Has anyone ever heard of this? (RE prolapse totally gone after 1 month post partum)

Submitted by Love2boys on November 15, 2008 - 3:36am
Body: 

I was talking to my mother in law yesterday about my possible prolapse. She said that back when she was in Vietnam and gave birth to her second child, her uterus came down. Her mother told her to make a certain soup to drink. After 1 month and drinking the soup 2 times, her uterus went back up for good. She had 4 more babies after that...my husband the youngest one and never had any prolapse issues again. She didn't kegel and lifted heavy things throughout and after all her pregnancies. She often worked, cooked, etc. with a child on her back. She is now 61, still lifts heavy things, doesn't kegel and no sign of prolapse at all.
Has anyone known anybody or heard of anybody who had prolapse after pregnancy but it went away for good later on without surgery? Not just a prolapse stabilized or one that got better but one that actually went away completely?
I was just curious.

rosewood

November 16, 2008 - 12:33am

If you'll ask her and she remembers, it may benefit us all.

Marie

Love2boys

November 16, 2008 - 1:52am

I definitely asked her and she said that you can't get the vegetable here. She was in Vietnam and her mother told her to boil together pork intestines (i know it sounds gross) and a certain vegetable that grew in their area and drink the soup. She said she drank it twice and within a month it went away and she never thought about it again. She is 61 now and she works at my husband and his siblings restaurant...which use to be my father in law's til he sold it to them. She is very active...doesn't do sports, (plays alot of mahjong if you can call that a sport, lol) but she does alot of heavy gardening, does alot at the restuarant, entertains alot ( alot of cooking). But she is always busy and she is totally fine and healthy. I should ask her again though about the vegetable...maybe they do sell it in more asian populated cities like where my parents live. I'll ask her again tomorrow and find out from my parents.

granolamom

November 16, 2008 - 6:44am

yeah, get the recipe!

but I'm also curious....what's her posture like? and I wonder about lifestyle in vietnam. specifically things like toileting, diet as it relates to constipation, and is the habit of reclining on soft furniture as pervasive there as it is here?

also, I have heard of uterine prolapse pp that completely resolved. obviously, haven't seen any myself, so I'm going on what people tell me. both my mw and my doula have told me they've seen such things.

Love2boys

November 19, 2008 - 5:12pm

I asked my MIL about the soup and she said that it was some bark from the river and some of the sea vegetables growing there. She said you won't be able to find it here. I'm not even sure if it's something that people sell, it's just some bark from their area that they were living at in Vietnam. Too bad...if there was some kind of miracle drink to cure prolapse, that would be great!!!
Her shoulders are a little forward and back bent a tiny bit. Butt doesn't stick out but more straight. Her posture is like your average person. But amazingly prolapse gone and never came back despite all her heavy lifting. She used the toilet squatting i'm sure most of her life til she moved to the US and started using toilets.
Trai

louiseds

November 19, 2008 - 9:09pm

Hi Trai

Some women seem to experience no prolapse at all after childbirth. I find that difficult to believe when I think about all the tissues in a woman's body that are distended both by pregnancy and by birth, no matter how gentle and perfect. Pudendal nerve entrapment happens in all vaginal births, where the distension of the perineum forces it downwards and causes the pudendal nerve to be stretched and compressed between the various ligaments and muscles it traverses between the sacrum and the genital area. This stretching recovers as the perineum rises again, and this process is the reason for the initial incontinence and return of continence and bowel motions a couple of days after birth.

I had considerable vulval swelling straight after birth all three times, and from memory that all went down after a few days, but prolapse was never mentioned. Perhaps that was all normal. I never thought to ask.

On the other hand I too have heard of women literally pushing their whole uterus out with birth, then having it go back inside again postpartum. No idea about the longer term though. My aunt had this with her third birth and was immediately hysterectomised, poor darling, so she never got to find out.

Maybe your mother in law was one of the lucky ones who birthed her uterus, then it all reverted to normal size postpartum, maybe aided by the healing qualities of the soup. I have a feeling that delivering the uterus may be made possible by the enlarged internal tissues of pregnancy, and may not necessarily be the worst possible thing to happen, though it sounds so gross. Maybe her fasciae were not damaged by this and everything just shrank back up again as it was supposed to. Her vaginal fascia would certainly not have experienced the shearing forces illustrated in STWW ed2, where the baby's head forces the inside of the cervix downward while the outer cervix would be pulled upward, jammed up against the pelvic bones. Her experience is indeed inspiring as to the wonder of her natural design.

As for her posture, I guess all women have different posture, and always have had. Wholewoman posture will help a woman who has compromised her pelvic structure by standing and moving in a way that positions her organs backwards so they will slip down the vagina, but women whose natural posture reinforces the correct position of organs may have no need for it, cos they are already doing it! No doubt your MIL would have lead an active lifestyle throughout her childbearing life, without chairs and comfy sofas and car seats, and would not have had medical intervention for that first birth. I am also guessing that her posture, while slightly stooped now, was not stooped when she was having all her babies and working quite hard physically, though probably not in the stressed and hurried way women today work. Everything has to happen for us immediately, including birth.

Some women seem to have stronger fasciae than others, viz. obese people who lose a lot of weight. Some are left with very saggy skin while others look like they have always been slimmer.

I think the reasons for developing prolapse are complex, and it is a combination of factors that decides whether or not a woman draws the short straw.

My mother is now 96 and a bit stooped, though her posture as a younger woman was very Wholewoman. No tucking in the butt and tummy in those days. She only birthed one baby, me. It was a 36 hour labour without any intervention other than 'twilight sleep' anaesthesia, so she certainly wasn't hurried along. She was kept *in bed* for 10 days afterwards, wrapped in abdominal binders, cos that's what they did then! Don't know why. She has no prolapses and is basically continent still, though she does pee before she goes anywhere, and she does get up a couple of times during the night. She can still hang on if she has to, at times like a car journey.

Lucky me got the modern flat tummy and tucked butt, the pre-and postnatal exercises that reinforced them, the highly trained obstetrician, the pre-eclamplsia, the labour induced by breaking the membranes, the forceps, the lithotomy delivery, the epidural, the big episiotomy, but I am alive and well and so was my first baby. Oh yeah, I also ended up with prolapses as a result of all that. But I am OK now.

Cheers

Louise