Every time Sarah Kinee opened Instagram, she was barraged with advertisements for weight loss products. One time, she recalled seeing six in a row.

“I was like, what is this? Why do I keep getting ad after ad?” said Kinee, who had her second child late last year. “It’s all about how they can make money and profit off women.”

Kinee, 31, was breastfeeding and gaining weight; she and her husband began talking about whether she should take the weight loss medication known as a GLP-1. She was about four months postpartum when she brought up the subject with her doctor. 

What she didn’t expect, she said, was how effusive he would be — he told her he didn’t have enough good things to say about the drugs. Her insurance covers the medications, at least for now.

To start GLP-1s, she had to stop breastfeeding her son at four and a half months, well short of the full year she had hoped for. It wasn’t easy. 

“Each time I was breastfeeding him felt very precious — it felt fleeting,” she said. “It was tough to give up that bond.”

Still, it was ultimately the right choice for her and her mental health, she said. Her son transitioned well to formula. And there’s something special, she added, about sharing the responsibility of feeding him with her family.

“I try not to harp on the mom guilt and selfishness I felt for choosing myself,” she said.

She’s lost 10 pounds over five weeks. Her goal is to lose another 45. Her clothes are starting to fit differently, but even more meaningful is how she feels: more present in herself and with her family.

“For the first time in a while I feel like my body is my own,” she said. “Of course I’m there to comfort my kids and nurture them, still, but in the same breath, I can choose myself and not feel guilty about it.”

The year after giving birth is a complex time: medically, physically, emotionally. Caring for a newborn can mean sleep deprivation, sporadic meals and limited free time. Many postpartum people often describe a pressure to “bounce back” quickly — to become the same person they were before pregnancy within weeks or even months. With weight, that’s particularly complicated. Research suggests that a year postpartum, most people weigh more than they did before becoming pregnant.

Enter GLP-1s.

They have become almost ubiquitous. Polling shows that about 1 in 8 American adults currently use GLP-1s, and that almost 1 in 5 have at some point. They’re easier than ever to acquire, prescribed by doctors but also offered by direct-to-consumer telehealth providers like Ro Health, Hers and LifeMD. 

For the first time in a while I feel like my body is my own.”

Sarah Kinee

In the United States, women are more likely than men to use GLP-1s. Polling from KFF, a nonpartisan health policy polling, research and journalism organization, found that 15 percent of women said they were using GLP-1s, as opposed to 9 percent of men. Data suggests that part of that is because of prescriptions made to postpartum patients. A study found that postpartum women in Denmark have since 2018 become more likely to take GLP-1s postpartum. Another study, published in March, found a similar increase in the United States. Maven Clinic, a health company focused on women and reproductive health, even launched a direct-to-consumer GLP-1 program in March.

GLP-1s aren’t recommended for pregnant or breastfeeding patients, and there is little research about whether they might be transmitted into breastmilk. Nursing people are also supposed to get a surplus of calories to produce milk. That’s more difficult when taking a drug that suppresses appetite. 

But doctors — OBGYNS, family physicians and weight specialists — all say they are increasingly talking to postpartum patients about weight loss drugs. And new moms say they are bombarded with advertisements promising them that if they sign up they can quickly shed the “baby weight” with an easy injection or pill.

Some doctors say the availability of GLP-1s could prove transformative for patients whose weight gain during pregnancy has resulted in obesity or could compromise their health, increasing their risks of conditions such as hypertension or diabetes. It especially could help people with high blood pressure or diabetes — which can be dangerous in pregnancy — who want more children.

“The world feels like our oyster,” said Dr. Ann Bruno, a maternal-fetal medicine specialist at the University of Utah, who has studied GLP-1 usage in the prenatal and postpartum periods.

But for some new moms, the drugs offer more than just possible health benefits. 

Kristen Marriot thought it would just take a month before her body would feel like her own again. After she gave birth, Marriot, a 32-year-old in Quebec, almost didn’t recognize herself. 

Marriot was active throughout her pregnancy, going on long walks and taking workout classes. She loved it. But recovering from giving birth in a bitterly cold January, she couldn’t even go for a walk outside. About half of the weight she gained in her pregnancy — around 25 pounds — disappeared in her first two weeks after giving birth. The rest felt like it was staying. She didn’t like the feeling of looking in the mirror. 

Then she would open up her phone and see the same message, over and over: a promise that she could lose weight quickly through GLP-1s.

“All my social media is filled with advertisements for services that prescribe GLP-1 medications. Every influencer that popped up on my feed was talking about GLP-1s,” she said. “I was seeing all this messaging like, ‘This is the way to lose weight, if you take it, it’ll be so easy — you’ll be so skinny, you won’t have to worry about weight at all.’”

But the principal source of stress, she said, was a desire to quickly become the person who she had been before pregnancy — doing the same activities, looking the same, feeling the same. GLP-1s could be a quicker way to get back to that.

“No one said anything negative to me. My friends, my family, my husband were all incredibly supportive,” she said. “It was just the pressure I put on myself.”

Doctors said they wouldn’t advise GLP-1s for patients who aren’t diagnosed with obesity or pre-obesity. Research also suggests that patients who initiate GLP-1s should probably be prepared to stay on them long-term, or they will regain much of the weight they lose. Emerging data suggests possible side effects, including that some GLP-1s can interfere with hormonal birth control.

“It’s not without risks and side effects, and I would discourage just trying it to lose 10 or 20 pounds,” said Dr. Johanna Finkle, an OBGYN in Kansas who specializes in obesity medicine.

The medications aren’t always covered by insurance, meaning that costs can vary widely, from closer to around $40 per month to hundreds of dollars. They can be purchased from all sorts of compounding pharmacies that offer cheaper options than brand-name products like Ozempic — which can cost patients more than $1,000 per month without insurance — even as news reports have found that not all of those pharmacies are properly licensed.

Patricia, a 40-year-old mother of two in Miami, said that she sought a GLP-1 weeks after giving birth to her second child, a medication she plans to keep taking long-term. 

Patricia, who asked that The 19th refer to her by her middle name because few people know she is taking weight loss medication, had already planned not to breastfeed. Because insurance does not cover her medication, she said she pays about $574 per month. So far she has lost 60 pounds, though some of it was water weight she lost after giving birth. 

Now she is about 13 pounds away from her goal of reaching her pre-pregnancy weight. At that point she plans to switch to a maintenance shot, injected less frequently to prevent the weight from returning. 

Patricia has struggled with food in the past; she is in recovery for bulimia. For her, her body’s response to the medication has been almost a relief. 

“Before, I felt this need to staunchly stay away from the carbohydrates, and now I’m like I know I can have a bite,” she said.

But she noted that recovery is individual, and that watching the numbers steadily decline could pose a risk of relapse for someone with a history of disordered eating.

“Who knows if I get to 125 and I’m like, ‘Oh I want to be 117.’ I don’t think that’s there,” she said. “But if you just look at social media and look at these influencers, everybody’s on the thinner side, or a lot are on the thinner side.”

That pressure can be potent. But it’s still balancing against other questions for new parents — the price tag, the risk of side effects.

For Marriot, those concerns ultimately won against the barrage of ads.

In Canada, public insurance largely doesn’t cover GLP-1s for weight loss; she would have to use private insurance if she wanted the drug. She was also concerned about possible side effects, and she worried that taking a GLP-1 now might put her at greater risk of pregnancy complications in the future, especially if she quickly gained weight again after discontinuing the medication.

Now, a few months postpartum, she said, she’s able to exercise again — attending mom-and-baby pilates classes and stroller cardio — and she is slowly losing weight.

“I’m starting to feel more comfortable and more like myself,” she said. “It’s OK to not feel like yourself, but it’s not going to be forever. It just might be slower than what you want, but things will start to change and it will start to feel better.”