Postpartum Health + How I Healed my Diastasis Recti

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(Affiliate Links)

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The time has finally come my friends!

I have had so many requests for this post, and I am very happy to be sitting down to write this out for you guys.

It’s a lot of info so bear with me as I try to gather everything into one place.

First things first!

I have some thoughts about postpartum weight loss, and since it’s my blog I’m going to go ahead and share them with you. 🙂

I’m not a fan.

I know. That’s a broad statement. Let me expand:

I hate the pressure that women feel to lose weight after a baby, I strongly dislike the mlm’s that reach out to women who have had a baby and ask if they’d like to try their weight loss shakes, and it saddens me when I hear women say they just want to feel like “themselves” again when referencing weight loss after a baby (does weight really define us that much?).

I don’t blame women for feeling like they should lose weight, nor do I condemn or judge women who do try to lose weight. But I do think we should all give ourselves a break, and be kind to ourselves.

This is why you’ll never see a progress photo from me or hear how many pounds I am away from my pre birth weight. I don’t want you to ever feel like you should be following the same path as me because my body is unique, and it will do what it wants to do… and your body is unique and it will do what it wants/needs to do as well.

So if you came to this post hoping to read how to get rid of the baby weight fast, this is not the post for you. I’m just warning you now, this isn’t it.

If I would have written this post after my first baby it probably would have been to be honest, but I’m four babies in, and I’ve learned that agonizing over losing weight after a baby steals joy and happiness and it can turn our attention away from the beautiful experience that is right in front of us in the form of a newborn.

So what is this post then?

Two things:

1. I’ll be sharing how I make nutritious and healthy choices after a baby while satisfying the intense hunger that comes with feeding a baby + building my muscle strength back up in a safe and effective way and
2. I’ll be sharing how I healed my diastasis recti after three pregnancies (including a twin pregnancy).

Let’s talk nutritious and healthy choices first shall we?

After struggling through my first two experiences of intense breastfeeding hunger with my first two pregnancies, and just eating whatever I could find in the pantry (read: I just ate a bunch of junk food), I knew I wanted to make better nutritional choices when Gabe was born.

But I also knew I wanted to keep my milk supply up.

So I was really happy to stumble across the Postpartum Cure (Affiliate Link: I used the program long before I became an affiliate).

sign up for the Postpartum Cure here >>

The Postpartum Cure is a postpartum eating and and workout program that is specifically targeted to new mamas who are breastfeeding.

The meal plan is a 20 day meal plan that includes breakfast, lunch, and dinner recipes. Breakfasts are smoothies, lunches are salads, and dinners are easy, simple recipes that are family friendly.

The meals are all really yummy, and they’re all packed with the kind of nutrition that new mamas need.

I really loved using this program because it took the guesswork out of what I should be eating, and the accompanying shopping lists and easy to follow recipes made it one less thing I needed to worry about.

She also has a workout program that accompanies the meal plan, but I only did it for a short while before moving on to something I liked better, which was:

Gymondo.

Gymondo is a workout app that has all different types of classes available in varying lengths.

With diastasis recti (more on that later), it’s very important to not just jump back into exercising without knowing which exercises will make it worse (traditional ab exercises are not so good for d.r.), so I stuck to the Pilates and Barre classes…

and I loved them so much that I’ve continued to do those workouts. Now that my d.r. is healed, I’ve started integrating running back into my routine as well, but it has felt really good to feel my muscles getting stronger again.

sign up for Gymondo here >>

Okay. Let’s talk about Diastasis Recti.

It’s important to note first that I am not an expert so please don’t take my recommendations without talking to a Dr. first.

I’m also not going to share with you anything you can’t find in a Pinterest search, BUT I do know that sometimes it’s nice to hear from someone directly what worked and what didn’t.

I didn’t know anything about diastasis recti until I was about 18 months postpartum with my twins.

The evidence was there (I still looked like I was 20 weeks pregnant because of my belly pooch), but I didn’t know what it was until I stumbled upon an article that described it with a guide on how to figure out if you have it + exercises to heal it.

find that article here >>

Basically, Diastasis Recti is the condition that happens when the tissue connecting your ab muscles thins and pull apart, which then causes your midsection to bulge through the opening.

It’s commonly caused by pregnancy, and it can get worse if you try to do regular ab exercises before healing it.

After my twin pregnancies it took a few months to heal it because I had been doing my regular exercises. With this last pregnancy it took about 4 weeks to heal (I started doing the rehab exercises about 2 weeks postpartum).

How long it takes your’s to heal up will just depend on how bad it is to begin with, and how consistently you do your exercises. I did mine three times a day pretty religiously for those four weeks after Gabe was born.

If you are looking for something a bit more in depth than the article I shared, Moms Into Fitness offers a good program that goes more in depth, and she also has an accompanying workout program that does not exasperate D.R. so you can jump into exercising right away (if you want). To be transparent, I did the free trial and then canceled because it wasn’t my favorite type of exercising to do, but you may like it so I thought it was worth sharing.

See the program here >>

So that’s pretty much it! I do think it’s important to pursue healthy choices during your postpartum months because we’re already experiencing sleep deprivation, and adjusting to a new baby. Reaching for healthy foods, and doing some form of exercise gives that extra boost of energy that is so helpful and needed during those months.

I hope this was helpful for all of you who have asked me about it! Like I said above, I’m no expert! But these are the things that have served me well with my three pregnancies.

Now let’s all go snuggle our babies 🙂

Until next time,

Karin