Restoring belly after childbirth

If you want to return your belly to a state close to pre-pregnancy after giving birth, the core logic is never to mess around with curling up or tying your waist. Instead, you must first determine whether your big belly is "bulging caused by diastasis of the rectus abdominis/pelvic floor muscle injury", "fat accumulated during pregnancy" or "laxity after skin stretching" "The golden recovery period is 6 months after childbirth. The deep-seated damage must be resolved first and then the fat can be reduced. Most ordinary people can reach a state where they can no longer look like they were born when wearing ordinary clothes in 1-2 years. If you insist on pursuing a look that is not loose at all and even the stretch marks are gone, it can only be said that it is most likely to embarrass yourself.

My best friend gave birth to twins last year. After the nurse pressed her belly, she looked down and saw that she was still five months pregnant. She immediately took out her phone and ordered an Internet celebrity girdle. Fortunately, I held her down. In fact, the current opinions about slimming down the belly after childbirth are very confusing. If you go to a public maternal and child rehabilitation department, the doctor will most likely say, "Lie down for the first 42 days, don't do blind exercises." The waistband will not let you touch it, saying that when the abdominal pressure is high, the already fragile pelvic floor muscles will be directly compressed to bulge, and the leakage of urine is considered minor. ； But if you read the content of fitness bloggers, many people will say that they started doing the dead bug pose to activate the core a week after giving birth naturally without side incision, and that they had vest lines after confinement. In fact, both of these statements are correct, but they are applicable to completely different people - bloggers may have been in the habit of fitness all year round before pregnancy, and their core strength is already strong. During pregnancy, they only gained 18 pounds in total, and the baby was only 6 pounds. After giving birth, the rectus abdominis muscle was not even divided into half a finger. Can it be the same as you, who was sedentary for a long time without core before pregnancy, and gained 40 pounds during pregnancy?

A while ago, I met a former colleague who told me that after giving birth, my rectus abdominis was reexamined to have 3 fingers of separation. If I didn’t believe it, I had to follow Pamela to abuse her abdomen. After two months of abuse, my stomach was not small, but it leaked urine when I coughed. When I went to reexamine the separation, it became 3.5 fingers. Two months of hard work were wasted. I really want to remind everyone that when the separation of the rectus abdominis muscles is less than 2 fingers, all abdominal crunches and plank supports that increase abdominal pressure are counterproductive. Don't just listen to what others say about "thin crunches to slim down the belly". Speaking of which, I have to raise another controversial point: Is the rectus abdominis repair device an IQ tax? Private obstetrics and gynecology institutions will tell you that even if one finger is separated, you must do 10 times of electrical stimulation, otherwise you will suffer from urinary leakage and uterine prolapse when you get old, which will scare you and cost you tens of thousands of dollars. ； However, the standards of public rehabilitation departments are generally that no additional equipment is required for patients with 2 fingers or less. If you take 10 minutes a day to do gentle activating movements such as abdominal breathing and dead insect pose, you can basically go back on your own in about half a year. If you have 2 fingers or more, you can consider electrical stimulation intervention, which is the most cost-effective.

Also, the girdle is not a complete beast. In the first week after giving birth, you can wear a medical, loose girdle when you get out of bed and walk to support your organs and avoid pain. However, don’t wear it for more than an hour at a time. Take it off when you are lying down. Don’t buy the Internet celebrity girdle that makes you breathless. If you wear it for a long time, it will not only depress the pelvic floor, but also deform your ribs. It’s not worth the gain.

Many people especially deceive themselves and attribute their big belly to pregnancy. In fact, you had a small belly before pregnancy. After giving birth, you drank five bowls of bone soup a day and made cakes and milk tea in order to produce milk. How weird is it that your belly can be small? When your postpartum check-up is clear, control your diet and avoid extreme dieting. If you are breastfeeding, eat enough protein and drink less high-sugar soups. Slowly add aerobic exercise such as brisk walking and aerobics. Once your body fat is reduced, your belly will naturally become smaller. Don’t blame everything on “postpartum sequelae”.

If you are pregnant with twins, or your belly has grown too fast during pregnancy and you have a lot of stretch marks, then you have to accept the reality: the looseness caused by the break of the dermal layer can at most be tightened by exercise, but it is impossible to completely return to the tight state before pregnancy. If you can't accept it, you can wait until you are weaned to undergo medical aesthetic abdominal wall molding, but the surgery has risks, so you need to think clearly about it. I only returned to my pre-pregnancy waistline 10 months after giving birth. Now there is still some looseness around my belly button and a few light stretch marks. But I think it’s nothing. It’s normal to have some traces after carrying a baby for 10 months. No one can see it when I wear a normal T-shirt with exposed navel, so it’s fine if I don’t mind.

Really don’t compare with those people on Xiaohongshu who showed off their vest lines a month after giving birth. They are either the chosen ones, or they took half an hour after giving birth. Everyone’s body constitution is much different. Take your time and don’t be anxious. What’s more important than losing weight is that you feel comfortable.