Overwhelmed, and dreams are not my friend right now.

Body: 

I'm absolutely overwhelmed with the entire situation. I am quite certain I have a cystocele and possibly a uterine prolapse but I won't be able to see a urologist for 2.5 months so I'm trying to deal on my own until I find out exactly what is wrong. I have trauma issues and won't do a vaginal examination so I'm thinking I might not know what the exact situation is for a very long time. I've started with only the WW posture but I feel like I need more.

While I thought that I dealt with this emotionally, I was wrong. My dreams are showing me that I'm still afraid, even if I won't look my self in the eye and say it. I'm frightened that this will worsen. I'm ashamed that it happened at all. I'm afraid my husband will no longer find me attractive or will think about it and be disgusted during sexual relations.

Hi Harmony Needed

I know just how you are feeling because I felt like that last August. It certainly didn't take many months of reading and asking questions on this site for me to feel much better. I don't feel ashamed of my urethrocele at all. Sure, I went though a stage of being angry with the ignorant doctors and physios who gave me bad advice years ago and contributed to it getting worse, but I let go of it because anger eats you up. Don't feel ashamed, why should you? Our culture, medical profession and ignorant exercise 'experts' have contributed to so many of us getting symptomatic POP, but the good news is that we can stop it in its tracks. There is nothing from my 'old' life that I can't do now except wear tight jeans and lift heavy things and I'm so much healthier from being forced to learn about my health and change my lifestyle.

It won't feel like it now, but it's actually a blessing that you have to wait to see the doctor. Read Christine's book and watch her DVD. Scan the website here and post as many questions as you like. You're not going to see magical improvements in the short term ( I'm making some progress after say five months) and you're going to feel disheartened and have-set backs but I bet that in the end POP will seem like a minor issue in your life and one that you can easily manage. From all I've learnt and experienced, it can't get dramatically worse once you've mastered wholewoman poture and lifestyle, so there's no need to panic.

Men? For many of them any gynae information is too much information. However, I don't think many of them give it a second thought once they realise that sex is good for POP. Perhaps the thought of their partner being frightened and feeling too dellicate for sex would worry them, but that feeling passes very quickly. As for disgusted- do we ever feel disgusted that they're getting older/ chubbier/balder/ hairier or whatever? Perhaps I'm getting too personal here but they won't be turned off if we're not.

The only sensible thing my GP said on the subject was that most women who have children have a bit of prolapse, but they don't call it that until it bothers a woman enough to ask a doctor about it. (Mind you I live in the UK where the National Health Service is broke and not exactly proactive. Thank God - if I'd had expensive insurance in the US someone might have tried to 'fix' me years ago and then I really would be suffering awful after effects. ) So, if a bit of POP is part of being a woman in our culture ( maybe it was avoidable with better care in childbirth etc but we can't turn back the clock), we're fantastically lucky to be the first women to know enough to reject the surgical approach which generally, it seems, just maims women. There is a huge amount we can do to make it just a minor niggle in our lives, not a shameful or frightening illness.

Sorry to rant like this - it's meant to be encouraging. If you like, track my old posts to see how discouraged I was for a long time.

P.S. We all hate internal exams and you could probably do Christine's self exam which, together with your own experience/ reading, would be a lot more accurate than a doctor's.

Hugs and positive thinking.

hi there, and welcome to the site
I'm sorry, though, that you had cause to seek us out.
I only have a moment but wanted to say hello and in a real quickie summary let you know that my prolapse did not worsen and my husband finds me attractive and is never disgusted during sex. the only one who ever thinks about my prolapse during sex is me, and even I dont anymore.
I know you will still be worried, but please remind yourself that you are in the acute phase of grief right now. finding a prolapse is a very real loss.
I've been there, and its a lousy place to be. but I've come through to the other side ok, and so will you.
for now {{{{{{{{hugs}}}}}}}}}} and try to just believe us when we tell you it will be ok

Thank you, ladies. I know my husband will love me no matter what but he is effected emotionally by this, as well. That leaves me with no one to talk to, sadly. I thought I'd gotten past this rather quickly. I'm sure that is because I wanted to be past this and tried to sweep it under the rug only for it to pop out and bite me in my rear now. Thanks, ladies.

I am totally grateful that there is someone out there who is speaking out and helping women but I cannot afford $100 for a DVD and a book. Is there a cheaper offering of these items?

Hi Harmony,

I've tried to put a great deal of information here for women who can't or don't wish to buy my products. I need to flesh out the FAQs, which I will try to do over the next few weeks. I have a clip of WW posture up on YouTube and, of course, we have the forums here where we have answered every question under the sun, over and over again, for almost a decade. There are a great many good articles, with illustrations, in the Village Post.

I will be putting more in the Village as soon as possible. Right now I'm working very hard on the new Whole Woman Yoga dvd.

I ask all women to support Whole Woman by spreading the word about our work. Natural female posture *is* pelvic organ support and there is a great deal of work to do to extinguish old and useless ideas and frameworks around female pelvic health.

:) Christine

I would love to spread the word as I live in a well established alternative area. Because of that, I assume there are more than a few Whole Women nearby...what about local support groups? Fran

I'm still trying to figure out the site so maybe over time I'll find some of the exercises! I am very excited to hear about a yoga DVD as well as there being exercises up on here! A friend said she knew there were some up a while back but didn't think they were up any longer. Thanks! (As a side note, I followed the instructions on the FAQ for WW posture and with in a couple of days I saw a major relief in symptoms. It is difficult, though, with 2 little ones to keep it up which is why I'm interested in the exercises and additional instruction. The fact that adjusting my posture helped that much is just outrageous.)

Hi HarmonyNeeded

Yes, it is indeed outrageous that something as simple as changing our own posture can have such an immediate effect on prolapse symptoms. How can it be that nobody has realised before this that we are meant to show off that we are female, because it has whole body health benefits. We live in strange times.

Wholewomaninc is Christine Kent's channel on Youtube. You will find some excerpts of the DVD including some exercises there.

Tell us the ages of your children. It takes a woman's body about two years to fully revert after pregnancy and birth.

Shame is a negative, deep and powerful emotion that will affect our lives in many ways. It might be very helpful for you to seek out a professional, if you have not already, and get to the bottom of this needless shame, and defuse it so that it does not continue to cloud your life and the lives of your little children as you bring them up, and of course your marriage. We can help you to talk about it, and bring it out in the light where it will shrivel and die, but we are not professional counsellors.

Anyway, the good news is that you are not alone any more. We are here with you. These prolapses will not rule you life, any more than they rule mine.

Louise

I have been wondering if I would benefit from counseling. However, my situation with my children and child care would mean that it is pretty much NOT going to happen. (I don't want to go into too much detail but it won't work right now.) I think right now I really just need to get out my emotions and thoughts, rambling generally helps me deal with things. Thanks for the recommendation, though!

My youngest is 1.5yrs. I have had stress incontinence since the birth but had no idea that this could happen to a woman's body. I thought the symptom was due to the rough birth. My symptoms suddenly got much worse and I thought it was a UTI. After the UTI was treated I still had symptoms and that's how I found out about this.

I found the youtube channel and I tried the pelvic rocks that were on the video and the circling. I plan to do that every day. : )

I know that some therapists do online counseling. I encountered one in my area when I was searching for my current therapist. Maybe you could manage something like that? I can't tell you how much being in therapy has helped me.

Online counseling!
especially if it could be done late at night. With Skype and chat we really do have the ability to communicate.

I have a friend who sometimes talks to a therapist on the phone. It's something like $65 an hour. She found her through a parenting book she read and really enjoyed the advice there but wanted more help with specific situations.
She talked to the therapist maybe 4 times in 4 months, but it really really helped her.
I think one thing that helped streamline the process is that she'd already read the book, was familiar with the author's style and was comfortable with it. That way she didn't have to *get to know* the therapist to trust her and they didn't have to waste a bunch of time on figuring out where each was coming from.
and she talks fast ;)

The thing about professional therapy is that they have all sorts of tools to help us to identify what is bothering us down deep.

A woman's ability to utilise her posture to control the positions of her pelvic organs is undoubtedly related to her ability to succeed with WW posture. Her emotions affect the way she moves and uses her body. The woman who is protecting her belly, her butt and her vagina, and looking down to avoid eye contact is often acting out a need for self protection. Once she can figure out with professional help where the overwhelming and distracting need to self protect is coming from she has a much better chance of resolving it, and straightening up into a confident and very feminine princess posture. If her emotions are keeping her c-shaped it will affect her ability to uncurl and 'wind' up her pelvis.

Sometimes a woman can do it on her own, but we are not islands, and I think we need to use our community resources, and friends and family, to help us to make sense of ourselves and life in general.

Louise