New - and I have it all!

Submitted by maya on May 19, 2006 - 2:56pm
Body: 

I am 32 years old and I had my second child 10 months ago. Two weeks after he was born I realized something funny was going on with my vagina. Went to the doctor and she conformed my worst fear, and actually even more (I did not know about rectocele and cystocele at that point yet). I have an uterine prolapse with severe rectocele and cystocele.

I am happy I found this page. I've been trying to find information from here and there, but as you all know, it is hard as even the doctors talk in contradiction with each other. (I've been seeing a doctor both in here States and in Europe (I am from Scandinavia), and they essentially say the same: surgery. But for the reasons and everythings else they seem glueless).

Of course I've been asking my self WHY??? I am so young! I am not overweight, I eat healthy, I exercice... After my first baby was born I was told my uterus "came quite down". I did my kegels and got pregnant again after 20 months.

My daughter was born in Europe with mnidwifes. The way they told me to do my pushing was quite different there then here in States with my son's birth. With him, my doctor "pushed" the rim of the cervix over his head and then made me to push for almost 2 hours. The baby had not descended yet, but she wanted me to push. I did not have an urge to push. In Europe the same had happened (I was fully dialeted but the baby was still up, and the midwife told me to wait: "Pushing before the baby is descended does't help you at all" she said). So In Europe we waiting 2 hours and then I started pushing: in 15 minutes she came out. Here, I pushed, and pushed, and pushed... Once (after almost 2 hours of pushing) the baby was crowning, I pushed him out with one push, practically. I think all this pushing was for nothing else but for my entire pelvic floor prolapse!

I am in good spirits, in general, as I have 2 beautiful healthy children and a good relationship, but... of course, I am puzzeled with my future, my options and everything. My family, practically everybody who knows about this, says I should quickly have a surgery. And maybe even hysterectamy! I don't know about those, hysterectamy for sure I do NOT want to do, but how about the repair surgery? Do I have any options? It looks like this page doesn't really believe in the repair surgeries.

But do I need to live with all these complications the rest of my life. Of course most of it is not life treathning but it definately afftects on all aspect of my life.
Will I have difficulties when going to the toilet (specially with the bowel movement) for the rest of my life? Sex feels uncomfortable, depends a little from the position but the whole thing is compromised - do I have to live with unsatisfaying sex for the rest of my life? When I go for walks in the evening or if I carry my son with me, after a while I start having burning sensation in by vagina, or a feeling like I need to pee. I believe it is the cystocele - do I need to live with this always? I am an antropologist, so traveling and living abroad in more primal conditions is an essential part of my life - but if my physics are like this, I cannot be living on Himalayas like I used to. My menstruation started after the baby, but I cannot use tampoons, they don't simply stay in...

I am sorry, I have so many questions... I do feel a bit depressed...

And more over, I would love to have a third child, and give birth vaginally...

I had retrovert uterus to start with, I wonder if that made the prolapse more easy to happen. Now I feel like the uterus is less of a problem then the rest of it. But I think that actually the cervix stays in only because the rectum and bladder are so prolapsed and are on the way in the vagina!

I've tried doing the exercices and yoga to help the situation, and I breastfeed, but I don't know if all these have helped me any. I used pessary for the first 5 moths after my son's birth but I feel like it made my rectocele worse...

I am so grateful that this forum exists!!! Providing the information about women's health seems sometimes like esoteric work (they seems to know SO LITTLE about us!). Thank you, Christine! I am on my way to order your book, that will probably give me some answers...

But meanwhile, please, share your experience with me, information or tips... And any experience about surgeries...?

maya

UKmummy

May 19, 2006 - 4:14pm

Hello Maya,

Welcome here and I hope that you find the support valuable as we have all done!

You sound similar to many of us so read all that you can from our posts to get as much information as you need. This can be a difficult thing to come to terms with and many of us have, and are going through many stages in getting used to our new bodies.

I also have been told I have a retroverted uterus and this does seem to be a common thread for many prolapsed women but there are many other factors too one of which is simply I believe bad luck. I agonised over why this had happened to me for a long time, I don't so much now which is a sign I am coming to terms with it all I think! Most days now I feel pretty OK. My recovery from the emotional side of all this is definitely a work in progress.

We are all here for you so read and try to do all that you feel will help you personally to heal! Take care too.

Michelle xxxxx

mom30

May 19, 2006 - 5:14pm

I had the "tipped uterus" before I had children as well. This forum has definitely been an emotional healing for me personally. I would have been lost before if I had never found the emotional support from everyone. So, welcome and you're not alone in the world!!! My children are 3 and 20 mos.

mommi2three

May 19, 2006 - 7:15pm

Please don't feel alone. I have seen so many new women join this forum since i started in Dec. So there are alot of us out there! It is a hard time to go thru. I am emotionally 100 times better than when I started. I am also physically better. I also practice the posture, high fiber diet, and some chinese herbal tonics. There is so much to learn and everyday is a learning process about your own body as you go thru changes.

I can really relate to your cystocele b/c mine is bad too but i think it helps keeps the cervix inside. :)o On the bad days, when things are really low then i can feel the cervix rubbing up against everything else prolapsed. But it is good to hear that you are in good spirits. Try the posture, you can't go wrong. It is good even for women without prolapse. Welcome and keep posting!

kmc55

May 20, 2006 - 8:54am

Welcome Maya, and hope this site will be as helpful to you as it has been to me. I also have uterine prolapse, cystocele, and severe rectocele. Like most of the women on this site, it was pretty devastating to hear about and it was frightening to think that I would be like this always unless I opted for surgery. Like the rest of the women on this site, I started informing myself as much as possible about pelvic health, surgical intervention, and alternatives.

The surgical information is not good, in my opinion. And please understand that I'm just telling you what I've learned, and how I've decided to act on that information. There is another site online about pelvic floor prolapse which is deeply disturbing. Many of the women on this site have had multiple surgeries to correct rectocele, cystocele, incontinence, and other problems. Some of them have had up to 11 repeat surgeries. And the most disturbing thing about this is that for the most part these women seem to feel that this is OK, and whenever they post a comment it is followed by a list of that woman's surgeries. Some of these women are severely comprimised in terms of bladder function and bowel function -- whether as a result of the surgeries or because the surgeries were less than successful, I don't know. I posted one comment asking if anyone on the site had had a successful corrective surgery without follow-up surgery, and got no response. Maybe no one felt like responding, but still it wasn't very reassuring.

Since I had been urged to have surgery -- the whole bit, hysterectomy, ovaries removed, cystocele and rectocele repaired, and then some kind of mesh apparatus to keep my vagina in place, I started getting second (and third and fourth and fifth) opinions. I finally ended up with a urogynecologist who was recommended as a person who would NOT push me into surgery. I told her about the website and the huge number of repeat surgeries these women had had. I asked her what she felt about this, and she told me that in fact it is true that 15% of the women who have corrective pelvic floor surgery do not have a successful outcome. And she said that the doctors don't know why. They don't know why some women need repeat surgery after repeat surgery. She said that even with the repeat surgeries a number of women have real problems with their bowels and bladders. She said that she didn't think that a 15% failure rate was an acceptable rate of failure, which I certainly had to agree with.

Because of my meeting with this urogynecologist, I have decided not to have surgery. At least I can poop and pee, although having bowel movements is a lot more important and a much bigger focus of my day that it was before. Sometimes I have trouble with my bowels, but I still have control over them, unlike some of the women I read about on the other site. Sometimes it's so discouraging and I feel sad because I can't do some of the things I want to do, but I just keep thinking about that 15% failure rate and I remind myself that it could be me. And I would only know AFTER the surgery, when it's a bit late.

I have a sister-in-law who had a hysterectomy, and probably bladder surgery, too, for incontinence. She still has the incontinence a year and a half later. She told me that in her opinion, based on her experience, I might be better after surgery, and then again, I might not be.

Maya, I'm not trying to scare you or depress you -- though that might be the result of my post, anyway. It's just that even though I'm compromised by my universal prolapse, I feel that for me it's a better health choice than not knowing how my body would respond to surgery.

If anybody has had any corrective surgery out there, I would also really appreciate knowing how it went.

Meanwhile, I hope you get lots of information from the site. I did, and it certainly reassured and helped me.

Kathy

Christine

May 20, 2006 - 10:34am

Hi Maya,

Yours sounds like the classic case so many of the women here are living well with. Change your posture and bit by bit your musculoskeletal system will pull your organs up enough to become very comfortable. This is the best we have, and the best we will ever have, outside of prevention. It is not something I made up, but simply recognized as our natural design, which has built into it the ability to respond to prolapse.

Kathy, I believe it’s very possible to disprove the 15% surgical failure rate your urogynecologist quoted. Currently, however, all we have to go on is their own research, which public health studies have shown to be grossly faulty. If you tackle the problem from a strictly anatomical/physiological standpoint though, it becomes obvious that it’s quite impossible to have any semblance of normal functioning after radical surgery.

I believe the women who say they are so much better post-surgery are (1) grateful to have much of the vaginal bulging gone (2) deeply convinced they have been “repaired” and go to great extremes to protect that outlook. (3) discount or minimize problems with bowel, bladder, pain, and/or sexual function as part of a process of denial.

The truth is they are not fixed, but grossly compromised and set up for a very uncertain future. We’ve had frank discussions in the past about the moderators on that site, because of the astonishingly unbalanced way they present information. The current moderator, Donna, is no exception. Although she loves to hold herself up as a “surgical success” and give sympathy to all those who weren’t so lucky, here are a few of her comments from the past (all emphasis is hers):

Posted: Nov 6th, 2002:

“I also want to start with yoga, as I feel it would help MY backaches (yes, I too am having back problems--there MUST be some corrolation between these repairs and back pain!”

Posted: Nov 17th, 2002:

“About the back aches: I am a believer that backaches go along with prolapse repairs. It seems that many of the women here who have had repairs seem to suffer back aches after. I sure do, mine being mid-back instead of the old lower back pain I had with the prolapses.”

Posted: May 18th, 2005:

“I am 3 years post op. I have lower back pain.”

MIND YOU, THIS IS ONE WEEK AFTER THE ABOVE QUOTE:

Posted: May 27th, 2005:

“I really took a long time to feel like myself again. A very long time
But here I am 3 years later, finally feeling like a normal person again. I really feel great now.”

The women who run that site are all anonymous and for all we know “Donna” could be a housebound cripple. The facts are she has a very limited understanding of the natural processes of prolapse and a completely narrow view of treatment options.

Ultimate responsibility for that site belongs to “Lisa” in Australia though, who stays in the background, yet sets all the rules. Because she is linked with other medically-oriented sites, and therefore has significant power to influence, her disregard for reality has irritated more than a few of us on occasion. From where I sit now, however, I see the entire system crumbling to dust anyway and those women simply perched somewhere near the edge of that cliff.

Christine

fullofgrace

May 20, 2006 - 12:14pm

I don't remember who coined the above phrase, but having all three organs descend I have found to be a blessing as they all cannot fit out that same space, so they all hold each other in check. The only one I ever notice it the rectocele and that is only when I need to have a bm since that falls into the pocket.

The posture absolutely works to stablize my body and feels good on my back, too. If I get tired and begin to slouch, I know it. Returning to the posture alieviates all my back pain.

I don't even notice my prolapse. I know too surgery is too risky. When I first discovered prolapse, I could not find any encouraging sites for a natural solution. Everything said surgery, yet, I saw that the surgery came with a by-line of two, three, four, plus surgeries with it. No thank you. I'm not going to line a surgeon's pocket for a benign condition that is totally liveable.

I am sexy even with these bulges (and the few bulges around my middle! LOL!) I have complete function in every area those organs were meant to do and I'm not going to have any of that compromised by a surgeon's knife.

rosewood

May 20, 2006 - 2:18pm

reminds me how grateful I am to be a part of this community. As of late, Ihaven't been able to respond much. We're all busy, and I find that as a homeschooling mom of three and part time attorney that I have to relieve my mindspace from the computer most days to keep my own precious equilibrium.

However, this thread brought tears to my eyes. Tears of empathy, as a relatively young mom with prolapse, tears of pride, tears of gratitude that I still have all my internal organs, and tears of pain at the reality of loss over the things I can't do like I used to.

Maya, there is healing out there. I find it in myriad forms each day. This is not a dead end street -- each day has endless possiblities for healing. Each day, I find something new to help my on my journey. Personally, I religiously have incorporated the postures and dvd exercises into my routine. I am retraining my muscular-skeletal system. I also do pelvic floor strengthening exercises (with resistance). I am seeing a doctor of traditional Chinese Medicine and doing accupuncture and herbs. I'm about to embark on some bodywork I used to do called the Alexander Technique. I thought of this because Christine's postural recommendations reminded me of this technique and Iknow one of the foremost practitioners in the field. I am always looking for ways to heal. I am considering osteopathy, having heard of a man in my area who specializes in women with prolapse.

There was a day not long ago when I kept expecting the things I'm doing to make it go away. Now, my focus has changed. I've accepted my circumstances more, and am not necessarily expecting the prolapse to disappear. However, I will continue down this path of healing, and see where it leads me. More and more, I accept that I am a woman who has pelvic organ prolapse, and I intend to do everything I can to learn to live well with it. Will it be "cured"? That I don't know, and don't need to know.

I am also working on focusing on what I can do rather than what I can't. I wish I didn't have any symptoms. I still feel pressure when I carry my one year old son. This grieves me. I want to be able to carry him all the time.

But I can still play with my kids in so many ways. I choose to focus on all I can do. I have a dear friend, a young mom, with brain cancer. Talking to her always puts my situation in perspective.

So, I urge you to follow your path of healing. It's there and open to you. I send you loving thoughts for healing and guidance, and peace and well-being to all of you.

Marie