Once you have babies, Your body changes.
That’s why we always say once postpartum, always postpartum.
People will go through different stages after you have a baby.
To grow humans and birth humans is an extensive job. Think about it! Not only is the uterus expanding and developing a new organ (the placenta) All your muscles, bones, fascia, and organs must squish and move in order to make room for the growing baby. All the while this is happening you are preparing for a life altering event of adding a baby or another child to your life.
In order to get them out of the body, you birth them. Through the vagina or through the belly.
So this already expanded tissue now is either cut from a belly birth or is stretched through the vagina and has scar tissue or at the very least microtears from over stretching from the birth process. So all this tissue needs to heal after this event.
I often get asked “how long does it take for this healing to happen?”
Well that 100% depends on the person. Yes the body naturally starts to heal and recoil from birth and pregnancy (after being overstretched for 9-10 months). Natural healing is amazing, but what inevitably happens is that, with scar tissue that the body lays down to heal the injured tissue, the body starts compensating.
What do I mean by that?
An example would be if you had a c-section, the surgical procedure that cuts through 7 layers of tissue including muscles now has dense scarring. Without proper help to heal that tissue and retrain the muscles people will go years without appropriately using their deep core muscles. When they don’t use their deep core muscles they then rely on other muscles to provide stability. They then come up with compensatory movement patterns that can lead to problems over time. A big one is asymmetry in the pelvis, meaning that the bones shift in the pelvis. What this ends up looking like over time is that this can turn into sciatica. We often see moms who had c-sections end up with sciatica by the time they are in their mid 40’s and it often isn’t resolved for good by standard PT or chiropractic or acupuncture because the root cause of what caused this years ago was the actual c-section scar tissue itself. That scar prevented the deep core (transverse abdominis muscle from working and turning on when it was supposed to). Then you end up using all these other muscles and they become overused and tight and eventually start compensating to prevent you from experiencing pain and problems. But those compensations only last so long.
So at Body Motion we breathe Postpartum recovery into phases of healing. If you skip a phase of healing, the body will most likely start developing compensations and you may be fine for now, but could have issues show up in 10-15 years. So it’s really important that you take your time to work through these phases.
At our provider training this week. We discussed that oftentimes we might not see someone’s prolapse until 5 visits into treatment postpartum. Why is that? Well the scar tissue and tightness has developed and is literally hiding/holding up the prolapse. This works temporarily but as you progress your activity and exercise intensity, your compensations will wear out. So it’s super important that you work with a pelvic expert PT who is going to take you through these phases of healing and not just do one session and say you are healed. Of course, that is what happens and often that is what we want to hear but if we are talking about true prevention and healing our bodies from the inside out after babies, then these phases of healing are undoubtedly extremely important.
Stay tuned to find out when the release of our online program hits the market. If you want to get on the waitlist and are one of the first 5 to email support@bodymotionpt.com we will give you a stellar presale price and a discount on top of that to be one of the first adopters of our online program. We are excited to help you strive through postpartum and the rest of your life!
