Cystocele - Future pregnancy?

I have had a baby after finding my cystocele, and I'm now pg again. It has not gotten worse, in fact, its better than it was when I found it.

However, I will say, that I spent a good year or two learning all I could about prolapse in general and mine in particular. I worked at stabilizing (and reversing somewhat!) the prolapse and when I felt confident in my body to carry and birth another child, I went for it. I was careful to be good to my body during the pg, and did my best to protect my bladder during labor/delivery. I am no worse for the wear and I've got a gorgeous, sunny 2 yo to show for it.
as far as I know, there is no increased risk of bedrest or miscarriage or anything like that. in fact, my prolapse gets alot better after the first trimester, the uterus grows up out of the pelvic cavity pulling the bladder up along with it.

surgery is not your only option, stick around, read up on the faqs here and if you can, get the book 'saving the whole woman' (get the second edition). learn the posture, avoid constipation, and no matter what your PT tells you do not do any crunches. I also had an abdominal diastisis, which only got moderately better from years of abdominal work. a few weeks of nauli, and it was almost all gone. (nauli's one of those exercises we like here, you can search for it on the site). once you start reading here, you'll see that this is not about strengthening the pelvic floor, its about repositioning your pelvic organs safely over bone rather than over a hole where forces can push them down and out. this is about posture, rather than about kegels.

and another thing, I think 5 mo pp is too soon to make a decision re: surgery. many of us here have found that so much healing takes place that first year pp, even up to two years. give your body a chance to heal, help it along with the techniques you can learn here.

Your post just confirms my thinking in that one should always get a second, or even third, opinion when it comes to all things medical. You *must* have surgery at 5 months pp? What nonsense. Did he explain that most other doctors (even mine who was pretty ignorant about prolapse) tell women to wait until they are done having children because another pregnancy and birth can undo the "repair?" Did he tell you that in the UK, they do not consider the vagina to have completed the shrinking process until 6 months pp, and do not assess for surgery until one year pp because of all the further natural healing that can take place? In Chinese medicine, the postpartum period is a full two years! I get the feeling that you think he is full of crock. There is a non-surgical way to heal and deal with this here which many, many women are using with success. Glad you are here -- I think you will learn a lot. Look for posts by fullofgrace who had two babies post-prolapse, granolamom is on her second post-prolapse, and alemama recently had a post-prolapse baby too. No being bed ridden. No miscarriage. Just healthy babies. They are an inspiration to me.

I too have a postpartum cystocele that, at 9 months pp is sooooo much better than it was even at 5 months. I have been doing the postures, excercises, eating well, and exercising and I feel pretty darn good. (The nauli that granolamom mentioned is a type of yogic breathing/abdominal exercise that is amazing. It sucks those bulges away!) It takes some work, and some lifestyle changes, but I know for myself that the Whole Woman method has been amazing and, in a year or two, I will be having another child.

Yes, getting the book and the DVD is worth it!!

Hi viv

just wanted to add that i also had my first baby march 2009 and descovered my cystocele 7 weeks pp. I was told by the gyn surgeon(spesialist in pelvic floor reconstruction) in the hospital that my pp cystocele would most likely heal by itself and i would be able to reasume to normal after a year pp. He told me just to be patient as healing takes a long time. He said it is not likely that i ll need surgery and did not want to see me until 1 year pp. This is in Norway.I also had a second opinion which basically said the same.The two docs also said that i could have more children.The surgeon recomended vaginal delivery.The second opinion recomended c- section.
They also told me my pain would gradually disapear as my estrogen levels returned and they where right, so i think these docs know their stuff and i trust their words and experiance.
i hope this helps.

wow, what an upsetting response to get from a doctor!
Just to echo what has been said...at 5 months i was just starting to really feel better. at 8 months i started to have days where i felt i could live with this no problem. then it got a bit worse (i got a bad bad cold that really threw me--worth knowing that blips on teh road are just that, blips, not a big step backwards...), by a year even better again. I thought that was it, as the doctors said they would reassess at a year. But no! kept getting better! Up to two years I noticed quite big changes. Now they are smaller. Having said that, I got the DVD a few months ago and noticed mroe changes. Lately, I've been following dietary advice by Christine (see a post a few weeks back called Prolapse is an inflamatory disease or something like that...and wow, even better again!
So, 5 months is only just the beginning. I do hope that you are starting to feel better, but I will say that by reading the book, adopting the posture, doing the excercises, eating well, not letting clothing press on your belly--things can get so much better!

I would at this point have another I feel that good (but stopping here for other reasons...). my prolapse now is classed as mild (was grade 3), and does not rule my life...

hang in there!
Kiki

Thanks kiki, its great to here your story of amazing healing, and really glad you are sharing it with us:-)

I hope I'm posting this in the right forum. How do you post your own questions here? Anyways I hope it's the right place to post. So I'm turing 26 soon, have 2 children and I was wondering how pregnancy after developing Rectocele and Cystocele 3rd degree is? You can get pregnant when it's that bad right? Also should you wait after surgery to get pregnant again? Will it polapse again? I want some advice because I still want to have more children. I'm 6 weeks pp currently & am scared of surgery, but don't want it to get worse. I'm also wondering if next pregnancy birth will have to be C-section or if I can have vaginal birth? Will the prolapse get worse from either or & does it matter if it's post or pre-surgery child birth?

-Rectocele and Cystocele 3rd degree

So your dr said after your done having children you will get the surgery? I just found this site recently too and would be happy to share stories w/you. I wish luck to you that you continue to feel better! I'm 6weeks pp & having a hard time dealing w/this since I don't know who to talk to about this. This problem has been a very lonely one since it's hard to talk to ppl about this. I'm here if you need to talk hun, your not alone *hugs*!

-Rectocele and Cystocele 3rd degree

Welcome to Viv and to Angelmama.

Viv, I am not surprised that the diastasis is going away already. One of the features of WW posture is that the bottom of the ribcage is probably higher than it was, and your pubic bone is probably much further away from it. In addition, a relaxed belly will make the distance between these two points much greater.

The diastasis happens because your rectus abdominus muscles are still a bit longer than their functional length, because of pregnancy stretching. Now, in WW posture you are carrying yourself with the top and bottom anchorage points of these muscles further apart, the muscle is no longer floppy, but stretched slightly, so the two halves come together naturally. Voila! Now the muscles are at their natural resting tension they will start working with everyday movement.

It is like grasping both sides of a big fat rubber band with forefinger and thumb at each end. If you are not holding the two ends far enough apart the two halves will sag apart in the middle, even if you hold it vertical. When you move your two hands slightly further apart the two halves come together. At this point the rubber band is at its functional length, in slight tension. It is the movement of muscles that makes them stronger. A little tension is what makes them work, and makes them move. If they are continually floppy because you are tucking your tummy in and reducing the distance between their anchorage points they are permanently flaccid. If there is no resting tension they are not going to come together by themselves. This is one of the 'magic' aspects of WW posture. It reinforces its own health. It maintains itself. Over the next few months they will tighten up even more.

Angelmama, wishing Viv luck is great. But then I thought about it. Luck does play some part in WW work, but most of it is learning about your body, implementing the changes to get your body back to its more primitive, female orientation, where it is able to support its pelvic organs more easily, and the self-discipline of keeping it up, because change can be slow, and there can be setbacks which can be discouraging. I still find after 5 years of this work that I am still fighting Western lifestyle every day, whether it is buying food that sustains a healthy body (or getting off my butt and out into the vege garden), buying clothing that allows my belly free movement or finding ways to sit in slouchy chairs and chairs that do not have room for my female butt when I am out and about. The improvements after pregnancy and birth happen slowly, and really go on for years. I can remember after my third child was born 22 years ago how sloshy my belly felt on the inside as well as blobby on the outside, even a year after his birth. Now, at menopause, my belly is a bit saggy on the outside but the inside is much firmer. The changes of getting older are not all bad. So it is not so much luck as action, and natural progress.

BTW, I can now see that I had postpartum POP after my second baby. I went on to have a third without worry, partly because I didn't understand what was happening in my body. Surgical repairs certainly weren't suggested. Naivety can sometimes be the key to lack of anxiety. My POP diagnosis was formally made a few years after, and I tried a pessary but it was a horrible experience, much less help for the heavy bleeding and pelvic congestion and pain than I hoped it would be. That discomfort eventually eased off, and I wondered what all the fuss had been about. It wasn't until I was in perimenopause that the symptoms started in earnest, but ten years down the track, and seemingly through menopause, my symptoms are pretty minimal, nothing that would send my anywhere near a gynaecologist anyway. We have our PAP smears from family doctors or clinics in Australia, so there is no need to see a gyn for an annual checkup, so we are not routinely offered surgical repairs like in other parts of the world.

It is interesting to read your comments Viv, on your doctor and his nonchalant attitude. However, he is probably more dismissive than nonchalant. He certainly was relaxed about it, but was unable to tell you much that would make you more at ease with your decision. Trouble is that he probably didn't know much more that he could tell you! You might be able to direct him to this site, or print off a brochure from the main website and give it to him. Doctors generally find it hard to get their heads around Christine's model, so don't expect an Aha! moment for him, but you never know. Once ten women have given him the same brochure it might make him realise that this crazy woman in New Mexico does have something worth listening to. They have to listen eventually.

Cheers

Louise