Mum shares foot photo to show reality of body’s reaction to pregnancy

Chontel Duncan is not one to shy away from discussions about her body.

The personal trainer, model, and Instagram star regularly shares snaps of her kids, her work-out regime, and everything in between. This week, Chontel took to Instagram to share two pictures of her foot. Stay with me now, this is relevant. On the left was a picture of her foot during her first pregnancy, and on the right was a picture of her foot from her second pregnancy. The differences are startling, and really do say a lot about the myriad of ways our bodies react to having a baby growing inside of them.

A post shared by SNAP CHAT ?chontelduncan (@chontelduncan) on Sep 18, 2017 at 4:19pm PDT

In the post's caption, the mum-of-two said that her fluid retention got so bad during her first pregnancy, but that during her second she experienced virtually none. She also said she was creating a lot of "foot phobias" with her post. Surely not Chontel. Surely not. She wrote:

"Creating foot phobias all around the world with this post but this is the raw truth on how bad my fluid got towards the end of my first pregnancy. Second time round I have done nothing different but have absolutely no fluid retention."

She also included the hashtag 'foot fetish nation,' for reasons unknown.

A post shared by SNAP CHAT ?chontelduncan (@chontelduncan) on Sep 17, 2017 at 11:53pm PDT

Chontel regularly shares pics of how stunning she looks during her pregnancies, so it is nice to see that she's just like the rest of us - and gets a bit (or a lot) of fluid retention in her feet from time to time. Her snap has been praised on Instagram, with users saying that they had experienced the exact same thing themselves. Chontel gave birth to baby Swayde just yesterday. He is, of course, only adorable.

A post shared by SNAP CHAT ?chontelduncan (@chontelduncan) on Sep 20, 2017 at 6:50pm PDT

Swelling is normal during pregnancy and is caused by the excess blood and fluid in the body. The extra fluid is needed in order to soften the baby as the foetus grows.