new to this with questions

Submitted by suzep on December 10, 2008 - 9:16am
Body: 

Hi all, first just to say thanks for this great website and forum. It has already helped me so much to know that there are many people out there with these issues to deal with and who are´happy to share their experience and advice.

I´ve just had my third child, six weeks ago. The first two were born in the UK, this one in Spain. It says something for the general reluctance of people to discuss this that I had never even heard of prolapse during any of the pregnancies. When I had my third child, the midwife said that "everything had come out during the birth..." and it was important to do lots of pelvic floor exercises. At the time my baby was still attached by the umbilical cord and my Spanish not being too great I didn´t really take much notice! But a week ago after I had started exercising i began to feel that something was wrong, kind of like a feeling when a tampon is not inserted properly and you can feel it. Then i was horrified to feel either my vaginal wall, or roof of cervix, or I don´t know what at the entrance to my vagina. I was utterly freaked out when I started looking on the internet to see what might be happening, discovered the prolapse issue and finally arrived at your site and began reading in more detail. For days I felt too scared to even walk becuase i thought everything might fall out.

I had a check with a ginecologist yesterday, and he did a cursory examination, said it was a vaginal wall prolapse, not too bad but had to do lots of pelvic floor exercises and come back in six months. I asked about exercising in other ways, and he said of course anything that pushes down will make it worse but its fine to exercise.

I didn´t feel enormously confident that i was getting the best advice - i guess he had maybe seen a lot worse. Apart from anything i read somewhere that only women who had had hystorectomies could have vaginal wall prolapse. I was expecting him to say uterus, bladder or something.. ´does it matter which it is in terms of dealing with it??? Anyway, i´m going to get Christines book, but my main question right now is - should I be resting up as much as possible at this stage. I have three kids so obviously there is a minimum amount of activity i cannot avoid, but shoudl i be putting my feet up or is it alright to go for long walks etc and do other exercise??? I have been feeling so utterly helpless with all this and just want to be able to run with my two older kids and do normal things after a long pregnancy, late birth etc. ´

My other question is, is it damaging to do pelvic floor exercises?? How many is too many??

Thank you for your help

granolamom

December 10, 2008 - 4:57pm

welcome suzep, and congrats on the new baby
you're still very early postpartum, so yes, rest when you can (if you can with three kids). also know that many women report some degree of reversal within the first year postpartum. so anything can happen.
what you can do to help with the healing...

avoid constipation. straining on the toilet further pushes the pelvic organs down

get the book, learn the posture. this helps realign your pelvic organs and keep them supported and stable.

re exercise, once you've learned the posture, walking in posture is a fine way to start. also, in the book (make sure to get the second edition) there is a ballet workout and my favorite exercise for prolapse, called firebreathing.
assuming your lochia has stopped, you can also learn the nauli exercise (type it into the search box and follow the links in the posts).

pelvic floor exercises, in my experience, are useless in terms of reversing prolapse. for managing symptoms like stress incontinence, maybe.
but some have found them helpful. the important thing is for you to learn about your situation, get to know what's going on down there and learn to monitor what helps and what aggravates. then you will know when you're doing too much.

vaginal wall prolapse means very little. it doesn't tell you which organs are prolapsing. I think what you may have read is that women with hysterectomies can end up with vaginal vault prolapse, which is when the vagina kind of turns inside itself and the end where the uterus used to be can hang down. this is very unlikely to happen (if its even possible) if you still have your uterus.

you ask, does it matter which it is that you are dealing with. I say yes and no. yes, because it is useful in terms of monitoring your success, comparing notes with others, getting ideas, etc. no because management is very much the same for all types. but you can figure this out. go to the homepage, click on 'resources' so that a menu pops up, then click on articles, and then on the link to 'prolapse self exam'.

suzep

December 11, 2008 - 3:23am

thanks very much, appreciate that advice and will see how we go. i read an interesting website the other day about how the western sitting toilet was suggested as a reason for why women in the western world tend to suffer prolapse more ... not sure if it is already linked to this site but just in case, am posting here. It made perfect sense to me.

http://www.toilet-related-ailments.com/pelvic-floor-prolapse.html