How-To : Diagnose & Treat Abdominal Separation
The first few days/weeks post birth are comprised of your body trying to find its way back to 'normal'. There's suddenly a loss of weight into a something-pound something-inches blob of cute, your organs are trying to find their old neighbourhood and bumping into new organ friends along the way, "oh hello, bowel! I don't think we've met previously! I'm spleen" etc (or something like that...someone please educate me on this I'm actually fascinated), and your (lack of) core strength has not yet decided if it's going to go back at all; enter diastasis recti, aka abdominal separation.
We asked local mama Paula Hindle of Yummy Mummy Physio, with lovely mama Amy Johnston to show us how to self-diagnose our own levels of diastasis recti, using a very easy, quick tool - your fingers!
Abdominal separation occurs when the uterus expands behind the the abdominal muscle wall during pregnancy, and pushes the two sides of muscle apart, forming a gap in the middle (see diagram from Babycentre here). Diagnosis is easy, both post-vaginal and post-caesarian birth. Paula shows a simple, pain-free way of assessing your own ab status, in the video below.
For further information, head to Paula's website.
Paula and Amy are both wearing Krew Active sports bras. Paula wears the Lola Active Feed Mesh Tank.
