As a doula I assisted at nearly 300 births before I stepped back from active practice. Certainly not all of these were unmedicated labors. In fact there were numerous labors I attended which made use of an epidural to help mom rest, relax, and ultimately release into the process of birth. I loved attending these births every bit as much as the natural ones. Every birth was truly magical. But I began to notice an occurrence in the immediate postpartum hour that seemed more common with the epidural and cesarean births. Shaking.

First time babies don’t usually fall out of their mother’s body. That you have some warning that they are coming, and usually that warning is soon enough that you will be able to arrive at your birthing facility in plenty of time to receive your baby. But of course there are those exceptions…And sometimes those births are exactly what you were hoping for.

The last post also talked about some of the simple things we can do to avoid and reduce the chances for having a Diastasis Recti (DR).

But what if we already have one and we still want to create deeper strength, or regain stability through the whole core body? Should we just be popping back into crunches and planks? (A hint the answer is NO!)

A 2016 study found that as many as 60% of women in the US have some form of Diastasis recti during pregnancy or postpartum. Nearly all pregnant people will have some widening of the linea alba- the connective tissue line that links the surface abdominal fibers of the rectus abdominus. (Think of the “six pack” muscle. That indent in the middle? That’s the linea alba. This dense fascia is meant to stretch during pregnancy to accommodate the growing uterus and baby, but if stretched too much, or loaded too heavily the tissue can separate, leaving a space in the top layer of the abdominal wall. This can then result in challenges such as back and hip pain, organ prolapse, incontinence, and general reconnecting to the core postpartum.

What if I told you that the aches and pains we think of as inevitable in pregnancy are actually windows into how to have a better birth experience? That those aching SI joints might be telling you something about the position of your cervix…

Aching lower back, hip pain, calf cramps, stiff shoulders…Whenever I ask a prenatal yoga class what they would like to work on the list almost always includes these, and it doesn’t stop there. It almost goes without saying that being pregnant can put a huge load on your body. But for me, these aches and pains aren’t inevitable consequences of being pregnant, they are rather windows into where the body might be holding too much or too little tone, and if we practice some simple movements on a regular basis (like daily), we could re-balance the load on the connective tissues, and not only create more comfortable pregnancies, but actually ease the process of labor, birth, and postpartum recovery!