posture, muscle and gravity...

first, 'good posture' as traditionally defined by the western world is not exactly the posture we are talking about. dont have the time atm to get into it, but will later if you'd like.
so even if you think you have good posture it doesn't mean that the posture you are currently in will be helpful in terms of prolapse.
next, suppose you arent in WW posture (prior to having babies), your organs are still tightly packed, the inner fascia and ligaments are taut enough to do the job of holding everything up and in. once you've gone through pg and birth you can no longer rely on your ligaments. this is where your posture comes in. In WW posture, it is your spine and pelvis that does the lions share of supporting your pelvic organs. of course, fascia, ligaments and muscles play a crucial role as well. for some of us, it is difficult in the early pp days to get into proper WW posture. partly due to overstretched/weak muscles and tight muscles elsewhere. it is truly all connected, but the 'pelvic floor' muscles are NOT the ones for this job. I had uber strong pelvic floor muscles prior to developing my prolapse. if a strong pelvic floor cannot prevent a prolapse, how can it fix a prolapse?
your pelvic floor is an important group of muscles, but standing in posture actually lengthens them, keeping them taut like the skin of a drum without you having to contract them. which is almost besides the point because once you are in ww posture your pelvic floor becomes a back door and your new floor (bone) has no openings

This is exactly what I was thinking and rambling about.

Then I was thinking about it a lot and I realized, that my POP is multi-factorial. I know I had terrible posture b/c of emotional issues. As a kid I wanted to be invisible, I was afraid of peolpe, even kids!

Later, I started to express my emotional problems towards the outside, began to have kidney and bladder problems. I know it was always my week area. My kidneys almost stopped during my first birth (toxemia). And here I am now at age 30 with 3 kids and POP. Now I see that my POP was straitforward.

Maybe it sounds crazy but for me holistically thinking is the only explanation. Because, hey, as you wrote, if it is a muscle/posture/gravity problem, why moms with 1-2-3 births (home or not) survive? Why me then?
Maybe the answer lies deeper inside.

Just my 2 cents.
Liv

sorry to be confusing, new_mamma. will try to clarify a bit. keep asking, it was through endless questions that I finally got a grasp of this.
so here goes.
lets first talk about a woman with no prolapse. standing typically, her pelvis is in a somewhat 'neutral' position. your pelvis is like a bowl sortof, with the contents being your uterus, bladder and rectum. at the 'top' is the large opening and at the other end you find the other openings, the urethra, vagina and rectum. so back to this typical woman standing typically. because her pelvis is 'neutral' (think the position a bowl on a table would be) her organs are pretty much sitting over holes. hanging really, from their attachments above, mostly ligaments and fascia (fascia's this connective tissue that wraps around each of our organs in one continuous sheath. head to toe).
now if Typical Woman adopts WW posture, the pelvis tips. we will say it tips forward, or anteriorly (or nutation) like a bowl on its side. now the contents are still at the lowest point of the bowl, but that point is no longer a hole, but the side of the bowl. in your pelvis that would be the pubic bone with the holes at the side (ever see the backside of a cat? holes are behind, not under).
I hear your question, once prolapsed, HOW does this all help? well first, the bones are connected to the fascia and ligaments. moving your bones will change the way the fascia hangs and the way the ligaments support your organs. gravity helps a bit too. of course, the more significant your prolapse the more time this takes, the more difficult it is to pull everything back up and in to where it belongs.
this is where firebreathing and nauli are so helpful.
but even just going about your day in WW posture is helpful, the force of your breath is powerful too. moving around, activating the muscles of the pelvic girdle and abdomen in WW posture help coax everything back.
it is slow and steady work, at least it was for me. but so worth the effort, imo.

about trusting our bodies to heal......thats a pretty big question. for starters, prolapse is not cancer. this work is not chemo. prolapse never killed anyone and posture is not invasive treatment.
sometimes our bodies meet up with disability, disease and dysfunction, true. but I don't know if our bodies fail us or do we sometimes fail our bodies? not saying that we necessarily cause our physical ailments but speaking for myself here, sometimes I am not as loving and giving to my body as I could be. sometimes I choose a quick cup of coffee rather than plan well for a good nights rest. I cannot speak for those who choose chemo or for those who choose to treat cancer holistically, I dont (thank G-d) know enough.
but for prolapse, not a day goes by that I regret putting off surgery. once fascia and muscle are cut they heal with scar tissue. and scar tissue is unpredictable. you can try this WW thing for a year and if your situation is so unbearable, you can always consider surgery later. once you've had pelvic surgery, your anatomy is changed and it is much harder to work with nature.
I hope some of that makes some sense.

I believe that, liv. I really believe that what happens to us physically is connected in some way to what is going on with our emotional/spiritual/psychological side.
mind and matter, all connected

Now you are talking. The despair is gone and your words are ringing with hope and empowerment. Now, the healing will truly begin. The work Christine has put together on the DVD is very fun. I do the first 20 minutes every morning before work, and try to walk in the evenings. Watch what you eat, adjust you posture throughout the day, rest as much as a new mother can, and you will probably find in just a few more weeks you rarely think about your symptoms. Keep asking questions, the answers are here.
Melly

"So with ww posture my organs should be resting on my pelvic bone? How is this ever possible when your uterus is so low it hangs out? Even when the doc examined me laying down she said my cervix was only about 1 cm from my opening"
What you really need is a number of great anatomy drawings. These are actually really hard to find.
Maybe you can have a good feel around and understand it for yourself. If you are flat on your back you can feel your pubic bone. Now imagine the shape of your uterus- it's an interesting roundish shape and has a bit of a 'tail'
the rounded part is what will rest on top of your bladder and over your pubic bone- the little tail ends with your cervix and forms the top of your vagina (sort of).
standing or lying down your uterus will be above your pubic bone- if it wasn't it would be outside of your body-
the worst prolapse I have ever heard of (besides the stories of women who give birth to their uterus's) is the cervix hanging outside by about an inch. In this situation the uterus is 'behind the pubic bone' and pushing in the front vaginal wall taking up space and creating a large bulge in the vagina, but not 'under' it.
In this situation it is imperative to move the uterus up and forward. Hands and knees will help this, retraining facia will help this and breathing exercises will help this.

does this help you see it a little better?
I have a decent understanding of anatomy and it took me quite some time to understand how the organs are situated inside the pelvis.

Hi New Mamma

POPs are weird. All prolapse means is that the pelvic organs are more mobile than normal, so, depending on what you have been doing with that body of yours, they move into different places. I am 18 months past menopause. I haven't experienced any more descent over the last few years. I have been doing WW techniques for about 6 years now, and my POPs hardly bother me at all now.

I never know what will descend when I feel a bulge. Sometimes it is my cervix, though that is less common since my uterus shrank with menopause. Sometimes it is rectum hanging close to the opening, if I have become constipated. Sometimes it is bladder, which was right in my vulva last night after some strenuous farm work and weeding yesterday. There is no evidence of either bladder or rectum this morning. My body feels like it did 15 years ago, no probably better than that.

What I am saying is that it seems to stabilise, and adjustment of posture, clothing, physical activity and exercise keeps them all tucked inside me 90% of the time, which is fine by me!

Doctors give prolapses a score, but you can go to three different doctors in one week, and they will all give you different descriptions and different scores, and reel off a heap of different surgical procedures that they would do to fix it. They are all probably correct at the time, but it illustrates the reality of prolapsed organs. It is all very inexact.

We can fix it ourselves with no damage to our bodies, and you too will be able to 'fix' yours, and come to trust your own body's ability to protect itself over and over again.

Louise