Whitney Port is refreshingly honest about how giving birth changed her body

Style icon Whitney Port has been sharing her life with reality TV viewers for years, and now the Hills star turned mom vlogger is sharing her new reality: How becoming a mom in July has impacted her body, self-esteem and even her style.

In an age where celebrities are applauded for “snapping back” after baby, hearing one talk about her body in a more realistic way is refreshing.

Clad in an In-N-Out stained basketball tee that actually belongs to her husband, Tim Rosenman, Port faces the camera in a new video that’s part of her ongoing YouTube series, I Love My Baby, But—and gets real about the ways motherhood changed her body.

How pregnancy changes your body

“Gaining the weight was really hard for me. It did not make me feel good about myself,” she says, adding it’s hard to pull together a cute outfit when you don’t feel good about the body you’re dressing.

Logically, Port says she accepted that gaining some weight is just part of pregnancy. But, emotionally, it was challenging.

How delivery changes your body

Then there was the birth itself: Port says thoughts about how labor and delivery would affect her body worried her throughout pregnancy and didn’t prove easy to cope with afterward.

“Having a vaginal delivery changes everything down there and that’s just something that’s really not discussed,” Port says, explaining the recovery period for a vaginal birth can be a lot longer than people think. “It’s painful and uncomfortable and along with having to take care of a newborn, you also have a whole other situation to take care of.”

How motherhood changes your sex life

Port says after she became a mom she worried a lot about how the physical changes associated with pregnancy and birth would impact her relationship with hubby Rosenman, who filmed the video. She says she wondered whether sex would feel the same for her and for her husband. She also worried about something so many new moms do: Whether her partner would still be attracted to her postpartum body.

“I thought a lot about if [he was] attracted to me,” Port reveals. “And that was hard, because I was never insecure about that before.”

For Port—like many new moms—grappling with these questions is an ongoing battle. On some days, it’s easier to embrace the physical changes that come along with motherhood. On other days, it’s natural to feel more conflicted.

But when we’re open about it, as Port is, the journey itself doesn’t feel so lonely.