who she shares with husband Daryl Sabra, kept her motivated and excited for the future.
“I had gestational diabetes when I was pregnant so I was literally dieting while pregnant, which sucked,” the “Made You Look” singer said. “But it was really fascinating to watch my blood sugar, so I learned all this fascinating science.
“Then after my baby came out, I was like: ‘I want to live forever.’ …I was like: ‘If I can get through a C-section, I can do anything,’” she continued. “And I just changed everything about my life. I was like, nothing scares me anymore.”
This is not the first time Trainor has opened up about learning to love her post-pregnancy body. During an interview with People in September 2021, months after giving birth, she reflected on some of the changes to her body.
“I’m covered in scars and stretch marks in new places I didn’t know stretch marks could be,” she said at the time. “There’s things that aren’t going to go away ever, and I have to learn to love that.”
The “All About That Bass” singer also noted that, while her and her husband’s spark “struggled” due to her issues with self-image, they managed to reginate it through a different approach to intimacy.
“The spark didn’t leave, but the spark has struggled,” she recalled. “I started to feel unsexy immediately. What helped was making intimacy a surprise – it’s not scheduled – and that really brought back our spark.”
Elsewhere in her interview with Yahoo! Life, Trainor recalled how she grew up with a lot of “bad self-talk”, among herself and her parents, which she said was “traumatic” for her.
“My mom is very hard on herself and my dad is like a jokester, but not in a good way,” she said. “If he’s trying to give you advice on something, he’ll kind of pick on you and that’s his way of like, helping you. But it’s traumatic. I took him to therapy back in the day so he knows.”
Trainor went on to cite a specific instance with her father, where he’d ask her: “You’re not going to wear those pants, right? You look fat.”
She noted that, while she knew that he didn’t mean to offend her, the remark still impacted her, while revealing that she is working to ensure that she parents her own child differently.
“He didn’t know that as a young teen girl, I’m gonna remember that for the rest of my life,” she added. “I’m trying to rewire my brain so that my future daughter and son don’t think like that as well.”
