I Did Nails For Twelve Years And I Had A Baby This Year. Your Feet Did Not Swell. They Got Longer.

everybody warns you about the swelling. nobody tells you that the swelling is the part that leaves.

i did nails and feet professionally for twelve years and i had a baby this year. the thing i wish somebody had handed me is a small measurement study out of the university of iowa. it is the only honest answer i have seen to a question that came up in the chair more than once: why do my shoes not fit, and is that ever going back.

what they measured

neil segal, an orthopedics and rehabilitation researcher at iowa, measured the feet of 49 pregnant women in the first trimester and then again about five months after they gave birth. published in the american journal of physical medicine and rehabilitation in march 2013.

what happened to those feet, in the study’s own words: “arch height and measures of arch rigidity decreased significantly from early pregnancy to five months after childbirth.”

the arch dropped and it got less springy. and because a flatter arch is a longer foot, foot length went up between 2 and 10 millimeters.

around 60 to 70 percent of the women had feet that were longer and wider five months out. segal’s own summary was that “pregnancy does indeed lead to permanent changes in the feet.” and there is one more finding in there that matters if you are on your second or third: first pregnancies “may account for most of the observed changes.”

what that study is not

49 women, measured twice, no comparison group. that is a real limitation and i am not walking past it.

and one thing in the coverage got repeated that should not have been. the researchers raised the possibility that these changes might help explain why women have higher rates of foot, knee, hip and spine pain. that was a hypothesis, and segal said testing it was the next study. nobody has shown that pregnancy gives you arthritis. if you read that, it came from a headline.

what the paper supports is narrower and, for practical purposes, more useful. the shoe size you have in your head is probably from before.

the swelling and the shape are two different things

the swelling is fluid. it is often worse after you come home than it was before you went in, it is visibly puffy, it leaves a dent when you press it, and it goes. the shape change is structural. it is not puffy, it does not dent, and it does not go.

so the mistake is waiting. you tell yourself the shoes will fit once the swelling settles, the swelling settles, and the shoes still do not fit. by then it is four months later and you have been carrying a newborn around in footwear that stopped being your size during the pregnancy.

on the fluid half, the one thing worth saying is that drinking less is not the lever people think it is. the same reflex shows up with the other postpartum thing nobody warns you about, and the leaking is not something you wait out has the sourced version of why cutting fluids backfires. a big lidded tumbler is an unglamorous product that solves an actual problem, which is that you will not get up for water with a baby on you. flagging it honestly: i am recommending the size and the lid, not that specific one.

the part i can actually speak to

twelve years of feet in my hands, and this is the pattern from the chair rather than from a controlled trial: a callus is not a skin problem. it is a load problem. skin thickens where it is being pressed and rubbed, and it stops when the pressing stops.

so when the arch drops and the foot gets longer, the load moves. the ball takes more. the inside edge takes more. the end of the toe box becomes something your toes meet. a few months later there is hard skin where there never was any, and shoes that were fine for ten years feel wrong in a way nobody else can see.

that is not neglect, it is a structural change doing what structural changes do. you cannot moisturize a callus away is the full version of the load argument, and it all applies here.

get measured first, and it is free

before you buy a single thing in this post: go get your feet measured. both of them, standing up, late in the day. any shoe store with a staff member and one of those metal plates will do it for free.

that is the most useful sentence here and there is no link on it on purpose. 2 to 10 millimeters is the difference between a half size and a full size, and no foot cream fixes a shoe that is too short.

then the skin, in the right order

the order matters more than the products do, and the first three below are ones i use.

soften first. a callus softening gel on the thick spot, for the few minutes the label says, not the twenty you think will work better.

reduce second, and gently. a metal foot file on dry or barely damp skin, in one direction, taking off a layer and then stopping. you are not trying to get to normal skin in one sitting. the hard skin is there because of pressure, and if you remove all of it at once the body puts it straight back thicker.

and nothing with a blade. no callus shavers, no razors, no graters, no corn cutters. those are how a small home foot job turns into an injury, especially on a foot that has quietly lost some sensation.

then the acid, daily, which is what actually keeps it away. 15 percent lactic acid foot cream is the one i reach for. it is not a moisturizer and it does not behave like one. it breaks down the bonds holding thickened skin together, which a lotion does not do, however good the lotion is.

if a heel is split open rather than just thick, the acid will sting and that is a different job. plain ointment on the crack overnight with a sock over it, and keep the acid to the rest of the foot until it closes. i have not used this tub on a split heel. the case is for an ointment over a lotion, because a lotion evaporates and an ointment stays put.

the toenails, which also changed

a longer foot in the same shoe means the big toenail is now meeting the end of it. that is where the bruised nail and the ingrown corner come from, and it is not a nail problem either.

straight across, not curved, and then take the sharp corner off with a glass file rather than cutting into it. the case there is for glass over emery, because you can wash it and an emery board you cannot. that is an argument about the tool, not about that brand.

a little jojoba oil around the nail folds at night if they are dry and lifting at the edges. a category call, and a small one.

and if you cannot reach your own feet yet, that post is about doing all of this without folding in half.

when it is not a skin job at all

heel pain first thing in the morning that eases as you walk, arch pain that builds through the day, numbness, or pain in the structure rather than on the surface: that is a podiatrist, not a file. a dropped arch has real mechanical answers and none of them are sold in the foot care aisle.

if you had gestational diabetes, as i did, ask at your follow up whether you still need your feet looked at. and if you have diabetes or any loss of sensation in your feet, do none of the above at home. that is not me being careful for the sake of it. that is the one group where a small home foot job turns into a serious problem.

and the smell, while we are here, is a separate matter entirely. your feet do not smell, your shoes do.

short version: your feet are a different shape now, that is documented, and the most effective thing you can do about it takes four minutes in a shoe store and no money.

some of the product links above are affiliate links, which means i may earn a commission if you buy through them at no extra cost to you. #ad #WalmartPartner. three of the seven products here are ones i use and i have said which. the other four are framed as a case about a tool or a feature with the reason attached, in the sentence that links them.