Body image: a cross-sectional study of the perception and practices of women after delivery | BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth

Respondents’ perception about their body after delivery

With regard to the respondents’ perceptions of their bodies after delivery, approximately 44% of participants reported being ‘sometimes’ or ‘often’ unhappy with their bodies. However, 32.13% asserted that their partners were not happy with their bodies after delivery (Table 3).

Descriptive statistics

Respondents’ behavior toward their body image after delivery

The study revealed that the respondents engaged in a number of self-assessments to track their weight gain after delivery. Most of the respondents (47.37%) often engaged in pinching their abdomen to measure how fat they were and trying special clothes (42.11%) to see if they still fit (Table 4).

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Factors influencing women’s postpartum body image satisfaction

A logistic regression analysis was conducted to identify the sociodemographic and behavioral predictors of postpartum body image satisfaction among women. The outcome variable was body image satisfaction, and independent variables included age, number of children, religion, marital status, education level, and engagement in postpartum exercise.

Among the sociodemographic factors, marital status and number of children emerged as significant predictors. Divorced women were found to be significantly more likely to report satisfaction with their postpartum body image compared to unmarried women (Odds Ratio [OR] = 2.468, 95% Confidence Interval [CI] = 2.44–2.49, p = 0.005). Married women also had higher odds of body image satisfaction relative to their unmarried counterparts (OR = 1.37, 95% CI = 1.34–1.40, p = 0.012), suggesting that being in a stable marital relationship may provide emotional support or reduce social appearance pressure during the postpartum period.

Additionally, number of children was a significant negative predictor of body image satisfaction. Women with more children were less likely to report satisfaction with their postpartum body image (OR = 0.703, 95% CI = 0.55–0.89, p = 0.004). This may reflect cumulative physical and psychological changes experienced across multiple pregnancies and the increasing demands of childcare, which could negatively impact self-perception.

In contrast, age was not significantly associated with postpartum body image satisfaction (OR = 1.005, 95% CI = 0.96–1.05, p = 0.810), suggesting that body image satisfaction in the postpartum period may be more strongly influenced by social and behavioral factors than by chronological age.

Educational attainment showed varied associations with body image satisfaction. Women with no formal education had significantly lower odds of reporting postpartum body image satisfaction (OR = 0.435, 95% CI = 0.43–0.44, p = 0.001) compared to those with higher education. In contrast, other education categories such as junior high school (JHS), senior high school (SHS), and primary education did not reach statistical significance, though the direction of the odds suggested a trend toward lower satisfaction with lower levels of education. Notably, the SHS category approached significance (OR = 0.742, 95% CI = 0.58–0.95, p = 0.124), warranting further investigation.

The effect of religion, specifically identifying as Christian, was not statistically significant (OR = 0.807, 95% CI = 0.68–0.96, p = 0.89), suggesting that religious affiliation alone may not play a meaningful role in influencing body image satisfaction in the postpartum period.

Importantly, engaging in postpartum exercise was a significant positive predictor of body image satisfaction. Women who exercised postpartum had 1.37 times higher odds of being satisfied with their body image (OR = 1.370, 95% CI = 1.09–1.73, p = 0.008). This finding underscores the potential psychological and physical benefits of postpartum exercise in promoting positive body image perceptions (Table 5).

Logistic regression analysis

Practices engaged by post-partum women to attain ideal body image

This section assessed the practices of postpartum women implemented by respondents to obtain ideal body figures.

As shown in Table 6, forty-one [41] of the 361 respondents (11.36%) consumed weight loss tea, 33 (9.14%) ate less, 7 (1.94%) exercised routinely, 103 (28.53%) wore belly bands or corsets, and 177 (49.03%) did nothing. Only 7 (1.94%) of the respondents exercised routinely to obtain their ideal body image.

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Relationship between Post-Partum exercise and body image satisfaction

A chi-square test of independence was conducted to examine the relationship between postpartum exercise and satisfaction with body image. The analysis revealed a statistically significant association between the two variables, χ² (1, N = 361) = 5.32, p = 0.021. The results showed that among women who engaged in postpartum exercise, the majority (6 out of 7) reported satisfaction with their body image. Conversely, among those who did not exercise, a smaller proportion (150 out of 354) reported being satisfied. These findings suggest that postpartum women who exercised were significantly more likely to express satisfaction with their body image than those who did not engage in exercise (Table 7).

Chi-Square test