New, scared, with questions

Hi momof2girls

Just a quick welcome email. It's late here. Must sleep. You are not alone. This postpartum prolapse often happens a few weeks on from birth. It will get better but you might be in for a rough few months first. Remember that you went into this last pregnancy with an already stretched body from the last birth, whereas the first time everything was tight when the pregnancy started. It has taken a long time for your body to grow and stretch to accommodate the growing foetus. It will take a long time for it to all revert back on the inside, maybe two years, even though you may look pretty trim on the outside. While it is reverting it needs to have optimum positioning to enable it to retain your pelvic organs, away from the top of your vagina. Wholewoman posture is the way to do this, especially when loaded with a baby.

The body wants to curl up to protect the baby and clench your butt together to keep your organs inside. What it needs to do is to stretch your spine up tall, raise your chest, relax your belly and shoulders, and allow your butt to find its place out the back.This actually tightens the pelvic floor muscles so it doesn't feel so floppy. It also tips your pelvis forward and rolls your uterus and bladder forwards onto your pubic bones, where they rest against your relaxed lower belly. Your pelvic floor merely stabilises at the back, rather than being an horizontal floor that holds everything up. This also means that the bladder and uterus push backwards on the front of the vagina, rather than down from the top, which leaves less opportunity for them to go down the plughole. Your lumbar curve needs to be present all the time. That curve is part of the engineering that deflects intraabdominal forces away from the top of the vagina.

Check out the Wholewomaninc channel on Youtube. You will find some excerpts from First Aid for Prolapse DVD, which will give you some basic principles. Then give yourself a few days and experiment with ways you can use your body differently to help it to retain your pelvic organs inside you. Then come back and ask some more questions. Don't expect quick results. Progress may be slow, but it will happen. It is an investment in your future wellbeing.

Louise

Your baby needs you to cuddle and jiggle her

Hi! I am also pretty new in here (one week) BUT the advice has been AMAZING and only to be out done by the compassion of the women here!!

I know what it is like to put a post up = and wait. It feels like 35 minutes can be forever because of all of the worry and discomfort! I was only going to read today because I am taking wonderful advice from someone here and in a funny, crawl position! Like much advice I received here, I thought no way! But wow, I have learned listen to these women!!!

Excellent you found this site! Congrats on your wonderful baby! Before WW posture type things wanted to toss you a few ideas in general about quieting the baby because I had very, demanding babies! : ) Not that yours is demanding, but mine were sooo cying sooo often! So I used a few things that really helped - swing, swing, swing. It helped when I couldn't cope. They have them for newborns now. Also, they have b ouncy seats now. Just simple cloth over one simple wire that forms the outline of a chair. And the BABY'S WEIGHT makes the seat bounce. VERY young can go in it!!

Also, can't remember if you said you'e nursing, and it's hard for me to scroll up (sad but true and I have keyboard issues right now)....but there is a nursing position wehre you lie OVER the baby. Like youi are on all fours, with baby on a pillow under you. My guess, and remember I am new (and my kids are teens now) so please take other people's advice more than mine - but that's an idea to throw out there.

On WW posture with the little I do know so far: The wonderful women here kept telling me not FEAR going on all fours, or to lean foward like in the You Tube Video that you can watch right now of Chistine's exerrcises. (patial clip). I didn't understand the forward, forward talk.

BUT last night I was soooo fed up with the misery and with each time I laid down I felt my Uterus going lower and feeling like uh o h it is NOT coming OUT, right? So I was besides myself. Everyone here knows I was really on the brink~!! hee hee. Gosh, it's sooo scary - you are right to be asking questions to arm yourself against the fear!

So I was going so bonkers last night from the discomfot and fear, that I got up, grabbed a tampon, came back, and without even looking, felt carefully and guided that uterus back home! hahahah. I felt such relief that I thought why the heck was I waiting for a doctor to do what I could have done myself? Adn could have saved myself a week of misery. Or at least helped myself. So today I thought, ok, uterus is back, so I will maybe TRY forward positoins....

o phone..........more later..........anyway, hang in there! And women will start posting soon!

Congratulations on your new baby girl, Mom.

Gentle bouncing is actually great!! Sit on a firm surface with your legs apart and pulled up through the back of your neck and head - shoulders down, upper back flat and broad. Let your belly fall as far as it will over your thighs. Your bum should be way out behind you. Hold your babe close to you at the level of your breast. Now gently and rhythmically bounce your baby. Breathe through your nose and sense your lower belly expanding with each breath. Understand that with each in-breath your body is moving your uterus and bladder forward into their natural positions. If you feel stable doing this, you may bounce standing as well, but make sure your belly is forward, your bottom is behind, you are pulled up into the posture and holding your baby snuggly at your chest.

Postpartum is the most important time for the WW work. You don't have to be militaristic about it - just make sure you don't spend all your time slouched into the couch or bed. Nurse as much as feels comfortable sitting up into WW posture and walk with your baby in this way.

You will be just fine.

Christine

Maybe try one of those inflatable gym balls (sold in the fitness section of stores like target, etc) to sit and bounce on. Just maintain your lumbar curve as described below. You are on the right track, with so much healing to look forward to! You healed from this once, and you will do so again.

Good idea re: the gym ball....but it's the force of gravity (that's right, impact!) that moves the organs forward when the body is in its rightful shape. Gentle bouncing will only reinforce these dynamics. We will look forward to hearing how you do! :)

Hi mom-of-two-girls,

I thought I'd replied to you earlier, but seem to have deleted my own post.

Just wanted to say that it's easy to panic in your situation but there's no need to. Your baby is so new and your body has so much natural healing and reverting to do in the first few years after a birth. Like you I probably had POP from my first birth sixteen years ago, but didn't realize it. I noticed it during my second pregnancy and eighteen months after my daughter's birth nine years ago, but had useless medical advice - did all the wrong things and it still improved enough to stop bothering me. From all I have read of other women's post-partum experiences, the body does a lot of its own healing from pop after a baby.

Now, my POP, a urethrocele, came back to frighten me nine years after my youngest's birth because I didn't have the knowledge I've gained here at that time- and even I have made a definite improvement to it, in my forties, in just six months. Think how well you can do by finding this site so early post-partum.

I think initially, for all women, they are afraid that one false move is going to make their POP dramatically worse and from all I've learned here that's very unlikely. Apart from very heavy lifting you will find you can do most things you need to, but sometimes you need to adapt them so that you can do them in posture. It often feels like it's 'getting worse' - but actually POP symptoms vary - depending on recent activity, position etc and hormone fluctuations. When you get your menstrual cycle back you'll be able to keep track of this in a diary - as well as noting what kind of activities/ positions make it feel better or worse. It helps to think of these times as 'bad days' and to start working out why - but it doesn't mean you are doing more damage. After some months you'll also see a pattern of much better times, and be able to work out why as well.

Whole woman postural and lifestyle changes take a lot of getting your head around initially, and you can only take small steps at a time - but it works. I was utterly sceptical at first, but thought I had nothing to lose, and now seven months later my symptoms are so much better. I haven't 'fixed' the childbirth trauma - and surgery can't do that either - but I have stabilized and slightly reversed my symptoms to the point where I have very little sensation of POP ever. I'm sure a young woman like you is going to make even more progress.

Please try to enjoy your children without feeling as though you are about to break. You're not! Work on the posture as much as you can, avoid a c-shaped spine as much as you can, don't try to squeeze into tight clothes and read, learn and pester women here to your heart's content. We've all been new and frightened and there have always been women a little further on than us to encourage and advise.

All the very best

Doubtful