I am new here!

If you research surgery for prolapse, practically all surgeons will perform a vaginal hysterectomy first to gain access to the prolapsed organs. The mesh is then used to sling the urethra and attempt to hold your bladder in place. Imagine supporting a full balloon on a flexible straw. There are incisions at the top of each leg where each end of the mesh is sutured after final adjustments are made. This requires many trips to the doctor during the recovery period: too much adjustment you can't urinate, too little adjustment and you are incontinent.
Mesh can also be used to "strengthen" the rectal wall. What they don't tell you is you will probably prolapse again further up with a greater chance of total blockage, as you can't splint to aide elimination. Sometimes the mesh will work through the vaginal wall where you and your partner can feel it during intercourse, and it stands a real chance of infection and fistula. You are sent home with a catheter for many days after surgery, and some poor souls just never urinate normally again. The saddest cases are when the mesh needs to be removed. Then, without a uterus other organs might prolapse to fill the space. I was scheduled for all of these procedures in July of 2009. I watched youtube videos of actual surgeries. You can also google polypropylene mesh and read the FDA warning. I am telling you about this, because my surgeon said nothing about any dangers. He is one of the best in this field. These are the only surgeries he performs. Maybe he has a good success rate, but I wasn't going to be the failure. Less than one year later, I'm in better shape than I have been in eight years. I am 56 years old, teaching high school algebra to behavior disordered students. You just can't do that sitting down. LOL. I believe Christine Kent and the women of this website have the cure to pelvic organ prolapse.
Melly

Hi Mama_J,

Congratulations on your beautiful baby girl and thanks so much for sharing your story with us. There are many women here willing to help you in the Whole Woman approach to recovery from postpartum prolapse, but far fewer interested in engaging with the conventional view. I will try to offer a few ideas.

I guess it depends on whose definition of “textbook” you are referring to in describing a normal birth. The epidural is anything but ideal in our book, as pushing on your back under anesthesia is a recipe for prolapse disaster.

We live in a very interesting time in the history of women’s health, where more and more MDs are admitting to the futility of prolapse surgery, while others continue to cash in on surgeries that have been proven over and over to be catastrophic. Saving the Whole Woman makes a very good case, which is endorsed by several prominent MDs, that prolapse surgery is entirely misconceived because none of the operations are based in anatomical reality. This statement is backed up by huge failure rates catalogued throughout gynecologic literature.

By all means, you should pursue a pessary. All prolapsed women should, even if only some will benefit from them for the long term. You will learn more about your anatomy by seeing how a pessary changes things - even if it does not relieve your symptoms 100%. The issue is not that it stretches the vaginal walls, but that a pessary holds the walls open slightly to internal pressures, so surrounding organs may bulge further into the vaginal space. Hopefully you saw jadeandpearl’s post on the sea sponge, which many women have found useful as well. For most of us here, this postural work pulls the organs enough inside that a pessary becomes more trouble than it's worth.

The Whole Woman work is based on the existence of the natural pelvic organ support system, which gynecology has never accurately described. This system develops over time throughout your growing years and is ultimately determined by the shape of your spine, from which your pelvic organs suspend. That shape has a pronounced lumbar curvature as its hallmark, and is maintained by sitting and standing postures that rely on the strength of your spine rather than a chair or couch back.

It is no coincidence that postpartum women prolapse weeks into motherhood, instead of immediately. While spending most of their days snuggled into bed or the couch with their baby, their pelvic organ support system is disengaged. Instead of the bladder being forced down and forward against your lower abdominal wall, it is forced backwards into, and sometimes out of, your vaginal space.

The story of our true anatomy is simply wondrous and is available in the Village theater for free. Hopefully after watching it you will have a better idea why the muscles of the pelvic “floor” have less to do with pelvic organ support than we have been led to believe.

There is no surgeon, surgery, or pelvic floor specialist who can fix this. Dry your tears, do some more reading, practice this postural work, and watch in amazement as your symptoms resolve. It is highly likely that by this time next year you will hardly remember your prolapse.

Wishing you well,

Christine

Ladies, ladies! *Trust me* at 6 months pp you are just beginning to embark on what will be great healing, if you start addressing how you sit, stand, and move. Chinese medicine recognizes that it takes 2 years for a woman's body to recover from pregnancy and birth, and I wish that Western culture would adopt that attitude too, because this has been my experience for sure. I am 22 months pp, and my once significant cystocele is rather insignificant now. I have been practicing WW posture and strategies for about 18 months. I lift as I please, run after my toddler, walk miles and miles, take ballet class, and spend 12 hour days on my feet as a nursing student. I feel fantastic and anticipate a second pregnancy in the coming year. I recently redoubled my efforts and (knock on wood) my cystocele has been completely gone for the last 10 days! You too will heal. It takes forever, but it will happen. Get to work on it! Get the DVD, take walks in posture, and read, read, read every post on here you can. Serious. I learned so much about how to help myself by reading all the old posts.

Best wishes!

HI Mama_J,
Congrats on your gorgeous baby. I am sorry to hear about your POP, but so glad you found WW. This work is amazing, and will help so much.
I also had a horrible cystocele at 3 weeks, that started to recede and let my rectocele appear. above that was a minor uterine prolapse, held up by my other POP.
I too was devastated, and couldn't imagine it could improve. everything made it worse--lifting my baby, lifting a water jug, leaning, standing--it was awful.

after several months of starting WW posture i started to notice improvements, that really sped up about 8 month PP. by a year i was soooo much better. it kept improving till about 2 years, and then slowed. then i started an anti inflammatory diet, which again really really helped (threads on here about this if you search...). Nauli and Firebreathing (on the DVD) also really helped.
I just went to NM to visit Christine, and am sure I will have further improvement as she really worked on my posture, and I'm doing more excercises.

I know having to wait two years for surgery sounds horrible--but really, it's a blessing. by 2 years you won't feel anything like you do now. and has been mentioned, the surgery is a nightmare. I saw a top surgeon who said that i was better living with POP than having surgery (and if i did, don't go near the mesh!!!!). that said something!

if you can, get the book & the DVD. there are great videos on the site if you can do the membership. read old posts, and you'll get a lot of hope of how much things can improve. lots of women here have gone on to have more babies post POP.
you will get through this time, and it will become a distant memory. start of hte posture, get reading, get excercising, and feel things move!