New to this hope I'm doing it right??????

What an awful doctor. None of his business if you plan to use your vagina or not. Can you find someone a little more compassionate? In the meantime, you dont have anything to "lose" and a lot to benefit from trying the exercises/ reading the book and watching the dvd from this site. I am 50 but have the same problem you do. Also learned about it from a bm and feeling my uterus when I was finishing up the bm. I didnt know it was my uterus though. I have been bad and not given the exercises a fair shake yet but I plan to get into it now that the holidays and the company has left and things are calmer. I have already benefitted from changing my posture. I already was eating a lot of fiber and dont have constipation but that is another thing you can work on if it is a problem for you. Just stay away from that idiot doctor with no compassion for a woman seeking guidance. I cannot believe anyone with an ounce of compassion would suggest that you sew up your vagina! What an idiot. Perhaps he tells male patients with urinary problems he can just cut off their penises!

txswimmer

Hi HeavenlyFlower

What a lovely Username.

I agree with Txswimmer about finding another doctor. He might be OK for PAP smears, but he certainly didn't display any respect for your reason for consulting him, and he certainly didn't show respect for your body. I wouldn't trust him as far as I could throw him! (Perhaps he was just feeling a bit pre-menstrual.)

How long have you been practising WW posture? Hopefully, with practice, you will be able to keep your cervix higher all the time. This can take years, and seems to happen gradually, as you fine tune your everyday activities. I have hardly seen or felt my cervix at the introitus for about a year now, though I have been using WW posture for about 5 years in total.

I have found that emptying the bowel without getting into too much of a c shape, particularly the upper body, prevents the cervix from coming down as far into the introitus, so it doesn't get either contaminated or irritated by the toilet paper. Straining when emptying the bowel will also push the cervix downwards. If you try and keep your chest out and head up while bearing down you can simply firm up and stretch out your abdominal muscles, rather than pushing down and in with them. My other tip is to wipe from the back. To do this you have to arch your back then twist around. Arching your back will lift all your pelvic organs up and forward and might get your cervix far enough out of the way.

Cheers

Louise

It IS a procedure offered to older woman. I would have thought over 85 though! It works, it has nothing to do with urination, that bit is left alone.
Sorry I don't know of anyone who has had this.
One of my problems is that I have this pressure feeling , and I dont think it would stop it?

Have a listen and view of this video on pelvic organ to see the prolases and the details of the surgery. I found it very informative.
I think everyone here should view this, as from reading I am not sure if people here realise how bad this POP can get for some??
I'm wondering if the exercises and posture help for those where it is already outside?
Pelvic floor disorders, Pelvic organ prolapse, incontinence etc. (copy and paste link to address)

http://www.researchchannel.org/prog/displayevent.aspx?rID=29680&fID=345

Warning: these videos use up internet bits-so perhaps download it to computer first if possible and then listen at your leisure as much as you like!

Hello Heavenly Flower,

This is a very old surgery fraught with risk and failure that you can read more about in Saving the Whole Woman. It is the pelvic floor that is closed in this operation. The pelvic floor is the sphincter of the urethra, which sits immediately on the other side of the front vagina wall. One of the major problems with colpocleisis is that through scar tissue, or simply the tugging of altered anatomy, the angle of the urethra is changed and chances of urinary incontinence greatly increased.

Please ask your doctor for further details.

WIshing you well,

Christine

Dear Jandi_7,

Thank you for linking us to this "classic" video presentation, which savvy WW members will be able to see as an unabashed sales pitch for (1) urogynecology and (2) Stanford University. I will offer my own video presentation as a rebuttle to the extremely dangerous, industrial practice of urogynecology on the home page of this website. Please look for it within the next week or two.

Until then, I would like to offer up a few discussion points from the Stanford video:

1. What are the profound implications for women of conceptualizing the pelvic floor as a "salad bowl"?

2. How does anterior colporraphy "unmask" urinary incontinence? What exactly does "Cover Your Butt" mean? What is the natural evolution of female prolapse and how are we actually protected from SUI?

3. Does the un-anatomic effect of pulling the uterus (which normally sits against the abdominal wall) toward the back of the pelvis through uterine suspension have anything to do with the extremely high failure rates of these surgeries?

4. What do you suppose passionate, grinding sex would feel like with a piece of plastic between your partner's hard cock and your extremely delicate and irreplaceable urethra? Does the fact that most of these slings are placed into post-hysterectomy women with intractable incontinence (and no sex lives) alter the "success" rates of these devices?

5. Do operations that attach pelvic organs to the spine so that they become exponentially more susceptible to being blown out of the body with every breath we take qualify as "minimally invasive"?

6. Does it really matter if completely misconceived surgical procedures are performed "in the right hands?" (This is a Very old and amusing argument amongst competitive and profiteering pelvic surgeons.)

7. Are these doctors just stupid, or have they sold their souls to Ethicon?

I will not be able to participate in the discussion, but hope it gives you food for thought.

Christine

LICENSE UNIQUELY-QUALIFIED MIDWIVES TO EVALUATE, DIAGNOSE, AND TREAT PELVIC ORGAN PROLAPSE NOW!!

Dear Christine, Thanks So much for reviewing this. I greatly appreciate it.

I just put it up as it does show what the "state of art" that doctors are offering us. It is more detailed than what I was told by four specialist docs I have consulted, and explains what they are offering and the "success" rate better than I have been informed, although as you say... how is "success" defined and how long does it last?

About the urination it actually has corrected some mistakes "they(including specialised incontinence nurses unfortunately)" used to make in advice which led me to have a very stretched bladder(like HOLD ON with time charts etc, which led to the beginning of prolapse there.

I really value your feedback on this. I'm downloading the video now, link is slow to Oz and will take over 5 hrs. Now I can look at it again with your comments in mind. I'm a bit slow as I don't understand all the terms.
(Heck when I first found this site it took me a long time to find out what a pop was:)

Jan

Well ladies, I think somebody just got a ticking off! And it wasn't any woman with prolapsed pelvic organs. It was the urogynaecologists! Christine does get very angry about these surgeries for good reason. Doctors do pass off major surgical changes to a woman's body as if they were just waving a magic wand. It is all very well for them. They can go home at the end of a day's work and sleep. How can they sleep, I ask you?

I guess the condition of a woman's pelvic organs has to get pretty bad to submit to this type of surgery. It seems to be 'out of the frying pan and into the fire'. However, as Christine says, it is usually women who have already had hysterectomy who are offered colpeisis as a means of trying to fix problems that are the result of having the hysterectomy. their bodies get 'that bad' as a result of having the first surgery, not as a result of simple pelvic organ prolapse.

The aim of Wholewoman is to prevent women having that first lot of repair surgery which sets up their body for further prolapse and further surgery to try and fix the resulting problems. The statistics tell us that the first surgery is the best outcome of all the surgical repairs. After the first surgery the problems will be more likely and worse. There are women who have hysterectomy who experience no problems afterwards but we don't know whether their hysterectomy was really needed in the first place, and we don't know what 'no problems' means in terms of how bad it was before. I would be doiing everything in my power to avoid that first surgery.

I would like to be able to believe videos like this one, but I am afraid that I don't swallow their confident attitude and misleading half truths. Maybe my POPs aren't bad enough to consider surgical repairs. Well, I can tell you that they are, and it is the techniques I have learned from Christine that make it seem like my POPs are not that serious. No wonder I don't see surgical repairs as a worthwhile risk!

I wonder why women conceptualise the female pelvis as a salad bowl? I guess it is because we see diagrams of it, drawn with the woman lying on her back in the normal position she would be in when examined. The problem is that lying down is not usually a problem for prolapses. They don't bother us until we stand up, so why do they examine us lying down?

When you stand up you can feel the wings of the pelvis and you can feel your pubic bones, often further back than the wings of the pelvis. You can reach around to the back of your body and feel where the bottom of your coccyx is. Is it level with your pubic bone? Not unless you are slouched over! If your stand up tall with a relaxed belly and your chest held proudly your coccyx will be much higher than your pubic bones. The line between your pubic bones and your sit bones is basically horizontal. The opening into your pelvis from the top is basically aligned straight up and down, and your pelvic floor, between coccyx, sacrum and pubic bones, will be diagonal, not horizontal like the floor of a salad bowl. Believe your own body, not medical diagrams drawn of collapsed, horizontal cadavers!

Your pelvic floor is no salad bowl!!! It is more like one of those sloping trapdoors that people have outside their houses that allow you to put stuff into and remove stuff from a cellar without going through the house. Either that or the salad bowl has fallen well and truly over onto its side!

Cheers

Louise

Hi :)

My little rally was not meant to scare Jan (((hugs, Jan!)

Urogynecology is a new practice organized in the late 1980s to take advantage of the *huge* market of reconstructive pelvic surgery. They have brought absolutely nothing new to the party and have only deepened a knowledge base wrought with misconception and error. With the exception of the new mesh surgeries, all of the current "gold standard" procedures were developed decades ago by gynecologists. What makes urogynecology different is a *gigantic* multi-national industrial machine of surgical device corporations behind them. It is these companies that influence every aspect of women's healthcare from University training to private practice.

Urogynecology has never attempted to understand the deeper issues of prolapse. They have not even developed one additional pessary, nor have the slightest interest in incorporating the realities of natural female anatomy and posture into their conceptual framework, as evidenced by the seven years work that WW has done trying to make them aware of these realities.

If midwifery has no interest in making an intellectual and political stance for the right to evaluate and treat prolapse, then we should begin to persuade and honor gynecologists who are willing to make the changes necessary to bring the care of women up to current standards, which includes avoiding prolapse surgery if at all possible.

Welcome to Whole Woman, Jan,

Christine

Hi All

Sorry, but I didn't watch the video before commenting, and it bothered me, so I went to the site and discovered that I could just download the audio on my Australian 'microband' internet connection. ;-) The audio download was very quick, and though I couldn't see the slides the audio explanations were quite clear. As it turns out, my initial comments still stand, and I do agree with Christine about the way it is simply promoting the services this clinic provides. However ...

I did learn quite a few things from the audio file, and I thought I knew it all! I think it is a worthwhile listen, just to learn new stuff about the way the bowel works, particularly about the different types of constipation and the different ways it is treated by doctors. You are all visitors to Wholewoman so I feel safe in assuming that you will be listening/watching with Wholewoman in mind.

The first speaker, Dr Rose, explained about bowel continence and its dysfunctions. Those with bowel continence/constipation issues will get some good anatomical and physiological theory out of it, and an overview of medical treatments. Nothing about particular conditions, though.

The second speaker, Eric, the smart ass urogyn surgeon was a different kettle of fish. His attitude really bothered me. He talked in terms of "restoring the relationship between organs", and "restoring the defect", as if he was putting everything back where and how it was, which is clearly untrue. 'Patching up' or 'handyman repairs' would be a more appropriate term, even if it is done with his new, hi-tech tools. A hammer is still a hammer. I am sure I wouldn't let them do to my house what he wants to do to women's bodies. I don't want it falling down around my ears in five years time! He also points out how common POP is, that it could be said to be normal. Why then, is it necessary to 'fix' it, rather than manage it??? Interestingly he said little about how the pelvic organs work together, or how their physical relationship between each other is the same in every female human. I don't think he has any idea! It was all very Freudian.

The crowning comment was his statement that a woman's pelvic floor is weaker than a man's pelvic floor because (wait for it) it has to allow a baby to pass through it!!! LOLOL!!!!! Well, where has he been hiding!?!?!? I wonder how women manage to keep everything else in there, with a larger hole to boot??

He had also been drinking way too much cheap coffee. I could hardly keep up with his speech. I don't think I missed much.

The third speaker talked about urinary continence, its importance and its dysfunction, and some of the assessment tests. Like the first speaker, good background for understanding what your doctor says.

I think the first and third speakers were quite practical, the message being that there are surgical treatments but often diet, workarounds and strategies are a better option. The thing we forget is that incontinence is not only associated with POP. There are a heap of congenital conditions and chronic conditions that result in incontinence over males and females of all ages, not the least of which are medications and *previous surgery (hysterectomy being mentioned again and again)*, either for POP or for other conditions. Also it was stressed that urge incontinence is common over both sexes and all age groups, which indicates to me that is is not something we should have surgery for. There was also the message that in many cases, if you sort out the constipation your bladder problems will disappear too. Another interesting 'fact' was that there are more adult diapers sold in USA than baby diapers! That's how common lack of bowel and/or bladder control is!

I am getting the message that medical world is in some cases, offering treatments for conditions that are just a variation of normal, and pathologising normal processes, eg treating the 'falling' of POP in the same way as plastic surgeons 'treat' wrinkles. If it falls, we can lift it! People have higher expectations in these days of invasive fixes for socially unacceptable characteristics. To a degree I think these clinics are responding to consumer demand.

They know what is damaged or not working in the pelvic region with the incontinence conditions they described. They have even come up ways of training the brain and the body to overcome many of them, but re POP, they have no idea why organs fall when their supports are damaged, when in fact their traditions supports are pretty flexible and jellylike anyway! They have no idea how a woman's pelvic region maintains its own integrity in the first place. They are no lightbulb moments, no Isaac Newton's or Einsteins among them.

Yours, disappointed again.

Louise