Sculpt Society founder Megan Roup on the good and the bad of being a first-time mom.
Over the course of the next few months, we’ll be catching up with Megan Roup, founder of the massively popular dance-workout class, Sculpt Society. We’ll join Roup, a new mom, as she adjusts to postpartum life. She’ll also tell us how she’s regaining core strength and strengthening her pelvic floor, and give us some quick-and-easy workouts she’s been developing for busy moms — just like herself.
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Megan Roup first rose to fame as the body-positive fitness guru who founded The Sculpt Society, a dance-cardio workout program “for the non-dancer”; it offers classes that help build strength and endurance while having a good time. Each class is essentially an hour-long dance workout that incorporates weights, high-energy music, and very easy-to-follow steps. As the pandemic kept people out of gyms and Roup took Sculpt Society entirely online, the popularity of the workout (which requires very little equipment, and is thus easy to do from the comfort of your own home) skyrocketed, and Sculpt Society is now the most popular at-home dance-cardio workout platform.
The pandemic brought another huge change to Roup’s life: she became pregnant, and in June she and her husband Morgan Humphrey welcomed their first child — a daughter named Harlow. Roup has always been radically honest with her fans and followers about her own fitness journey, and she’s been no different about motherhood. “There’s this idea that you get pregnant, and you get a pregnancy glow, and it’s all so wonderful. That was what I expected pregnancy to be,” says Roup. “But when I got pregnant and things started to shift and grow, and my hormones were all over the place, I didn’t love it at all. I kept waiting for this pregnancy glow to happen, and it never did.” That led Roup to have worries she never expected: “When I didn’t love being pregnant, I worried, ‘Oh gosh, does this mean I’m not going to love being a mom?’”
Instead of swallowing those feelings and pretending that everything was wonderful, Roup shared her experience — and her fears — with her followers. They responded with an outpouring of love, support, and gratitude for her candor. “Other women validated for me that it was OK not to love these changes and not to love pregnancy. There was this sense of relief for all of us, that we’re not alone in it,” Roup says. “I feel a sense of responsibility now to share honestly, especially at a time when in-person connection is so hard. My online community helped me understand that even if I didn’t love pregnancy, it didn’t mean I wouldn’t love motherhood.”
Luckily, Roup is head over heels in love with her daughter — and the experience of motherhood. “I’m obsessed with Harlow, and with being a mom,” she says, “but that doesn’t mean I’m not still dealing with things postpartum. My body is in such a raw state.”
Now that Harlow is about 3 months old, Roup’s beginning to feel more like herself again, especially after the initial postpartum rollercoaster that so many moms experience. “I’m feeling so much more positive and optimistic, whereas in the early days, I just didn’t know how I was going to do it.”
Roup also confronted a common — yet emotionally challenging — issue that many moms face: breastfeeding. “I think there’s a real lack of knowledge about breastfeeding,” she explains. “When I was pregnant, I just assumed, ‘Well of course I’m going to breastfeed my daughter.’ That was my choice.” But Harlow had other plans: she wouldn’t latch.
As a woman who knows her body so well, this roadblock was particularly tough. “I didn’t know what to do,” Roup says. “I wanted to provide for my child, and I was so frustrated with my own body. I felt like, ‘What’s wrong with me? What’s wrong with my nipples? Why isn’t this happening?’” In those first vulnerable, raw days, Roup was frustrated. “It absolutely drained me emotionally. Combined with a lack of sleep, I was just completely overwhelmed.”
Even after visiting multiple lactation consultants and trying new breastfeeding techniques, Harlow never latched, so Roup decided to pump. “Once again,” she says, “this was a subject I never really understood. I thought pumping would be no big deal, but it turns out that I hated it. So to do that eight times a day, it was exhausting.”
Roup decided to do some research on how to improve her pumping experience — not just for herself, but so she could share her intel with other moms experiencing similar struggles. “Did you know you have to measure your nipples?” Megan asks. “I had no idea, but that’s how you figure out the right flange size.” (The flange is the part of a breast pump that connects directly to the areola, creating a vacuum seal.) For Roup, nipple cream and a warming massage device called a LaVie were lifesavers. “I’ve been exclusively pumping,” says Roup, “but for my mental wellbeing I had to cut down from eight pumps a day just so I could get things done.”
In between pumping, Roup substitutes with formula. It wasn’t her initial plan, but if anything, motherhood has taught Roup that sometimes things don’t always go according to plan, and that’s perfectly OK.
Roup shared some simple postpartum ab exercises with us, which work just as well on moms and non-moms alike. Happy strength-building!
