between hope and despair...

Ivonush, of course you will learn. I started doing WW techniques when I was your age, and in perimenopause. Now I am fine. It might be a long journey for you, but it will be worthwhile. I promise that.

You have come from a hard place, and have so many improvements you can make in the way you use your body.

Your need to protect yourself has probably molded your body the way it has. You will eventually learn to let go your buttock muscles and your belly, and relax into your body, which has, after all carried you all this way, in spite of your only now becoming aware that you could have looked after it a lot better.

1 You don't have a major defect. Your body is exactly the same as everybody else's if you still have your pelvic organs.

2 You do not have weak pelvic organs. They are fine, even if you do have a little patch of endometriosis. At least you are aware of this.

Your pelvic organs are silmply not where they are supposed to be. WW work will help you to reposition them. You will have to do the hard work of changing old ways of being and enabling your body to carry them differently, by moving them forward onto your pubic bones, and allowing your pelvic brim (the big circular hole in your pelvis) to become vertical again, and tip all the intestines that are squashing your rectum down, back our into your abdominal cavity, where they belong. Your lumbar curve in your spine will reestablish itself and keep your pelvic organs forward. You will breath deep into your belly, using your diaphragm, rather than your rib and shoulder muscles. Your body will settle into a real female shape.

The first step for you to start bluffing yourself into thinking you are the Queen of the world, and that you are the unassailable, peaceful leader that you are. Find yourself a safe space.

Lift your chest and show the world your breasts and your heart. Feel your lungs fill as you lift your chest. You will feel your tailbone lifting as you lift your chest. Now, let your abdominal muscles go. This might be hard at first.

When you can let them go and relax your belly, inhale right down deep into your belly, the root of your being, using only your diaphragm, and keeping your shoulders relaxed. This will probably feel really weird and scary, because you will have to unwind all the tension that you feel protects you and holds you together. There may be tears, but they will be good tears because you will have let go.

That's enough for now. You will have taken some very important first steps.

BTW, are you still menstruating?

Louise

Hi Ivonush

I recognise where you are right now menstrually. You are quite close to port, but on stormy seas still. Until you reach the port and stop menstruating you will not realise how stormy it has been for you.

So many things have settled since I stopped menstruating, and my body stopped bucking and kicking in an attempt to stay fertile. I do hope that, like me, you will experience a calm with menopause, quite unlike the emotional and physical upheaval of perimenopause.

I think it really is a metamorphosis during menopause. I really feel like quite a different person than I was a few years ago, and have a much broader perspective on life. I think I am starting to taste wisdom.

You are a survivor, Ivonush. This will make you stronger. I was fortunate enough to have a very pleasant childhood, and have been much loved. I have never had to live in fear but I was very much a tomboy until all this POP stuff came along. It has allowed me to see myself as female, and to embrace my own feminine side. I discovered orgasm, which was pretty special! I now enjoy wearing dresses, and flirt shamelessly when I have the chance. Still not big on makeup, perfume or fashion clothes but I love skirts, dresses, and soft, exotic fabrics.

I am sure that your best years are in front of you.

BTW, your English is just fine.

Louise

:-)

Well it's been a while since I was on this site. I've been busy trying to get answers about how to fix my prolapse which has given me grief since giving birth 14 years ago. Most Doctors told me I would need a hysterectomy, but I knew from reading Christine's articles and my own research that this was probably not going to fix my problem.

In despair I saw yet another Doctor but this time his answer was different... Yes he could do a repair. He would stitch the loose muscles to a ligament in my back which would hold everything up. Sounds great lets do it I said, and I did. Well 6 weeks later I feel fantastic, I can pee and you know what again, my backache has gone and I am ready for sex (just need the final check up this week). Does my back hurt from supporting my uterus you ask, no but my right butt cheek does, although the pain is nearly gone now.

I am posting this for all of you who are wondering if this is it do you have to put up with this forever. NOOOOOO just see about a repair I am so relieved to have done it.

Hi Goddess

I am sure you gave a great deal of thought to having your repair. If women go ahead and have surgical repairs they need to do it by learning all they can about avoiding it, and after giving WW a try, if their body's response doesn't meet their expectations, then to go and have repairs, knowing the risks.

I am very glad it has gone well. Hope the painful buttock settles down and that you don't have any further POP problems. It would be great if you could call back occasionally and let us know how you are going.

Cheers

Louise :-)

Hi Goddess - I am glad that you were able to save your uterus, but concerned because your repair might not be without complications down the road. Six weeks post-op is not a long time. What were your experiences with the WW techniques prior to your decision to have the surgery? For the sake of those readers of this forum who are trying to maintain their prolapses without surgery, it would be great (as Louise suggested) if you would check back from time to time and let us know what you are experiencing. Good luck to you!

Hi Goddess,

Since beginning this work almost ten years ago I have been encouraging women to understand exactly what was done to them during these surgeries and to learn and comprehend surgical terminology. “Stitch the loose muscles to a ligament in my back which would hold everything up” tells us that you probably had a uterosacral colpopexy, where the cervix is sutured to the anterior ligament of your spine.

How about if you send for your surgical records and find out exactly what was done to you? Then you will be better prepared for the inevitable aftermath of pulling the vagina unnaturally toward the back and compromising the sacral nerves contained within the uterosacral "ligaments", of which buttock pain is a classic sign.

Wishing you well,

Christine

So glad you have the book. You will learn lots of the reasoning behind this work from the book. We have all had to learn it from scratch. I thought my posture was good when I first started, but it is very different these days! It is amazing the changes you can make to your body over time.

Try to be patient, and think month to month, rather than day to day. It does vary a lot how quickly women find improvement. If you just try and do the right things with posture, diet, clothing, lifestyle and how you use your body for physical tasks, you will make progress.

You will eventually realise that your symptoms are not driving you nuts every day, then you will only feel symptoms a couple of days a week.

We all have temporary setbacks too, when we think we are going well, and suddenly it feels like we are back to step one. It only takes a couple of days to recover from these, but they can have a devastating effect on the self esteem. This progress may take 12 months, or it may take 12 days to get the initial progress, if you get the formula right first off.

It does sound as if things are starting to change already.

Just do your best with what you can do, and take it slowly. I hope you can reduce use of the suppositories. It doesn't sound wonderful for your body to use that many on a regular basis. Diet is the key.

(((Ivonush)))

Louise

Ivonush, I too have IBS. But since learning about my prolapses, I have decided that most of my problems are more related to the prolapses than to IBS. The main reason I don't throw out the IBS diagnosis altogether (really more of a suggestion than a formal diagnosis) is that I do sometimes get symptoms that are very sudden and very stress-related. Glad you are finding so much help and hope on this site. It has been life-saving for me and many, many, many others. Where we would be without Christine, her amazing work, her staff, and this forum, I really do not know.

Hi Ivonush, I have symptoms so similar to yours. I don't have a problem having a BM in the morning, it is quite regular and usually soft. But by afternoon I also have those smaller pellets that sit down in the "pocket" and I don't have any urge to have a BM then, but can feel it sitting there which is so irritating. So the urge to strain to get them out is huge, but then BAD ...

I think what is happening for me is, that in the morning most of the stool gets out but not some that must be higher up. Then as the day goes on this stool falls down and is now harder because it has been in there longer, and also it isn't enough stool to cause a BM urge. I have tried using Louise's LoPo position when I go but it doesn't work for me very well. Putting my feet up on a stool in front of the toilet seems to line up my rectum with my anus better so it comes out without straining. I like the LoPo idea of getting the bowel all stretched out - I thought that would help get all the stool out but when I use the LoPo position the natural peristalsis (sp?) seems to just stop in me.

I sure would like to not have those small amounts that get stuck in there all day long. Any ideas?

You have done nothing to cause this. You are not to blame. It is not your fault. It is a result of the way we live. It just is, and it can get better, with your efforts.

:-)

Amen. Your belief in the infallibility of doctors will stop you from listening to the intuitive. We have all had experiences with both doctors and the intuitive that are both positive and negative. Two people can see the same situation from opposite poles, one as positive, the other as negative.

Doctors are wonderful and essential in some circumstances but can trap us into childlike faith in them. We are *here* because we don't believe that doctors have much to offer a woman with pelvic organ prolapse, but very few of us would lock doctors out of our lives, and out of our sickness care.

I say the following softly, gently and with respect.

I think you need to grow up now Ivonush, and look at doctors as partners in health care, rather than the answer to every health challenge you face. I am sure you love your beloved Dad as a person, but his teaching you at a very impressionable age that doctors have an answer for all sicknesses was a very, very naughty thing for him to do.

Fathers are near to god to little girls, but eventually we have to put our father/daughter relationship in a box of its own and take a real look at the way they have influenced our thinking as people, and make rational choices for ourselves, and be confident in our adult ability to do this. If he was not your father would you listen as an adult to his advice that doctors have all the answers?

I would go as far as to say that he really believed that, which would have been very naive, or arrogant, or a sign that he too was an anxious kind of guy who wanted to control all the bad things in your life, because he loved you so much.

My Dad died when I was sixteen. He was the protector of his only daughter and only child, until he died. I was very close to him, and admired him greatly. I missed him like you wouldn't believe. He was dearly loved by all who knew him. I was never able to negotiate my own adult values with him, because he wasn't there any longer.

I recently has a lightbulb moment, when it was revealed to me that one of my main motivations in life is whether or not he would have been proud of me, doing the things I do. He is like my guardian angel still. I would imagine that, had he been a doctor and given me drugs for anything that went wrong with me I would still be enslaved to that belief, but ultimately you have to make your own life and decide what about your Dad is worth holding onto and what is worth wrapping up and putting in the trash.

The thing I wrapped up and put in the trash about my Dad was the fact that he held onto me too tightly, and didn't trust me or my friends to start acting like adults as we got older. Had he lived, I am quite sure that there would have been fireworks and possibly a serious rift in our relationship. I think we would have rebuilt it later in life, but it would have been a torrid time in the intervening years, and would have caused my Mum, my Dad and me a lot of needless heartbreak and pain.

So, how about wrapping up some of that stuff about your Dad's behaviour, and ditching it for good? Keep the love, and the deep care he has for you, but the rest will either make you very sick or kill you if you take it that seriously.

I am *sure* that your Dad would not want that! ((((Ivonush))))

Louise

:-)

Hi everyone,
Thank you all for your concern following my surgery to correct a prolapse. I had a Sacro-Spinous Hysteropexy + anterior and posterior repair + monarc.
The surgeon also found that after having done this my cervix was still too long so also shortened that a bit. I still feel great my body functions are working better than ever which is such a relief, nothing worse that wanting to wee and not being able to force out more than a few drops.

I tried all the exercises off and on for a least a year before contemplating surgery but think I was just too far gone.

It is now 8 weeks since the surgery and I no longer have any pain. I realize that this repair may not last forever but the relief I feel now out-ways that. I will be very careful about lifting and exercise that may be jarring for the rest of my life but think that is a small price to pay.

Thanks everyone, I'll check back from time to time and let you know of any changes.

Good one Goddess. I do hope the repairs hold up. Look forward to hearing from you again in the future.

Louise