Doing excercises but worse!

Sheppie,

I was just where you are three months ago. I was beginning to be incontinent from both ends, and my bladder was at the opening of my vagina and I was terrified.

I'm a lot older than you are, and not as able to as much as you. Also, I've lost my estrogen. Be grateful for that!

Because of a very strenuous exercise program I am no longer incontinent, and my bladder is better every time I return from exercise. I didn't notice it at all today and my job requires that I be on my feet seven to ten hours a day.

(In addition to being a teacher, I'm also a professional writer, so don't be alarmed at my direct tone. I learned a long time ago to cut to the chase.)

There is an exercise you can do at home that's marvelous. Stand with your legs straight and apart about four feet. With a straight back, bend forward at the hip and not the waist. Dangle, then grab your ankles and pull forward so that your head is near the floor. Then do super kagels. Do this ten times a day and take your time and enjoy the pull. As you do more and more of these, you will feel the adjustment inside! That way you are not doing kagels all day - just at prescribed times.

The problem with mild, half committed exercise is that you are not strengthening your whole body. You might do a few kegals, and some other things, but unless you exercise every muscle and every internal organ every time you do it, the mend won't be complete. Trendy, soft sell, quasi, sometimes, and only won't help. You have to be committed and you have to work hard.

No physician is going to "fix" this for you. You will have to do this for yourself, and it takes very very hard work for a long time.

When I come back from exercise, I am soaking wet and have lost four pounds. For the first two months, this was really hard. Now, it's not hard and I'm enjoying it. But best of all, I'm enjoying fixing this darned thing. Take the time to do it.

You CAN do this. And in the meantime, love on that baby; they are the one truly emotionally calming therapy there is! When I'm really upset, I get in my car and go to my daughter's and just squeeze her latest. Fortunately, she always has a latest.

Judy

Change what you can change; be happy with what you cannot.

Hi Sheppie

Don't panic. Prolapses can be very emotional things, and sometimes our bodies are not very predictable. It will now be a few hours since this happened and I suspect it may have settled down by the time you read this. Even the monthly ebb and flow of hormones upsets mine on a regular basis, but I also get these urgency things every now and then. I don't know why. It is usually when I come back into the house after being out in the paddock or in town. It may even be related to carrying loads then putting them down. It is almost certainly to do with changing position or loading of the body. I am not sure but it is only every three weeks or so that I have an episode. It never happens while I am out.

The story you were telling with your friends may have also brought on an 'emotional download', one of those things that can catch you when you are not expecting it, and perhaps not sitting in posture. Hope you are feeling better now.

Sometimes prolapses happen bit by bit, but usually stabilise eventually. As your body is still recovering from birth for about a year it is feasible that there are just changes happening every day as your body returns to normal. It will stop changing eventually, then you know what you are dealing with in the longer term.

Cheers

Louise

all I can say is that my 'celes seem to get worse at times for no apparent reason. I try to find the reason, is it pms, too much lifting, a disagreement with my dh? sometimes I can find a 'reason' that seems to make some sense and sometimes not.
the good news is that within a couple of days things tend to go back to where they were before the setback.
prolapse is frustrating. there's really no good gauge of how you're improving. even the diagnostic stages aren't very descriptive. but I have found that the ups and downs are predictable in that they will happen. now that I've been dealing with this for over two years, I'm less shaken by a setback, and I don't get cocky when things improve (I used to start to slack off on the exercises and diet).
I hope by now, things are on the upswing for you.
hang in there

just wondering how you are doing since your last post. i am 12 weeks postpartum and experincing the same feelings. some days things feel much better and other days worse. i am doing biofeedback/muscle stimulation/kegals and find the day or two after, things are worse! i was told that it can be due to having worn out the muscles, so the next day you aren't as strong to hold things up as usual. i am depressed also....getting tired of wearing a pad every day....and probably peaking down there way to often. instead of my mood being based on how i feel physically, it will be based on what i see in the mirror. so sometimes backfires on me. i think things feel okay, take a peak and the bladder is hanging there like usual. other times i am surprised it isn't hanging much, and i will be less depressed. probably not a good way to live my life...i also wonder if i am too impatient. but we have been through so much, months or pregnancy...the initial postpartum recovery....that why wouldn't we want to just be well like all the other mommies we see out there. so just checking to see where you are. j

but- breathe. It does seem to get worse before it gets better. You will improve greatly.
I am now 11 months pp and I am finally starting to feel lighter. It takes a while for your body to begin moving back into that preprego state and it also takes quite some time to make this new posture natural. Keep at it. Do the exercises from the book every day. Stay in the posture and have patience.
This is the age of instant everything and it is so frustrating not to instantly bounce back. This will take time- the encouraging thing is that time and healing are on your side.
you are doing the right thing by taking it easy. Keep it up.

i do find it amazing how long it takes our body to get back to normal after childbirth. i have not been able to find one article regarding this. everything talks about the 6 week postpartum. which is hysterical considering how all of our organs were in disarray for several months. i do try to keep this in mind...today is actually a good day so far. things don't feel great, but when i took my peak it seems the tissues of my labia are plumping up. i stopped breast feeding about a week ago. so i want to assume if the outside is plumping, then maybe the inside is too!!!! also, i am the gal who was hit by a taxi (fractured my knee), and i think my whole body (hips and back) are out of allignment due to the overcompensation for my bad knee. so better allignment and posture should help. congrats on almost making it through your babies first year!!!

Hi Jsnyc

I just picked up on your comments about the 6 week postpartum thing. Yes I agree, it is a joke. However, it seems to be where the ob/gyno's work ends, until the next pregnancy. Perhaps a lot of them really don't know what happens naturally over the next 12 months?? Scary, but quite possible, especially if the prevailing wisdom is what they were taught in medical school, by people who learned in medical school, who were taught by people who learned in medical school, who were...

It is a pity they don't seek to find out what happens in the normal body.

Unless they have a professional interest in what happens after 6 weeks they would have no reason to even think about it. Their next professional interest happens twenty years later when women have had all their babies, lost their youthful bloom and can be talked into getting their pelvic organs hitched up surgically. The whole medical field seems to operated on the damage/repair paradigm, rather than the observe/implement preventative behaviour and maintenance paradigm. Otherwise what would pelvic surgeons do for a living?

Actually I suspect it is a lot to do with our handing our wellbeing over to doctors, instead of learning about normal bodies from other women who have experienced it, like we do here. I have just learned so much from all our Members, and try to pass it on to others. Yes, ob/gynos and urogynos have very important uses, but it not to tell us that there is something wrong with a body that is simply in longterm recovery phase after the enormous reshaping of pregnancy and birth.

You other comment was about the effect of your dicky knee on the way you walk and stand. Have you had any ongoing therapy since being able to walk again? I have found that injuries create new ways of moving that, while they make it feel better during the healing process, compromise the body's dynamics and make us use our bones and muscles differently from how they were designed to move. Later this can cause wear in joints and a lot of pain. I have been told by my physio that it is really important after an injury to get back to a normal gait and use your body in a balanced way again as soon as possible.

I have just had a few sessions of Feldenkrais to try and get my pelvic movements happening properly again. I have been using my back muscles too much to protect some dodgy lumbar discs, and all those little pelvic muscles don't work very effectively at the moment, and my lower back is very stiff. Feldenkrais is attempting to teach those muscles how to work again by getting the nerve signals operating and take some of the pressure off my back muscles.

Perhaps you need to learn to walk with a normal gait again before Wholewoman posture will work properly. It is all connected.

Cheers

Louise

another thing is that many (if not most) working moms need to return to work by 6 weeks. society expects us to be 'back to normal' by then and we therefore expect that of ourselves. especially since we don't hear too many women complaining that they aren't feeling super-duper-I-can-do-it-all, so we try to be as together as the next woman.
at least that's been my experience. this time around I'm older and wiser so I'm not ashamed to admit to my friends and family that I'm still not cooking dinner every night. you should see the looks I get! I think people aren't shocked that I feel that way, but that I admit to it.
6 weeks *is* a joke
takes me about a year to feel back to my 'normal' self. that first birthday is as much about me as it is my baby.