As a new mom, your confidence takes more hits than the Spears family's reputation: the prepregnancy jeans that hang mockingly in your closet; the breasts that leak milk every time your neighbor's Labradoodle whimpers; the aunt who cocks her eyebrow at your swaddling technique. Not to mention the changes in your love life (him flicking a glob of pureed peas off your chest is the closest you've come to foreplay in months) and simply dealing with the sheer exhaustion of new parenthood. All of these things can tremendously impact how you feel about yourself as a woman, a wife, and now, a mom.

Sure, you understand your body is miraculous. And sure, we all like to think that the extra weight we gained during pregnancy or in the first months of caring for a new baby is a small price to pay. But let's be honest. It's still your body, and wanting to be strong and look hot in your clothes doesn't fly out the window the minute you purchase a Baby Björn. And that's true even if you're the rare woman who considers herself immune to society's obsession with physical perfection. Tabloid magazines scream out celebrities' nose-diving postpartum weights like a NASA countdown ("160, 145, 120...we have liftoff!"). Then there are the ever-more-popular mommy makeovers—pricey mix-and-match cosmetic surgeries including breast implants, lifts, and tummy tucks aimed specifically at mothers. In 2006, doctors performed 325,000 of these procedures on women ages 20 to 39, according to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons in Arlington Heights, Illinois. That's an 11 percent increase from the prior year.

It's enough to break even the most confident of women. "I think it can happen to anyone," says Maria Rago, Ph.D., a psychologist at Linden Oaks at Edward Hospital in Naperville, Illinois. Of course, a history of anorexia or extreme perfectionism can increase one's risk for postpartum body-image issues, but many otherwise healthy women are "surprised at how much it impacts them when they look at their new body," Rago says. "It's different from the media's ideal in so many ways." A pouchy stomach, rounder hips and thighs, or newly deflated or gigantic breasts can make it very discouraging and scary to look in the mirror, she says. So discouraging, in fact, that a 2007 survey of more than 3,000 mothers found that 67 percent would rather reclaim their pre-baby physique than their prebaby sex life.