My Postpartum Enemy: Diastasis Recti

This is the story of my postpartum enemy: diastasis recti. Ever heard of it? I hadn't. It's a nasty thing that pregnancy can do to your body. It's common for your abs to split apart a bit down the middle during pregnancy, but they should go back together after baby is born. But...sometimes the abs don't go back together. You are left with a hole running up and down your abdomen (in my case, that hole was three fingers wide), which creates a bulging belly that makes you look like you're still pregnant.

I think a lot of women experience the same shame, frustration and hopelessness that I felt and don't even realize what they're up against. They just think they haven't done enough to get back in shape and beat themselves up over it like I did. I really wanted to write this post to raise awareness.

The diastasis originally developed with baby #1 and got worse with each pregnancy. However, I didn't figure out what the problem was until right before I got pregnant with #3. I finally got it fixed when baby #3 was almost two and a half. In the meantime, I really struggled emotionally.

Let me back up. I’m a very athletic person. I grew up dancing (ballet/tap/jazz) and have always been in good shape. During my pregnancy with baby #1, I gained 35 pounds (which was more than the 25 I had hoped to stick to). Baby #1 was born in April 2009 and weighed 8 pounds 4 ounces. I jogged and jogged and jogged after he was born to get all the weight off. Took about eight months. Those last 5-10 pounds were very stubborn. (I later figured out that my body just likes to hold onto a few pounds while I’m breastfeeding.) But even with all the weight off, my stomach was not back to normal. It was still…smooshy. So I kept jogging. When baby #1 was 15 months old, I got pregnant with #2 and at least had a justification for looking poochy.

With baby #2, I was determined to gain no more than 25 pounds. And I didn’t. Baby #2 was born in April 2011 and weighed 7 pounds 12 ounces. I was determined to get my body back ASAP. I felt huge! My mid-section was a mess. After she was born, I ate a low-fat diet and immediately started jogging again. I was also breastfeeding, as I had done with baby #1. My blood sugar went CRAZY. I tend toward hypoglycemia (low blood sugar), and it was kicking into high gear. My blood sugar would often get too low and I’d be shaking and breaking into a cold sweat. I even gained a few pounds, to add insult to injury. My baby actually lost weight from one checkup to the next, so her doctor told me to eat more calorie-dense foods…not what I wanted to hear since I was trying to lose the baby weight. I reluctantly gave up jogging as I was forced to accept that my body just couldn’t handle it. That helped a bit with the blood sugar levels at that point. However, later I realized the blood sugar issue was a result of needing more fat in my diet in order for my body to support my normal body function, breastfeeding, and heavy exercise. I basically put my body into emergency mode to hold onto all the fat it could for milk production.   

People just kept telling me I needed to eat less and exercise more in order to get my body back to normal. NO! NO! NO! Though that may be the answer for some (most?) people, it was definitely not the answer for me.

At that point, I decided that if I couldn’t work on dropping weight, I’d try and work on the muscle tone of my abs, since that was obviously thrashed. So I started doing sit-ups and a few other ab exercises very religiously but with VERY LITTLE results. I hated the way I looked and people asked me fairly often (at least it felt that way) about when I was due or if I was pregnant. Sigh. NEVER ask a woman if she’s pregnant. If she's not pregnant, all you have done is walk up to her and tell her she looks fat! How is she supposed to respond? I would politely tell the person I wasn't pregnant and then go home and cry.

I felt alone, ashamed, embarrassed and hopeless. What’s wrong with me??? Why can’t I get it together? And every time someone asked me if I was pregnant, it was like a knife to my heart.

When baby #2 was 11 months old, I met with a personal trainer to get professional help fixing my body. He told me that if I could do the workouts three times a week, then I should start seeing some good results in a couple months. Hope was restored, and to the gym I went. Faithfully. After a couple months, I definitely saw some improvement (thank goodness!), but not nearly what I had hoped for. I was starting to get some definition on the very upper abs (like a two-pack…ha!) but those lower abs were just stubborn, stubborn, stubborn. Still poochy. 

(On a side note…in France, doctors can prescribe and the national health insurance plan actually covers “abdominal re-education”…basically, postpartum physical therapy to help you get your abs back to normal. I learned that when I read Bringing Up Bebe. Hmmm….)

Back to my story. Along the way, my husband kept telling me, “I think something is wrong.” I had several thoughts/reactions to that: 1) That’s just a cop-out; if I work harder and keep at it, eventually I’ll see results (though it’s taking FOREVER). 2) Something is wrong with me for not being able to conquer this issue. 3) My husband doesn’t understand what I’m going through and doesn’t have any confidence in me. 4) If something is physically wrong, what on earth could it be?

When baby #2 was 16 months old (5 months after meeting with the personal trainer), I finally got so desperate from the lack of significant results that I decided to do some research to see if there might actually be something physically wrong with me. I had lost all of the baby weight and my body fat percentage was super-low…yet I still looked pregnant. I had no idea what I was even looking for. I ended up Googling “abdominal pregnancy injury” to see what I could come up with. I found information on a condition called diastasis recti–aka abdominal split. I had never heard of this, and no one else seemed to have heard of it either, except for my nurse friends.

I did the simple test to check if my abs were split and discovered that the gap between the two sides of my abs was three fingers wide. Although this was bad news, it almost felt like good news in the sense that I could at least identify the problem. 

I found two solutions: surgery and special exercises. I'm an athletic person, so I dismissed the idea of surgery and focused on the special exercises that were said to help heal a split. (Click here for a video demo. Read Julie Tupler's Lose Your Mummy Tummy and Maternal Fitness: Preparing for a Healthy Pregnancy, an Easier Labor, and a Quick Recovery.) 

So hope was again restored (I had slowly been losing heart), and I started working on those exercises. Unfortunately, I also learned that traditional abdominal exercises (like sit-ups) can make the split worse. ARGH! So I had been killing myself in the gym and potentially making it worse! Somebody shoot me! But you just have to move forward. So I started my new ab routine.

About a month into the new routine, though, I got pregnant with #3 (and therefore once again had a justification for looking poochy). I kept doing the exercises for about five months then finally stopped because my baby belly was growing. I just planned to get right back on it after baby was born. At least I would be starting off from a better place than I would have if I hadn’t done any split repair. At least I knew where to start. Forget the jogging. Fix the abs!

To read Part 2 of the story, click here. (Before and after pictures forthcoming.)