I just wanted to share this issue with you, because where I come from it is not discussed or mentioned at all until diagnosed.

After giving birth, I still had a bloated belly which was upsetting as I had always been quite fit and lean. I thought it was probably due to breastfeeding (my doctor had warned me that often whilst breastfeeding your body retains as much fat as it can and I could experience lots of water retention) and maybe a few extra kilos gained during pregnancy. I did not gain a lot of weight though so at my 6 weeks check up I mentioned it to my doctor.

He examined me and confirmed that I had the so called diastasis recti - very common condition after birth whereby your abdominal muscles do not quite go back to their place.

As many of you probably know, during the pregnancy your abdominal muscles separate to make room for your growing womb. After birth they are meant to slowly move back to their place and realign like before, but often they don’t quite “reach each other” and leave a gap. I won’t go into detail but effectively that gap causes your belly to look bloated.

Now, the interesting thing is that to fix that you can’t just do normal abdominal exercises, in fact that would only cause the gap to widen.

I decided to start physiotherapy and I went to visit an osteopath. They both confirmed the diagnosis and we started working on it. They gave me a specific set of exercises to do on a daily basis, which would gradually help my abdominal muscles close up again.

The best part of this was being able to talk to knowledgeable people who knew about it and reassured me it is very common. I no longer felt “wrong”.

I am now 5 months postpartum and am starting to look normal again. My gap is almost closed and my belly is almost flat as it used to be.

I wanted to share this experience with you because I found it very frustrating. I had to google my symptoms and actively ask my doctor to check if my suspicions were right. He would not have checked that if I hadn’t asked him to and I would have probably started doing crunches like crazy to get rid of the bloated belly and that would have only worsened my situation.

If you think you might have it, google “diastasis recti” and check how you can find out if you have it. Once diagnosed, please know it is very common and all you need is to exercise regularly and in the right manner. It can be fixed very easily if you know about it.

Hope this helps some of you and most importantly I hope more women will be aware of this!

Xxx