anyone else has this symptom?

HI Happymum,
welcome to WW. I'm glad that you are talkign with your GP about what is going on and I agree, POP wouldn't cause some of those symptoms.
POP can cause frequent urination, but that is something that can definitely be improved. POP can cause a heavy feeling in your pelvic / vulval area, and a sense of drag in that region.
POP however wouldn't be causing a change in smell, fatigue / exhaustion. It sounds like something else is going on. I wonder if you have developed some sort of an infection that has spread, causing the fatigue? What you are experiencing is quite extreme, and definitely needs looking into further.

WW techniques, ie posture, diet, lifestyle changes, exercise (diff't to pelvic floor ones) can help with POP and the symptoms. But you definitely need to find out what is going on with the rest of you, causing this fatigue. Please don't give up on getting that checked out. Have they tested you for iron levels? blood sugars? maybe keep a food diary, and see if there is a link. once you are feeling better you will be able to take the steps to help improve your POP, but it really sounds like you need to figure out this extreme fatigue urgently.

Hi happymum
Well I can relate to your symptoms, not the change in smell part but to the fatigue. Since becoming aware of my POP less than 3 months ago I find that many days are as you describe. I can only manage very small tasks and since I focus most on looking after my 7 month old baby I find that all of the other things are 'left'. Like you say I also have to do a lot of crawling. I have even crawled up the stairs. It is not every day but frequently.
I am waiting to learn more about my situation as time goes on but I get the impression that my pelvic floor area and abdomen is totally fatigued and that this may improve with time - well it has to doesn't it!

Hello happymum,
I am 48 years old, two teenage kids, and have a cystocele. It is a new injury, it happened about six weeks ago. I haven't been diagnosed with what level cystocele, but I do bulge out of my vagina. I have no incontinence problems, I have always been active and healthy, stable weight, never overweight...but the biggest issue for me (besides the bulge, the fear, and feeling like my life has stopped..haha...I can laugh a bit now) is my pelvic region in general. My periods have been so heavy and my stomach (I'm assuming my uterus) is so bloated, that I look like I am about 5 months pregnant! I am feeling spasms, almost like braxton hicks', when I am waiting for my period, and then I feel my uterus contracting/spasming after my period begins. I always feel heavy in my pelvic region and I am tired. I work full-time, it hasn't stopped me from going to work, but it's exhausting! I have had two periods since my POP, and am just going to play it by ear and see if they get worse or better! Of course all I can think about is that I have something else going on that's worse than the POP. I have always been healthy, have been a "vegetarian" since I was 16, never had problems with my periods...this is all new to me. My stomach is always distended. I have read on this forum that the stomach is here to stay and I will never again have a flat stomach, which would be ok if only my pelvic region felt stable. Instead it feels tenious, jiggly, distended, with spasms! Of course we go along in our day, compartmentalizing all that is thrown at us while we participate in life's ballet!! I will let you know if I end up at the doctor's trying to figure this out. For now, I will do my exercises with christine's dvd, I will run in the soft sand at the beach, I will take deep breaths, and I guess most of all, I will take one day at a time, one hour at a time and wait for improvement! I hope you will also feel better each day!

Hello and welcome, Happymum,

Your story is very interesting because it illustrates the futility of kegels and the possibility that repetitions of strong pelvic floor contractions can actually worsen prolapse symptoms. They certainly did not prepare you for the simple task of pruning your roses. Let’s look at why.

When you strongly contract your genital hiatus, which is the area of your pelvic floor surrounding your vagina, you are pulling both vaginal walls toward the center of your vaginal space.

Not only are you pulling the walls, but also your bladder and rectum toward the center of your vaginal space. You are actually stretching the pelvic fascia in the direction of prolapse! This is why kegels are such a misconceived notion. If you have something in your vagina - like a penis - while you are contracting, the walls, fascia, and organs are held back in position.

Prolapse has an extreme effect upon some women’s energy levels, including feelings of being paralyzed with fatigue and discomfort. It is a dislocation really, which can drag down the spine and central nervous system.

So, what would reverse these symptoms? Lifting your tailbone and slowly stretching the muscles and fascia to their functional lengths while you allow your organs to fall forward against your lower abdominal wall. This is the exact opposite of kegels-on-your-back and is the only thing (other than reinforcing exercise) that can positively effect your symptoms by bringing your organs into their anatomically correct positions.

I actually lift in an exaggerated WW posture: hips externally rotated, knees bent, and back straight and horizontal as I get my body directly over whatever I’m lifting. I lift with strong buttocks and thighs, and the great stability of my naturally horizontal sacrum. You have none of these elements while sitting, which is a dangerous way to try to lift.

Hope this helps to reframe your perception that a strong pelvic floor is a contracted one. The opposite is true, actually.

Wishing you well,

Christine

The forties are a notorious time for fibroids, heavy bleeding and general hormonal instability. In a few years you will be past it all, so don’t get talked out of your marvelous uterus, which is the hub of the whole system.

:) Christine

How about a mineral/electrolyte drink? I don't mean some sugary thing with artificial colors. I mean something like Emergen-C, which comes in little packets that you mix with water. When we feel like that, we drink some Emergen-C and immediately feel better.

I am so grateful Christine for your work on prolapse. Your book and your dvd have been so truly enlightening. I rely on both for my mental and physical healing. I was instantly depressed, felt my world caving in on me when I felt and saw my prolapse...I don't know what I might have done to my body if I hadn't had the internet and found your website. Thank you for this forum! Sharing stories, supportive and informative responses, truly caring vibes emanate from this site! Women are awesome!

Thank you Christine! I'm sure you still have your tough days as well, so hang in there and keep practicing what you preach!!

Hi Happymum

I can remember feeling very weighed down when my 3 kids were little, and yes, I was about 35 at the time. I did not have the level of physical exhaustion that you have had, except after my second baby, when I felt like I had a football in my vagina, about 2 weeks postpartum. My only solution to this pressure and heaviness was to lie on the sofa with my head over the edge and my legs hanging over the back with my butt up in the air, for about 15 minutes, which was often not easy. I had a difficult start to second pregnancy and fully managed labour with forceps and big epi for first birth. It felt like I had varicose veins in my pelvis or vulva, which I probably did.

Of course now I know it was postpartum prolapse, which did resolve with some electrical stimulation therapy from a physio. My pelvic floor had been still moribund, probably from the abnormal stretching it got at the start of the pregnancy and never really recovered. See my personal story In the soon-to-be-renamed Personal Stories Forum.

I wish I had known about Wholewoman posture back then. I was at the time heavily into butt and tummy tucking, which would have worsened my symptoms considerably. Who knows if I would have needed the electrical stimulation or not, had I been able to take the pressure off my poor perineum by simply standing, sitting and walking differently!

Before babies I also had extreme heaviness in my limbs during days 2 and 3 of my period, and pains down my legs. My periods were were very heavy on days 2 and 3, but were still significant on days 1, 4 & 5. Lying down was all that would fix it. I think it was pelvic bloating/congestion, which simply put a lot of pressure on the nerves in my pelvis. Perhaps WW posture would have improved that as well.

Oh yes, one other factor which I am sure was significant was a retroverted uterus, which finally corrected itself a couple of years into WW techniques, and about 2 years before my final period.

Oh yeah, last thing. Since childhood I can remember those same sensations you describe after a bowel motion. It sort of felt, and still does, like my intestines were stretched before the motion, but were able to revert to their normal size and rearrange themselves more comfortably after a bowel motion. It is a really nice sensation, because it feels like a release of tension.

You are only 35, and have just started this work. Progress can be slow, especially will little children to look after, but I am sure it will get better with WW posture and other factors you can improve. At least you don't have a constipation problem. I think that is really fortunate.

Louise

Thanks so much for your comments. Yes, I have difficult days, too! But things always improve and sometimes I find myself jumping for joy that I am so healthy and sound. Keep up the good work and someday maybe we will all be able to join hands and have our circle stretch all the way around the globe.

:) Christine

Happymum, will you describe which muscles these are that you're bracing? Because I get very fatigued doing simple things that shouldn't be tiring. I also have become very clumsy and I drop things, and I fall. I've fallen several times recently and I wondered if it was related to not being strong in my core anymore.

I understand what you're saying, but can you tell me exactly what it is you're bracing?

Thanks!

After you have had a baby the pelvic floor , the transverse abdominus (the sideways one), the rectus abdominus (the up and down one) and the internal and external obliques (the diagonal ones) are all stretched and everything is feeling 'blah' as you so succintly describe.

We build muscle strength by using our muscles. The physio exercises will help to get the muscles moving, ie contracting back, but it is getting all these muscles to their functional length (neither stretched nor contracted) that maximises their use and gives them strength.

The way to do this is to separate out all the points at which they are attached. This means lifting your ribcage away from your pelvis and reinstating your lumbar curve. This allows the pelvis to tip forward slightly. the SI joints are not parallel to each other so allowing the pelvis to tilt forwards slightly moves the 'wings' of the pelvis a little towards each other and opens out the back of the pelvis. It also lifts the tailbone away from the pubic bones. This makes the back (aka bottom) opening bigger, like putting a small drumskin on a bigger drum, so it has to stretch tighter. With all these muscles 'wound up' they exercise themselves every time we move, because they are being worked all the time. If we slouch the pelvis tips back and the ribcage comes closer to the pubic bones. Then all these muscles *do* go 'blah'!

This is why we do not say that Kegels are necessary for strengthening the pelvic floor. Do your day and all its activities in WW posture and you are doing pelvic floor exercises *and* working your abs *all day*, without even trying.

The transverse abdominus muscle is only partly muscle. The front and back are wide strips of tough ligamentey stuff. It only has muscley bits on the sides between the bottom of the rib cage and going down the inguinal ligament a little way past the crests of the wings. The inguinal ligaments are thin ligaments that go from the front of the crest of the pelvis down to the pubis on both sides. There is very little muscle lower down than that, so you can contract that as much as you like and it will not pull the lower abdominal wall in, because it is all ligament at that level, adn the sides of it are not attached to bone, but to this ligament. It is more like a sail on a boat at that level! The TA's function is being the partly elastic rope that goes around the abdomen and keeps stuff from falling out.

The internal and external obliques only really work on one side at a time, so they can't pull the tummy in either. It just pops out the other side! (viz nauli, I think). They are the rotational and flexing muscles, because the fibres go diagonally.

The problem muscle is the rectus abdominus, the famous six pack muscle. You can tuck your tummy in with that muscle by shortening the distance between your pubis at the bottom and your sternum and ribs at the top, which tilts your pelvis backwards and lessens your lumbar curve, with the result that your pelvic organs slide backwards and down the plughole. The primary function of the RA is, according to my Atlas of Skeletal Muscles, to flex the vertebral column and compresses the abdomen, ie it is the quite elastic rope that is strung from top to bottom of the abdomen and stops stuff from falling out.

If you look at bodybuilders you will see that to show off their six pack they have to straighten the spine and tilt the pelvis back. This shortens the six pack muscles, so they become short and fat, and stick out! This apparently is attractive. :-( When body builders stand in Wholewoman posture you can't see their six pack because it is stretched out thin (unless they spend an unhealthy percentage of their lives gobbling steroids or obsessively exercising them.)

Sorry, but for me a six pack is best icey cold,straight out of the stubbie, on a summer evening under the stars!

This RA muscle is the one you need to learn to relax and stretch out. If you cannot stretch it out you cannot get your pubis low enough or your ribcage high enough to allow it to be its functional length or allow it to keep your pelvic organs forward. They simply slide backwards again!

I find yoga poses like the Cobra give the game away if my RA's are tight because I can't keep my thighs on the floor. I try to do more of these for a few days. To do Cobra, lie flat on your tummy with your hands beside your breasts and your elbows stuck up in the air, then straighten your arms and look up, to stretch out the front of your torso. Keep your shoulders down.

Here endeth the anatomy lesson.

Louise

...should be that if you feel weakness in the area of your pelvic diaphragm, by all means do as many contractions as you feel necessary - but do them with the lumbar curve in place. This way, as Louise states, the entire pelvic organ support system is working in your favor.

That is great news, Happymum. It is funny how we accept a flawed state as normal, and don't even consider the possibility of it getting better. I think your baby steps and a positive attitude, paired with accepting that progress will be gradual, are the secrets. I am sure you will get better and better.

Louise

What is the pf muscle, I am drawing a blank in the head. I have heard pf muscle over and over and can't grab hold of it.
Thanks,
Heavenly

I think pf = pelvic floor?

Hi Louise,
That was a fantastic read. I have a real need to understand all the anatomy involved when parts of me don't seem to be working as they should. Your information and yoga tips have given me something to positive to work with.
Thanks
Lyntongirl

Christine, please could you explain a bit about the paragraph where you say that prolapse can affect women' s energy levels and it is a "dislocation really which can drag down the spine and central nervous system. " When my symptoms are bad and everything is pulling down, it makes me feel very weak and unable to do anything.

Is it a problem if our hips naturally turn in a bit?

Is it alright to lift things from a kneeling position, as this is the only way I can lift things.

Thank you and best wishes

rainbow

Hi Rainbow

I find that lifting while kneeling is sometimes very useful because you can get close to the load. Kneeling on the knee beside the load, with the other foot planted is another way to do it. You have the advantage of using the thigh muscles of your legs in different ways, and it is easier to stick your butt out if one foot is standing. It is also easy to tuck your toes of your kneeling foot under and rise easily to standing on two feet.
Just don't bend from the waist. Bend from the level of your hip joints.

When kneeling on two knees to get something off ground level I will lift it up slightly onto a low stool while kneeling, with knees apart, using my arm muscles, then stand up and lift it from low stool to bench by half squatting. It uses the best of both worlds. You just have to think it out first, before you start.

Another advantage of kneeling is that it is one less joint in the zigzag shape to be unstable. I find that my pelvis is more stable when kneeling, or even when sitting, than it is when squatting.

Once I got some lower body strength happening everything is more stable.

Over to Christine for the theory.

Louise

Thank you Louise for all the helpful information. At the moment I just kneel on two knees to lift things onto higher surfaces and then push myself up with my arms. I can only carry things on my head like the African women.

Best wishes,

rainbow

Just remember that women have more lower body strength, relative to upper body strength, than men. We have big, solid, strong muscles in our legs. Try and strengthen those legs so you can use both arms and legs when you need them. I have noticed that my elderly mother has little strength left in her legs, though her arms are quite strong. I am hoping to be stronger in the legs than she is at the same age because having strong, stable, responsive legs is the key to remaining mobile in old age. Without balance and confident mobility everybody is paranoid about elderly people falling, so they have to be 'confined' to keep them safe. This is unpalatable, but I would have to agree that being able to get around on a frame or in a chair is preferable to being hospitalised with a broken hip at the age of 98, which happened to my Mum's mum.

My husband's mother, who died aged 86, used to come and visit us for a few weeks each year, for more than 20 years. She had very twisted toes (from not being able to afford bigger shoes when she was young, I think) and appeared to have a lot of difficulty walking. Her feet turned out and she had to take very short steps. However,she was a creature of habit, and every day she would walk/shuffle run round and round our house, going past the window about twenty times, just for exercise. Then she would hang on to a veranda post and do her leg lifts and body bends to keep supple and strong. I think she did them until the day she died. I used to think she was insane doing all this exercise, but it kept her mobile until her dying day. She also used to do a lot of pavement sweeping, and potter around in our garden, bending and straightening, pulling weeds, just a little bit every day. Progress by slow encroachment. She simply refused to give in to the paralysis of old age.

Now, ironically, I find her an inspiration and hope I can do the same. I wish my Mum had been more persistent a few years ago with keeping her body moving than she was.

Autonomy with our mobility is such an important part of life, and is so 'expensive' to maintain. There is no way that nursing homes can afford the staff to keep the oldies moving, even though it is effective use of the elderly care dollar. There was some research done a few years ago in Western Australia in some nursing homes, where residents did weights training for a few months. Their muscles responded almost as well to the exercise as those of younger people, and they grasped back some of their mobility while they were fitter. Unfortunately it was a one off program, so they all went back to their previous, more disabled state, and became dependent again, which suited the system that was in place. What a waste!

So get those thighs strong. Lots of squatting; getting down on the floor and up again. It will make you groan and creak, but that is the cost of working at a level of slight discomfort in order to conserve and grow your body's strength. Take the stairs. Take the first parking spot you see, and walk the rest of the way. Always keep a hat, a jacket and an umbrella in the car, so you can do it satisfactorilly in all weather.

Growth happens at the edges of anything. If you just stay in the middle you never challenge your body and it will stagnate.

So glad I am not the only woman who carries things on her head. I bought a light outdoor chair the other day at a major shopping centre (mall) , and then remembered that I had to do a bit more shopping while I was there. It was school holidays, so it was crowded. I just tipped the chair upside down and plonked it on my head, and walked proudly around for an hour or so. It was great at lunchtime. I purchased lunch, put down the chair and sat on it while I ate. I got some envious looks from people who were trying to wheel shopping trolleys through the melee!!

Louise

Thank you Louise, I will try again with renewed hope. My legs do feel the strongest part of me still, I was very active until the menopause a year ago and suddenly everything went flop. Now bending over or trying to get up using thigh muscles just results in a horrible pulling down sensation, even with just walking up the stairs. I used to go to pilates classes and was told to pull my tummy in. Recently I did some exercises to release it and the pf and then found I could manage to do a few plies. I do feel that if I had known all the things that I have learnt on this site and from the book when I was young then I would not have had any of these problems.
I also carried my purchase from the shop on my head a couple of weeks ago, it was a little stool, and it was also very useful as it was raining!

Best wishes

rainbow

Hi Rainbow

Many of us have regrets about how we used our bodies for all those years. It is amazing how easy it is for muscles to waste because we habitually use them less than we could. Every muscle has its use.

I hope you can continue to build on releasing your belly. It really does give our pelvic organs a much safer repose than suspending them over an abyss and hoping they don't come down. And it stretches our abdominal muscles too, so they are at their working length, so they can exercise themselves as we breathe and move. No pumping iron necessary.

A few years ago I learned a Feldenkrais method of standing up, which changes the direction of the work that our legs do. Sit on your chair. To rise, move your feet to shoulder width apart and lean right forward so your belly is flat on your thighs. Put your arms out the front if necessary, until you can feel your bottom coming off the seat. Now use your knees as a pivot and lean further forward until your knees are 1/2 straight and your hands near the floor. Then all you have to do is change the position of the pivot to your hip joints and simply uncurl into Wholewoman posture, allowing your arms to relax to your sides. The last stage is to stand up tall, almost straightening your knees and hip joints. It is so easy.

It can also be done from squatting, or squatting on one heel with the other foot planted flat. If you are lifting a load at the same time just stick your butt well out the back, bend your knees as deep as you can and keep the load close to you. The last stage is lifting the load off the floor by straightening your hip joints. That is where the thighs come in handy. The more you use them the stronger they become. Just use them whenever you can in a mechanically efficient way. They are much more robust than you think. It is all about using the whole zigzag shape from feet and ankles right up through knees to the hips, and finally the spine. That way you are using all your body, and not just your thighs, to lift!

So now, when we see a woman with a chair on her head, walking through a shopping centre, we can just wink and know that she is a fellow Whole Woman!

Louise

Thank you Louise for your detailed explanation. Do you think it would also be useful to see a Feldenkrais teacher to help generally as I am not making much progress?

Yes we may soon see a few fellow Whole Women around!

Best wishes,

rainbow

Hi Rainbow

Feldenkrais is great because you never know what your body will learn to do (again). When we don't use the full range of movement of all our joints, it transfers the lack of movement to other body parts as well. Why use one muscle only to do a movement when you can use 8, with 1/8 the effort. Why have a large range of movement in a joint and only use a fraction of it?

Thank you again Louise, I will find a teacher. I had not heard of Feldenkrais before.

Best wishes

rainbow