Back at it. Jenna Johnson has experienced a variety of postpartum emotions after working out for the first time since giving birth to her first child.
“While at the gym I was confronted with many different emotions,” the Dancing With the Stars pro, 28, captioned a workout selfie on Thursday, February 16. “Anxiety because I missed my baby, excited ‘cause my body has been craving movement. Humility [because] having to accept that I’m weak and feel as though I’m in a foreign body [and] slowly needing to rebuild my strength.”
While Johnson — who welcomed son Rome with husband Val Chmerkovskiy last month — felt intimidated by the fit individuals surrounding her, it has taught her an important lesson about grace.
“I looked in the mirror and finally took a deep breath out remembering that I just gave birth and shouldn’t have ANY expectations for myself,” she concluded on Thursday. “Postpartum is a trip.”
The So You Think You Can Dance alum — who married Chmerkovskiy, 36, in 2019 — gave birth to her baby boy on January 10.
“Rome Valentin Chmerkovskiy ✨. Cannot believe it’s been 4 weeks of being completely infatuated with you,” Johnson gushed via Instagram earlier this month, sharing the first photo of her son’s face. “Thank you for bursting my heart wide open and showing me what unconditional love is. Mommy and Daddy love you so much!!!!”
As the Utah native and the two-time mirrorball champ settle into first-time parenthood, uncle Maksim Chmerkovskiy has enjoyed watching the extended family grow. (Maksim, 43, and wife Peta Murgatroyd are parents to son Shai, 6, and are currently expecting baby No. 2.)
“My brother’s a more pragmatic person [than I am]. He’s very thoughtful about things and yet [to] watch him be so disheveled and sort of like unable to [keep his thoughts together] … is so beautiful to watch,” the Masked Dancer alum recalled to Us Weekly last month. “And the first thing he said to me at least, it was the second his baby came out, the first thought he had was, ‘Should have done it sooner,’ which is exactly what I thought the first time.”
Maksim continued at the time: “Because we all live in the world. We’re like, ‘What are we bringing the kids out into? Should we do it now? Am I ready? Am I ready financially? Am I stable enough? Is my partner the one that I want to be with for the rest of my life?’ These are all questions that we were all trying to answer while also doing our job and bettering [and] developing ourselves.”
