Fascia tears... are they prolapse?

Hi Troubledownunder
Quick reply now to put you at ease. It sounds pretty normal for a rectocele to me. Yes it is possible to improve it with Wholewoman techniques. Degree of improvement? Depends. Will post again at greather length in a few hours.

Louise

Hi and welcome ... very familiar with your symptoms ... I have a rectocele but even moreso after becoming more familiar with my own situation is it seems more perineum than anything, which would make sense due to the childbirths I had.

Is there such a thing as periniocele? Too many celes ... sigh

In a way I wish I felt around more while doing a BM to see how much the area protudes during evacuation because it is a shock when you have to splint and can feel every bit of the path of the impending evacuee.

I can tell you all your celes will be assisted by the WW posture. And hopefully your back symptoms also - my back has a history all its own ... sigh again. But I now know doing this work does help the hip and back pain.

Best thing you can do is adopt the posture so that you are off your tailbone and rectum.

It won't cure you completely and you will have good and bad days .. but you will regain control of how your body functions and feel more confident that this is doable without medical intervention.

Hi Trouble. So you can understand a bit more clearly what has happened, here is a link to a brief article about the rectovaginal fascia, aka posterior wall fascia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rectovaginal_fascia . The bladder is joined to the anterior vaginal wall, and the posterior vaginal wall is attached to the rectum. All three are loosely connected and keep each other in proper alignment approximately in the centre line of the pelvic cavity. this rectovaginal fascia is thin, more like a 3D web than a membrane. Its function is to loosely tether the posterior vaginal wall to the anterior wall of the rectum, at the same time allowing the rectal wall to distend to accommodate stool without coming apart from the vagina, and for the vagina to distend during birthing without coming away from the rectum. When the rectovaginal fascia is damaged it is a bit like a hole in pantihose. It starts small, but with a bit of movement over a couple of days it will get bigger! The growth has probably been quite slow until the soft tissue changes that happen as we head towards menopause. The bigger the 'ball' became, the easier it was to fit into the hole. Then the hole suddenly enlarged. If may not even be a hole. It might just be coming apart and distending into the vaginal space as your rectum fills.

It sounds like this is part of the damage that happened at your last birth. However, it is seventeen years since that birth. It is likely that it has been happening slowly but relentlessly.

Don't worry too much. Your vaginal walls are tough enough to stretch for the passage of a baby. Your rectal walls to contain stool. It feels thin. Yes, I used to be able to feel the consistency of stool too, and had to splint with almost every motion, but I haven't had to do it more than twice in the last two years, which is great.

So, how do you reduce the pressure on the damaged fascia? The answer is to change your posture to a posture which allows your bladder and uterus to come forwards off the top of your vagina, onto your lower abdominal wall, underpinned by your pubic bones, the *solid, authentic* pelvic floor, and stretch your vagina in length. Remember, the rectum is still tied to your vagina, so the top of the rectum too will be pulled up and forward, and lengthen. With a lengthened vagina and a lengthened rectum there is more longitudinal stretch happening, so they each distend less. The connective tissue fibres between them are more vertical in orientation and there is less distance between them, like a sheet of that old-fashioned,criss-cross timber garden lattice work that has been 'closed up'. The rectum will hold its shape better and be less bunched up, more corkscrew-shaped, less curly. This is just like the garden hose that is stretched out in a line, instead of crumpled and kinked in a pile with you standing on it, compressing it. The stool will be more long and uniform, less variable volume lumps. It will move through your rectum, and out, more easily, like water out of a straight hose.

This is, of course, a a simplistic description, but do you get the picture?

Wholewoman posture relaxes the belly, increases the size of the lumbar curve, and lifts the chest. It also lifts your tailbone up, which has its own significance. WW posture tips the pelvis forward, the pelvic organs come too, and the rest is history, Queen Troubledownunder. Your new regal posture will keep your pelvic organs forward and encourage your rectum to stretch out. Within either days, weeks or months you will probably find that you are needing to splint less. You can help the process along by resolving any constipation, preventing its recurrence, and using your body in ways that keep your pelvic organs off your pelvic floor, and on bone instead!

I suggest that you check out the FAQ's and the Resources Tabs, do some reading, watch some videos that are in the resources, search the Forums for relevant keywords. Remember to search for 'constipation' 'evacuating', 'evacuation', 'animal kingdom' and 'Lopo'. Why? Because it is food for thought and there are some techniques hiding in these posts that will help you with your diet and constipation.

Firebreathing is another essential technique to learn. It will help to suck your pelvic organs up, forward and further inside your body.

Learning diaphragmatic breathing will help to make space on your lower abdominal wall for a safe haven for your pelvic organs. This is a bit hard to figure out until you do some more reading on the site. You also buy Christine Kent's book Saving the Whole Woman, which contains all the theory about why these techniques work, and DVD's with more basic explanations, video footage and different workouts, based on ballet and yoga, that you can do safely to strengthen your body for this important work you are learning.

Gotta go now. Now, breathe out, stop worrying, and go do your homework, Your Majesty, then come back and ask some more questions.

You can read my Story in the Experienced Members' Success Stories Forum.

Louise :-)