From my lips to God’s ears, I am hands-folded, on my knees, praying for the postpartum of influencers. ’Cause what do you mean you’ve got the energy and the glow to make reels while in labor? What even is a ring light in the hospital recovery room?

My timeline had nine months to morph into the stuff of icons. I’m talking the full range of momfluencers and pregnant social media moguls filling every story placement and square on my Explore page. It doesn’t matter if they’re still raw from birth—slap on a Biodance eye patch and some Rhode Pocket Blush, and these chicks were back on the bandwagon.

These are the same women vlogging from water breakage to how they bag their milk supply, and I’m subscribed to it. Premium subscription.

I’m still baffled by the women who can push out a literal baby and then record themselves to a viral musical overlay an hour later. They can prop up their phone to record a full makeup tutorial and then boldly caption it “postpartum skincare routine.” I’m not even sure if my hair will be in a ponytail or messy bun, let alone whether I’ll be applying the latest lip oils and tinting mascara in the same lifetime. But there’s something so wishful about postpartum influencers—a line so blurred between delusional and downright iconic—that I hope I can be blessed with in my postpartum era.

Let’s talk average content creators. Somewhere between 100,000 and 500,000 followers. Please tell me in a 30-second reel how on earth you managed to get up after tearing your “link in bio”?! These women are really out here recording full baby-mama dances after delivering a baby! The only thing in my content calendar is compression socks and catheters. But these influencers really have eight premade edits for week one of their baby’s life, with three more reels in their drafts.

What I’m saying is I want that level of post-production planning in my postpartum experience! I’m not even in labor yet, and it takes me three days to write a 1,000-word essay. Sometimes, I fall asleep at the keyboard. But these moms will really bypass the baby blues with a baby haul, all while breastfeeding and operating on two hours of broken sleep. Where can I get that kind of brand-sponsored stamina?

So, what do these influencers have that we don’t? And how can we stay delusionally hot and optimistic in the fourth trimester? ’Cause if Stacy with 30K followers can link her postpartum diapers before the epidural wears off, surely the rest of us can spawn the same will to like, subscribe, and reshare our insanity.

I humbly disclose that I’ve had to unfollow a few new-mom content creators. Their dedication to the game is too intimidating for me, and I can’t spend any more baby money on the products that sponsored their magnificence.

Even the moms who bare it all make me want to close my apps and take a social media sabbatical. It’s like even their raw honesty is another reel on the roster of my doomscrolling. At some point, I need to close the app and live my own postpartum instead of watching another content creator turn hers into a seven-part series.

But the truth is, once I stopped judging their bounce-back, I realized these women might actually be onto something. Beneath the perfectly edited day-in-my-life reels is a commitment to making motherhood feel beautiful—even when it isn’t.

No, I won’t be turning my recovery into YouTube Shorts—I don’t have enough clout (or care) for that. But I wouldn’t mind borrowing some of their audacity.

So, here’s what I’ve learned from the insufferably hot Instagram moms—and what I’ll be applying to my own subscriber-only postpartum.

1. Record like it’s going in the drafts

Even if her birth announcement gets 10 million impressions and ours gets ten, maybe we should all take more pictures and record more videos. Influencers have the capacity to make a bedside caddy look aesthetic. I mean, how photo-worthy can crumpled sheets and disposable nipple covers really be? You’ll never catch an influencer missing out on a photo op, though.

So, take more pictures. Record the baby scrunch, the sleepy feeds, the hospital bassinet, and the baby you made—even if none of it ever reaches the main feed. One day, we’ll have our own private archives to scroll through, and the only engagement that will matter will be our own.

2. Self-Care: Keep the GRWM alive

Makeup tutorials might be a little extravagant for non-influencer moms, but prioritizing self-care shouldn’t be reserved for the socially elite. One thing content creators have taught me is to shamelessly take that shower and put your lipstick on because behind the leaking, feeding, healing, and hormones, you’re still in there somewhere.

Sometimes, self-care is a full Charlotte Tilbury routine. Sometimes, it’s brushing your teeth before 4 p.m. In my humble opinion, both deserve a campaign… and both deserve your time.

*Image generated by Sarah Elle, Prose Club*

3. Dress like you might be tagged

Okay, I’m not talking about doing a PR unboxing, but is it so hard to get dressed that, if a reel were posted about you, it wouldn’t cue the trumpets getting louder?

I may not have a postpartum paid partnership, but we can absolutely endorse a couple cute pajama brands. What separates the incontinent from the iconic is unshakable style resilience. I’m not necessarily suggesting a REVOLVE haul just yet, but perhaps bleeding in matching pajamas and a good robe is a little more “on brand.”

4. Add postpartum to cart

If your motherhood had an LTK, what would your top products be? Sometimes, those checklists and affiliate links contain some golden nuggets. After all, there is no more honest opinion than that of an unsponsored content creator.

For the number of Frida Mom, Momcozy, Medela, Eufy, Cybex, and BÉIS products I’ve purchased for motherhood, maybe I really should get a PR package. Here’s hoping!

But sponsored or not, the right products can make a vulnerable season feel a little more scroll-worthy. So, consider this the campaign of your life—only the products that really work should make the final cut.

5. Find the right angle and ring light

One thing I respect most about influencer moms is their absolute compulsion to make the most of any opportunity. They must be exhausted, like every other mother out there. They must have days when the hormones and chapped nipples take a toll. But there is nothing like a content creator’s will to make the messy reel-worthy.

They’re quick to turn any challenge into content gold, whether that’s a list of tips they learned, a day-in-my-life reel, or simply an opportunity to add another must-have product to their “Shop Now.”

And I don’t mean pretending the hard parts aren’t hard. I mean believing that exhaustion and beauty can co-exist in the same frame. The cluster feed can be brutal, but sometimes, delusion is just turning the hardest parts into a viral hook.

“To have the motherhood you want, you must be willing to look at it from the right angle and ring light.”

6. Make motherhood part of the brand

Every woman will go through an identity crisis in early motherhood. Whether you’re debating leaving the world behind for everlasting matrescence or treating your promotion to CFO—Chief Feeding Officer—as the next step in your business plan, take it from the influencers: do it without guilt, and do it iconically.

Not every woman feels the same call to stay-at-home motherhood. You can be whoever you want and need to be in this season. You can maintain some aspect of your career if you want, burn your entire business to the ground, or find a happy medium like me, writing unsolicited Substack articles that may or may never get read.

Whatever your definition of “on brand” is in this sacred chapter of your life, let it be iconic and, more importantly, let it be enough.

7. Stop checking the metrics

“Don’t compare your journey to others” might very well be every influencer’s universal piece of advice. They all say that when they started out, they compared their progress to another creator’s. The same goes for moms.

Your baby may not be latching right away or sleeping through the night at three days old, but that doesn’t mean you’re meant to be any further than you are. We all want to figure it out, and we all need each other’s support. Unlike social media, where someone’s hypothetical progress is calculated by impressions, there is no true measure of motherhood. There is no follower count for how safe your baby feels in your arms. No engagement rate for the midnight feeds no one saw.

But maybe that’s the gold influencers really serve us—not just looks and brand placements, but the courage to share what they’ve learned, what’s helped them, and how to view motherhood through TikTok-tinted glasses.

It may be intimidating at times… and wildly out of touch at others. But maybe there’s something about an influencer postpartum that we all secretly want.

The question is: are we delusional enough to hit publish?