My diastasis story goes back to my pregnancy with my first born son.
When I am pregnant, I carry the baby straight out in front. My husband
would often comment about not being able to tell that I was pregnant
until I turned around and you could clearly see my
humungous belly. I'm pretty sure I could get some small objects to orbit
around me towards the end of the pregnancy. I ended up getting a
Modella maternity belt to help hold the belly up. After I recovered from
my first c-section, I began doing sit ups to strengthen my abs and
noticed that my belly protruded up in a football shape. At one point, my
husband poked it down with his hand, but it popped right back up when
he lifted his hand. I had no control over the middle of my belly. A
few months later, I noticed that my abs were firm along the sides of my
belly, but the middle was still flabby and soft. A friend told me to do
more sit ups to strengthen my belly. At that point, I was currently
doing a work out video that had me doing 100 pushups and 100 sit ups.
When my son was 1 1/2, I became pregnant again and grew just as big as I
did with the first one. The maternity belts in the department stores
were not helping me at all with the pain and weight of carrying straight
out in front, so my OB/GYN wrote a prescription for a medical grade
maternity belt that I picked up from Sante Mama in Vancouver,
Washington. While I was purchasing the belt, I noticed a pamphlet for
the Tummy Team, took it home, and began reading about diastasis. I
realized that I probably had one ever since I was pregnant with my first
child. I asked my OB/GYN about it after I had my second child and she
checked me and said that if I had one it was at most a 2 finger split
and that the only way to fix it was with surgery and no surgeon would
work with me until I was done having babies. For almost a year, I
stopped doing sit ups, but still had a pooch and was constantly asked if
I was pregnant. At one point a well intended lady said, "Oh you poor
dear! Look what those babies did to your belly!"
In the fall of
2011, I went to a free tummy check that the Tummy Team offered and found
out that I had a deep 6 finger wide split. It was encouraging to find
out what was wrong with me and also disappointing to see how wrecked my
body was. I attended a 6 week Tummy Team session in the winter of 2012
and went from a deep 6 finger wide to a deep 4 finger wide split. I
"feel off the bandwagon" after the class ended and didn't do the daily
exercises, but I still didn't do sit ups, jerk myself out of bed, and
braced my tummy whenever I picked up my sons. A few months later, my
husband and I started talking about trying to have another baby, which
motivated me to get back to healing my diastasis. I joined Fit2Be
studios, which has immensely helped me to not get bored with tummy safe
exercises. Now, my split seems to be flirting with the medium 2 finger
wide mark (although I might not be measuring correctly. I think I am
though). I still have a ways to go, but I haven't gotten the awkward
"When are you due" question in a long time.
Heather- mom of 2.
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