moisturizers, a good doctor who will work with people who prefer not to go the surgical route.

get the wholewoman balms! seriously! it doesn't say so on the label, but I'd guess they're safe enough to eat. all natural ingredients.
and so moisturizing

(Well, here we go again, ladies!!)

Hi Discouraged

Welcome back. Glad to hear you are going OK. While you have been away we have had a major discussion on Replens and vaginal moisturisers and lubricants. Use the search box to look for the topics, which mostly have product names in the subject line, but there are mentions of moisturisers in all sorts of topics. Just remember the two different spellings of moisturizer. Try both.

I swear by the WW balms too.

Call back with questions when you have taken all the posts in.

Geez, a few months is a long time in POP land.

Cheers

Louise

Gee, it is hard to make a subtle joke in these posts. I am not making fun of you at all. :-) If you have a look at the strings about Replens, moisturisers and balms you should get a laugh too. We seemed to spend weeks recording what happened and comparing applicators, husband responses, and trying out products. It was a real hoot!

I find the best way to search is to do one keyword or spelling at a time. It is not a sophisticated search engine. You will probably get more than a page of topics, some of which will seem irrelevant, but the reference to the keyword will be somewhere in there. Open each topic and use your browser's Find on This Page function to highlight the keyword. I use Firefox. That way you can skim large numbers of posts very quickly and the keyword will jump out at you. The keyword may only be in one post of a long string (topic). Good luck.

Louise

Discouraged,

I don't get to post much these days, but I'm the tampon queen. As a moisturizer, I use olive oil exclusively. I have even begun to use it on my face! My grade three has gone to a grade one. I have a little jar of olive oil in the bathroom, and I let the tampon absorb about five seconds of olive oil, and then I apply the tampon while I'm lying down. It stays in place most days all day. Since I'm not bleeding anymore, I don't worry about infection. Others have tried this, and have not had good success. I think the combination of the lying down, the olive oil and the fact I use a sports tampon by Playtex. You don't need much olive oil. I've been doing this for about six months.

Judy

I have been living with my prolapses since 2002. I was fitted for a pessary then because I refused surgery. Surgery scared me silly.

The pessary worked for quite awhile but my prolapse was getting very uncomfortable so I was seriously considering surgery. Still scared silly but thought it might be the answer. I found this web site in 2004 and haven't thought of surgery since.

The posture helped to improve my prolapse and I have been living well ever since. Still have some uncomfortable times but with rest they always improve. I still use my pessary as needed. I use the bliss balm and find it helps keep things moisturized quite well.

I am 72 soon to be 73 and I won't consider surgery unless it is a "life threatening" condition.

The only exercises I do are a lot of walking and work out on my gazelle when the mood hits me.

IMO I don't think your prolapses will require surgery if you take care of yourself, don't get constipated, proper diet etc.

Regards,
Flora.

Hi Dis (I'll just call you dis..discouraged seems so.. well, discouraging!),

I am am avid user of Replens as you might have seen in our past posts if you found them. Replens gives me tremendous relief and keeps my Stage 3 bladder prolapse up higher. I would hate to have to go without it, although it does carry some small risk. The good outweighs the bad in my mind. I love Christine's Balms as well, however, I find I need both since Replens goes up higher and the Balms work lower.

Good luck. I hope you are doing better. It's a shame that you don't have a Gyn that will work with you. Might want to think about finding one who will. This is too important to let someone persuade you to do anything you think you don't want to.

Regards,

~Mae

Hi Dis
I don't want you to think managing POP is just a matter of finding out what you can so you can feel better and just get on with your life. It is not really like that. The WW method allows you to firstly change the configuration of your pelvic organs in relation to their fascia and the skeleton, and secondly to maintain that new configuration in every day life. That is what allows me to get on and live may life in the same way as I always have lived it, with subtle changes to the way I now do things so I don't do further damages to the fascial supports of my pelvic organs and don't push them backwards so they fall down my vagina and down the plughole, so to speak.

Once you build these new ways of doing things into everyday life they are self affirming and the discomfort for me has simply gone away. Yes, I do feel them occasionally, but honestly it is less than once a day, and usually momentary. Mind you, I am having less frequent periods now, so I don't seem to get the monthly variations that I used to get a couple of years ago. I am naturally mindful of my prolapses these days because I don't want them to bother me and limit my activities. My new ways of doing things affirm themselves cos I know that if I go back to doing things the old ways the symptoms will be back with avengence.

Getting on with my life is not putting the discomfort on the back burner and doing other things to get my mind off my POPs. It is just something that has happened as a result of doing all these WW things on a 24/7 basis. I can now live my life free of the fear that I had before.
It is a matter of not taking your body for granted and working with it instead of against it. As an older woman who is discovering that I can no longer do things at the pace I used to, or the intensity I used to, I am very aware that it is downhill from now on. My mother is 96, her mother died at 104. I'm 55. I am going to be around for a long time yet. I will look after my body as well as I can so I can live life to the full and hopefully make the rest of my body's years a gentle downward slope, rather than hurtling into an invalid old age in a body which has been unnecessarily abused. I now consider that *not* doing all the WW techniques is abusing your POPs, and abusing your body by neglect and misuse.

Having said all that, it has been 4 years of WW for me, and there is a lot of information to take in. You can only do that gradually in order to assimillate it into your everyday life. Be patient with your body, and just keep learning. I am sure you will get there, or at least get to a point where you lose the fear of what is happening. :-)

Soon you will need a new username. Encouraged!

Cheers

Louise

I tried to post this before and lost it... so apologies if it somehow shows up twice.

I think the best way to find a doctor who fits with your needs (besides getting a great referral from a friend with the same problem!) is to contact other people in the community of whole woman-centered and/or alternative healthcare. I would look for midwives, doulas, and practitioners of alternative medicine (acupuncture, chiropractor, naturopath, etc.) and seek referrals from them. The gynecologist I have now seems wonderful so far - definitely the best I've had - and I was referred to her by my old doula when I called her and said I wanted to change doctors. Even though my GYN doesn't do obstetrics anymore, my doula had been around long enough to remember her.

If you ask around and hear the same name from more than one person, that's a really good sign.

Also if you have another doctor you trust you can ask that person, but I think that's the hardest one. It's always hard to know why a doctor recommends another doctor - sometimes it may have to do with a reputation in the hospital that has to do with surgical skill and not bedside manner or an open mind. And I've never had a GP I thought highly enough of to trust their referrals. I do take advice from my kids' pediatrician because we can talk more mom-to-mom than doctor-to-patient about that stuff (as I am not the patient!).

Good luck,
Sarah