I just need some straight answers... (sorry long)

You have every reason to be angry! I was and still am. This has got to stop!! I believe you have found a wonderful place to come for support, and proper information. I too (I'm 50) have recently been diagnosed and am waiting to see my gyno. Not looking forward to it, but want to hear what she has to say.
You know when I man has a physical he is asked to cough right? The only time I was ever asked to cough was two weeks ago when I was being checked for prolapse. I to have felt something for quiet some time. Hubby says I've had it for years. I have pretty much spent my time in here, reading the info, do the excersises that are given (while I wait for my DVD) and trying to learn as much as I can. I am very sorry to read of another case of this.
We as women need to teach each other how to care for our bodies!

Take care!

Hi Wheayting,

Your post is puzzling, since you wrote in July that you were seeing improvements.

From the WW perspective, we all have to start now...working with what we have. I have no way of knowing what’s really going on with you, and can only offer a few thoughts.

First of all, it’s my conviction that many girls don’t fully develop these days. Perhaps too much time spent indoors, in car seats, in soft furniture. The pelvic organ support system depends on the shape of the skeleton, which only develops naturally when we move and sit naturally over our developing years.

The pain you describe we’ve heard of many times before. It is interesting that the round ligaments of the uterus (the ones that come off the front, travel down the inguinal canal on either side of your lower belly and embed in the labia surrounding your vagina) are made of the same muscle tissue as the uterus itself, and they contract when the uterus contracts. This is not the case for any of the other support structures of the uterus. Within the inguinal canal they share that tight space with the genitofemoral nerve, which innervates much of the pelvis and thigh. It is so easy to visualize how the round ligament might become stretched and inflamed, referring pain to the pelvis. The cervix only has receptors for pressure, not pain. Another thought is that the intestinal cul de sac located at the top of the back vaginal wall is a common site of endometriosis, which can cause a great amount of pain with sex, as this is the area that gets pushed on. It is usually a pleasurable sensation, but not in the woman with endometriosis.

The UTIs are not a mystery, but a matter of healthy vaginal microbial populations and emptying your bladder fully each time you urinate, which you probably understand now is postural - we lean forward on to our feet to empty.

C-section is not preventative of prolapse and can make urinary incontinence more complex. The forceps, episiotomy, etc. delivery sounds horrible, and I can only wish you had more support at your first birth. The midwife who attended your second birth probably sees a lot of gaping vaginas, as this is very common and hard to diagnose lying down. We have many WW mommies who have gone on to birth multiple times post-prolapse. The medical community does not understand the true dynamics of prolapse, so doesn’t have much to offer this population of women.

Be careful of getting too crystalized in believing you “have 2nd degree, 3rd degree, etc”. Prolapse is not a static condition and can change over the course of months and years. Feeling broken is very normal and something you must work through, as we all have. We have many women your age who are living full lives, doing whatever they want to do. Prolapse forces us to push through boundaries, which believe it or not is a stimulus to emotional and spiritual growth.

I believe your sex drive will return with time and gentle self-care. Be kind to yourself and believe that change is possible.

I’m glad to hear the incontinence is better, and believe this trend will continue as you better understand that the urethra-bladder angle central to urinary continence is a product of intraabdominal pressure pushing the bladder and uterus forward against the abdominal wall. I think you might find it interesting that most of us with significant prolapse do not experience stress urinary incontinence.

I’m not understanding your comment about your belly hanging, but generally it sounds like in the two months you’ve been here you haven’t made much headway in understanding how the way we sit, stand and move through our lives effects our symptoms.

There is no surgical cure for prolapse, which we’ve described at length.

Frankly, you sound angry and traumatized (with good reason!), but like you haven’t quite realized that only you can positively affect your condition. Scream to the four winds for all the injustice, and then get down to the business of letting it go and stabilizing and reversing your condition. Yes, this is something you will be dealing with for the rest of your life, but most probably at a level far easier than what you are experiencing now. It gets better for *so* many women, but only you can make it so.

Wishing you well,

Christine

It's perfectly fine to vent - we do it all the time. Just trying to help you not get stuck there.

Your postpartum stomach probably is repositioning. How amazing you feel that sensation, which I've never heard described before. It's interesting that the abdominal vacuums we do were developed by men to aid prolapsing of the stomach and intestines - at least that's how I've heard it described.

I have a feeling you'll be better than ever once the dust settles on your recovery. Hope we can help you believe it too.

:)

You know, the first few days postpartum I feel my lungs and belly changing. But then things are mostly in place and I don't notice it anymore.
Sounds like you had some pretty serious lack of support in your abdominal muscles. How are they now? Stronger? knitting back together?

How much has it come together? Or, that is, how far apart were they right after the birth?
I think yes, the posture will work with your sideways C, as well as it can! It's your best shot right? May as well try for a good year or so.

I have heard your raves at the top of the page. You are really weeping and wailing, and I can understand why.

I don't know a lot about scoliosis, but I do know that the skeleton and the musculature work together, with the fascia as well, to support all the organs of the body. The scoliosis may have lessened your lumbar curve by bending sideways instead. It is likely that you can normalise the shape of your spine to some degree by allowing your body to assume the posture that it was designed to assume. You can strengthen all the muscles of your trunk, not be contracting them repeatedly, but by *stretching them and* contracting them repeatedly; by teaching all your muscles to use their full length. When one muscle in the body contracts, its antagonist muscle, usually on the opposite side of the bones they are both joined to, has to stretch to allow the first muscle to contract. Both motions are necessary for healthy muscle strength. Once you can stretch and contract your muscles more, they will be stronger, so they will be able to hold your spine in better alignment, and they will be more sensitive to detecting when your spine is out of line, and will respond more effectively with their new strength, by stabilising your spine.

It may be that a lot of your trunk muscles have contracted vertically in response to your height decreasing with the s shape. It may be that you need to stretch them out again, more than contracting them? This is the only way you are going to be able to squash the s and make yourself taller.

It may be that the diastasis that you experienced is because your rectus abdominus muscles don't know that the rest of your trunk muscles have had to shrink in length. They are long and floppy, like a loose rubber band, and separated at the centre, perhaps because your other muscles are pulling your chest down? The way to make a rubber band more rigid and strong is to make its ends further apart. You do this by lifting your chest, which will make your lumbar curve happen. It will also tilt your pelvis forwards and lift your tailbone. Your pubic symphysis will move down, and further between your legs. Your rectus abdominus muscles will get stretched much tauter because their ends are further apart!! The two halves of your rectus abdominus muscles will be drawn together like the two halves of the rubber band. Then your transversus abdominus and oblique muscles will be able to stabilise them.

Your intestines will settle into a hanging position, hanging from their mesentery which attaches them to your spine, drawing your lumbar curve further forward and giving the intestines space to expand at the front of your body as you relax your abdomen. Your liver, your stomach, every organ in your abdominal cavity, is *hanging* from the area around your lumbar spine, the diaphragm, and the upper anterior abdominal wall, pulling yourdiaphragm forward and down with every breath. Your abdomen *needs* to be relaxed to allow them to hang properly. Your abdomen needs to be relaxed to make room for all your organs at the front. Your abdomen needs to be relaxed to allow your lumbar spine to be drawn forwards to the centre of your trunk.

Try and think about your diastasis as a 'gastrocele'. If you think of your pubic symphysis as the bottom of your pelvis or pelvic floor, then a prolapse through the pelvic floor muscles at the back of the body is very much like the prolapse of your stomach through the midline of your abdomen. The diastasis is a sideways stretching of the normally firm linea alba perhaps because your transversus abdominus muscle and the internal and external obliques were not able to hold the two halves of the RA together in the middle during the pregnancy, their weakness connected in some way to their failure to keep your spine stable. Is this cause or effect? I don't think it matters. What matters is that you make your body stronger!

WW posture will increase the distance between the sides of the pelvic floor and the distance from tailbone to pubic symphysis. It will also increase the distance between the pubic symphysis and the underside of the chest. Don't you see? they are the two sides of the same coin. What is true for one part of the body is also true for its 'other half'. Of course you can affect changes!!

I can only say that "This too will pass". But you are the only one who can make it happen better, as awful, and broken as you feel. These changes have to happen in your own brain and in your own body. You are the only person who can do it for you.

The only alternative will be to sulk around in your broken body for the rest of your life. What? You have got to be kidding! Why would you choose that path????

Now, I would like you to do some reading of Christine's book. Take as long as you need to understand it. Come back and ask questions as you need to.

Louise