Miscarriage and D&C procedure

Hi Shekina

So sorry to hear that you have miscarried. It is not like having a period, but not like giving birth. You don't know what to expect. The emotional side of it is something else again. Been there. ((((Shekina))))

Have you stopped bleeding? This is the first consideration. I only bled for a couple of days, then all was well physically. It was my fourth pregnancy, and I physically really didn't feel like I had even been pregnant a couple of weeks afterwards. Even though I had lost quite a bit of blood I recovered and became a normal colour, and regained my energy, quite quickly. If this was your first pregnancy your body *might* feel different. I guess you are feeling a little 'loose' inside, which would be understandable.

How do you feel in yourself? And what has the doctor or midwife said about exercise?

I wouldn't really worry about what the medicos say about POP. It is a rare doctor who agrees with Wholewoman philosophy, and a rare doctor who can actually explain what has happened. And an even rarer doctor who really understands it. They really don't have anything they can suggest other than surgery and kegels. It is as if 'down there' is not something they want to understand, or have been taught much about.

Louise

oh man they really are annoying at times! have you tried a sea sponge or tampon to push the rectocele back? I know that the one time I had a period and used a tampon I felt better than I had in months at the end of that week. I had to position it just right (sort of centered in front of the bulge) but it really held it off of my perineum. Another thing to try is to monitor and figure out the different sensations (you describe feeling like you are sitting on it) when the colon is full vs. when it is empty. It may be that your colon is filling and needs to empty out (but you don't have the sensation).

as to the exercise, I am 5 weeks postpartum and if I get to doing too much I will know it because I will have spotting. I stopped bleeding 3 weeks ago but I will still spot if I exercise too much. Right now I'm taking it easy with the exercise. I'm walking which feels great and stretching.
I bet your body will tell you when enough is enough :)
I have a good friend who had a miscarriage and was trying to keep training for a long run- after a number of weeks she was severely anemic and finally stopped training for a few weeks and let her body heal.

sending healing vibes your way

Hi, Shekina,

I am one of the least experienced on the site, having been here about 5 weeks and still a lot of what I read here is foreign to me. BUT I have seen vast improvement following advice here. My problem with taking the advice for a while was NOT because I was resistant - nor stupid (lol) - but in large part had to do with communication. I can read back now and see people were trying to tell me or ask me this or that all along but I didn't get exactly HOW they meant it. Or how to do what they'd mentioned.

When someone (sorry I can't remember your screen name at this moment even tho I am so grateful. will look up your name again!) very soberly told me do xyz in very, very plain terms - I did it. WOW that was turning a corner. My POP has been MUCH better since then.

When I read YOUR post just now on wanting to sit like a normal person and being sick at heart about feeling like you are sitting on top of something, my heart went out to you. You phrased better than I did what was at the core of my questions back then, too. And with the discomfort/pain comes that awful nagging fear of doing damage by applying your full weight to these innocent little organs (lol) as you feel you are a giant person sitting smack on top of them. lol Not to mention how nearly impossible it is to think at work when someone's talking and all you want to say back, is "Yes, boss, but I can't hear your actual words because I can only think about what it feels like to sit on top of my uterus right now!" lol lol

And so I thought I'd mention to you that when I complained about sitting on Nicki Smith (lol that's the name for my uterus lol lol I will explain why later, but for now suffice it to say it makes me laugh when I call my u Nicki as if she's become a person herself, with a mind of her own. And a laugh during the midst of this is always a good thing).

So anyway, I was complaining here about sitting on top of Nicki Smith and the women seemed to be getting pretty sick of me and my apparently not following their advice. But as much as they tried to be clear, I couldn't understand. And didn't know how. I felt like the slow and dramatic kid in the class. AND I probably wasn't being clear in the explaination of my complaints but more importantly in my explaination that when I said "I don't think so" in answer to the often arising question from them of "Could you be constipated?" what I REALLY meant was: I DON'T KNOW HOW I COULD BE CONSTIPATED IF I AM GOING TWICE A DAY ALREADY, IS THAT POSSIBLE AND WHAT WOULD I DO?"

I think they thought my answer was simply, 'no' and that I was one of those people who just continually complain. I'm the opposite. I just wasn't being clear. The appeal I was trying to send out was: please explain to me how I could be constipated and going once or twice a day so that I can get Nick to get the heck out of V Land (or else tell me why else I could be sitting on top of Nicki all the time! She just wouldn't move, so I felt I couldn't do the exercises, etc as she as RIGHT THERE and feeling very miserable).

I have or at least used to have a SLIGHT pain once in a while where the transverse colon goes into that loop up that goes a little bit up. (go to wikipedia and put in transverse colon and you will see a pic of the various parts of the colon. Helps here on this site when you ask questions of the women if you can pick out which part of you that you are talking about...where you feel pain, discomfort, bulging, etc. They understand you better).

I had heard nature's pessary and such words, but it wasn't until that one post that I realized o man they are talking about ME about "nature's pessary" - not just to women in general. (That rectocyle, cystocele and uterus um, kind of take turns, let's say. If one's in your V area, it kind of hold the others up. Hard for me to explain it accurately. Like there's not room for all of them so one or two of them will move. Apparently even in a person without POP, when the bladder and rectum are full, the uterus goes "down" as laymen think of it (or Christine says the really correct term/concept is "back") Know how when sometimes people say "you have to do that" and you don't know if they mean women in general, or that "one" (everyone) MUST do that or if they mean you might consider doing that if you want to, or if they mean YOU BETTER HURRY UP AND DO THAT AND DO THAT NOW? Well throw into the confusion that I didn't always know when they said you have to do this or that...that they mean I MUST. lol

Well one day a couple of weeks ago someone here said clearly to me GET YOUR BOWEL MOVING. and told me take a natural laxative...said also DON'T drink TOO much, take a warm shower (i think), and right after you have a b movement, get on the bicycle for five minutes. And to keep going like that each day, to get myself moving physically and to empty out.

I did it.

EXACTLY as she said to.

POOF Nicki Smith went back to her normal place. And I stopped feeling like I was sitting on top of my uterus!!!!

THANK GOD as it was driving me nuts. And I think part of the reason I could not understand simple advice was because I was in mental agony. And physical agony because I wasn't sleeping, I felt I was losing my mind, I'd lost contact with everyone in my life. I was living in my own head at home, ringing my hands and begging for help and not able to understand the very help I needed so desperately.

So for me, the key is in that sentence I wrote above - about taking (Cascada Sargada) to get things moving inside me, about taking a short warm shower, about getting on the bike IMMEDIATELY AFTER emptying out (I think things are quickly getting themselves into another position right after going to the bathroom), riding the bike for five min (to get your body moving/active again), and in not drinking too much, which I found to be key. They said if your bowel AND bladder are full your Nicki Smith will move down. All three can't fit right there if you're very full everywhere else. Cutting WAY BACK in how much I drink has helped A LOT. (I could have easily drunk several 10 oz glasses of liquid several times a day).

Hopefully something in there rings a bell for you. I noticed that during my last FOUR DAYS of work, I did not feel as if I were sitting on top of anything! I sat NORMALLY!!!!
Cheers,
csf

I just did the not save thing- can we delete our own comments after theyhave been posted?

Hi Sammy, as an administrator I think my screen is slightly different from yours. You will be able to edit your own posts, but maybe not delete them completely. Not sure. If you can't delete them, just Edit it and delete all the text, leaving a message saying "Content deleted by author" or something similar, so it is obvious to the Mods what has happened.

If you can't figure out how to do it, PM me, and I will do whatever you want to your own post.

Louise

Thanks Louise- I had redone a lot of verbage and again lost it -
Just saying that I am happy to have reinforcement of the notion that a full bowel is a factor in the pelvic prolapse -

Sammy, it is very frustrating when this happens! If you keep losing it, how about writing your reply in a word processor, then cutting it and pasting it into the Comment box?

The other thing you can probably do is to use your browser's Back button, and just back up to the page where you entered the text. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't. Something to do with going off on a different branch of the Forums structure, I think.

Just remember it is only a computer sending zeroes and ones to another computer. There is no evil conspiratorial Web Monster capitalising on your frustration. ;-)

Louise

Dear CSF

I’ve been away and am very pleased to find on my return that the kindness of the ladies on this site and your dogged persistence have led to some relief to your uterine prolapsed. Yes, in the case of uterine prolapsed, I have found that the bowels are key. When the bowels are not comfortable, they will impact your uterus. When the bowels are not comfortable, you will urinate more frequently which in turn also pushes the uterus. I looked to my diet and now make sure I get sufficient Vitamin C, Calcium, Magnesium and Potassium specifically to make my bowel movements comfortable; not from supplements but form the foods in my diet. Apart from that, the urge to urinate was so frequent that I became concerned for my electrolytes levels as a result of the frequent urination draining nutrients from your body. And of course walking, which I love to do, became very difficult.

So drinking less became a real concern for me. Of course, when you are constipated or have diarrhea, you need to drink more, but once the bowels are again relaxed, I find it safe enough to cut back on my drinking. My uterus certainly appreciates the break.

Once I had given up drinking copious amounts of water, tea, coffee etc, I was no longer confident that I could trust my once raging thirst to be a true indicator of what my body needed. (The reason for my raging thirst had to do with the building I was working in, simple as that, but I was not sure at the time.) Having restricted myself to 3-4 cups (@ 1 quart or .9 of a litre) a day, my common sense told me that on the hottest days in summer, I would need to drink a little more. To test the validity of my dry tongue to gauge a true thirst, I took to sipping from half a cup of warm water. (Yes, warm even on the hottest day. Ice cold is so delicious I would have drunk a full cup and chased more just for the pure joy of it.) Over the course of a few minutes’ sipping, I was mostly satisfied that I had needed to wet my whistle. If I was still thirsty I would delay a little and then sip into another half cup. Sometimes I did not really need much more. After a little time of this, I can now trust my thirst buds to be not jaded, and be true to need. A good gauge of course is the colour of your urine. If it is light then that is normal, if yellow then you can look to remedy some degree of dehydration.

It is recommended that water is required in amounts of 1 mililiter for each calorie of energy we expand or about 2.6 quarts (83 ozs, 10.37 cups, 2.3 litres) or 2,500 mililiters a day. It’s worth keeping in mind that this figure is for top, fit (male) athletes who expend 2500 calories of energy daily. Also, when the health authorities speak in terms of 2.6 quarts, I am reasonably confident that that figure includes the liquid absorbed in the food you eat. Perhaps someone can comment on this? Even seemingly heavy meat is made up mostly of water.

So, for instance, in mild temperatures of 21C -24C ( 69.8-75.2 Fahrenheit) and a reasonably humid atmosphere you probably find that your food provides 80% of your needed fluid intake. This would then leave a top athlete to drink a minimum of .6 of a quart (19ozs or 2.3 cups). For the ordinary person the recommendation is for 1.5 – 2 quarts of fluids a day. So again for the ordinary person 80% of that liquid would be in their food and 20% (i.e. .4 of a quart or .36 litres) in actual fluid; water, coffee, fruit juice etc.

So that is where I am at the moment. A little old lady (well, littleish) like myself would probably only expend 1200-1500 calories a day so 3-4 cups of 250mls, or a little over 8 fluid ozs per cup is plenty of fluid unless you eat fibre and the daily recommended amount of fibre is 30 grams (1 gram of fibre to ever 100 calories expended) and I have no idea how much fluid it takes to digest that, I have not been able to discover actual ratios, but it looks like it might be a lot. I saw recommended on one site 3 quarts of water to 2 tablespoons of flaxseed.

Looking further down the track, eventually, you will want to ween yourself off cascara and attempt to maintain regularity just from your diet. The usual advice is to increase your fibre consumption, both soluble such as oats and insoluble such as bran or psyllium. If you pursue that course then you will need to increase your fluid intake proportionately as fibre absorbs fluid from the intestine and increases the water content in stools to push through the intestines. And this seems to be why the health fraternity recommend lots of fluid 1.5 to 2 quarts per day just to make sure that people eating fibre ( as recommended) do not become dehydrated and have impacted stools and other problems.

Apart from the concerns of the above, I find another major problem with fibre (and legumes) is the accompanying flatulence and bloating some of them cause, as trapped gas, just like stools, also impacts on the uterus. I have limited my fibre to mostly fruit, veg and refined white bread, white rice and the occasionally pasta. This is to limit flatulence. (If you do not suffer from gas from fibre, then this is more information than you need.) Instead I take a probiotic, and find this works quite well. Of course, there are still the occasions when I catch an infection resulting in diarrhea or constipation when I need to resort to a stool softener or laxative and increase my fluid intake for the short term.

The other point I wanted to make is that I hope you will not stop at this, but will pursue the WW posture. The posture is most important and should become your single minded obsession once you have gained some control over your uterus and regained your confidence. We can’t stress enough that the posture works. It takes time to get it right and to develop your muscles strongly enough to hold the posture for any length of time. Yes, it requires conscious effort, but so does any new skill. Remember how you would talk yourself through the process of driving a car when you first began? Hands on the wheel, turn ignition, put on indicator, check over your shoulder and so on. Start by adopting the posture when you are relaxed and have little else to do and when your uterus is at peace and keep it up until you have developed the new wonderful liberating habit of a confident, graceful woman.

Best wishes for continued uterine comfort