Diastasis Recti - any help?

blueraven44

I had my last child 2 years ago - he was 11.6 pounds. (Yeah, he looked like a baby sumo wrestler.)

Anyway, I had abdominal separation as a result, and now that I have been going through my fitness journey for several months, can anyone help me reverse it?

I have tried googling but the only thing that I managed to get from the information presented was that I shouldn’t do abdominal exercises like planks, etc.


Basically, those who have had it before, how did you fix it?

mom23mangos

I've found several sites with exercises to help.

https://health.usnews.com/health-news/diet-fitness/fitness/articles/2017-02-03/4-exercises-to-heal-diastasis-recti
https://dailyburn.com/life/fitness/diastasis-recti-core-exercises/
https://www.shape.com/fitness/workouts/abs-exercises-to-heal-diastasis-recti

VeryKatie

Depending on the severity you might want to check if your health insurance covers physio therapy for the condition too. If so that might be a great place to start as they can give exercises to help correct the issue that will be specific to you.

DomesticKat

I have pretty severe diastasis after five pregnancies. A few of those babies were huge so that didn't help. During my last pregnancy (also biggest baby) I suffered from something called "pendulous uterus". My abdominal muscles completely gave out and could no longer support the weight of my uterus by the end, which caused it to fall forward. My entire abdominal wall separated as a result.

I have chosen not to pursue the surgical route, but I will say that strength training, and in the last few months doing ab exercises for diastasis, have helped tremendously. I still have diastasis, but learning how to engage my core properly and keep all of my organs where they should be has helped a lot. I don't believe exercise alone can reverse it, but I think over time you can relearn how to engage the muscles so that it feels more natural to hold everything in better. Now if I try to relax my abdomen, it's feels really uncomfortable so it seems to be working for me.