3 Mistakes made by most postpartum women. The best postpartum exercise program for a faster recovery.

Have you ever heard or read about IAP? Maybe you did, maybe not. In all cases, these 3 insignificant letters are extremely important if you have diastasis recti postpartum or if you’re looking for how to elevate and improve your postpartum recovery.

In this blog post, I am going to explain to you why it matters and why you should definitely care.

This topic is not often talked about. And actually, absolutely everybody should care more about this as it is not something that only matters to postpartum women but to absolutely anyone.

At the end, I’ll drive you through what your postpartum recovery should look like and will give you some postpartum recovery tips. Keep reading!

By Leslie Abraham

Here is an overview of what I am going to cover in this blog post:

What is IAP and why is it important?

IAP, what does that stand for anyways? Intra Abdominal Pressure, or simply put, the amount of pressure in your abdomen.

At all times, when you breathe, when you cough, when you sneeze, when you go to the restrooms, the intra-abdominal pressure is increased. This is perfectly normal and safe.

Today, on some blogs, you can read that IAP elevation is something to completely avoid. Well, I’m sorry to say that this is just physiologically impossible. Or you might have to just simply stop breathing, and that is not something advisable 😂.

However, in some conditions, our IAP elevates in a chronical fashion, meaning it stays elevated for a while. This is what happens during pregnancy as your uterus is expanding and your baby and belly are growing.

What it creates in return, is more pressure in the abdominal cavity and against the abdominal wall, in a chronic fashion, repeatedly.

This chronic elevation of the IAP will in turn create some kind of stretch of the connective tissue between your 6 pack muscles – rectus abdominis – also called diastasis recti. It is something physiological in any given pregnancy.

Where it begins to be problematic, is when the environment – your abdominal wall and pelvic floor- is not able to properly manage it, because of this chronic elevation.

Fear no more, because if you’re taught to breathe the right way and make all the pieces of the environment work together, your abdominal wall and pelvic floor are perfectly able to handle and adapt to this situation.

How does it relate to postpartum recovery?

Most of the time, after giving birth, women have some separation on their abs midline to some extent. And this is not an issue.

It’s problematic when the width of this postpartum diastasis recti is over 2 fingers but also when the tissue quality is damaged too. You should have some kind of springy sensation underneath your fingers, not a squishy feeling.

You can go to this blog post to see how to self-test to know if you have diastasis recti.

If that’s the case, this is when we begin to talk about dysfunctional diastasis recti, meaning that your abdominal wall is not playing its protective and supportive role. This will create other dysfunctions translated in:

Lower back and hip pain
Stubborn baby pouch
Pelvic floor dysfunctions like pain during intercourse, urinary incontinence, prolapse
Constipation
Pain when turning into bed
Bad postural habits, etc.

So you can see how important it is to take this in account sooner rather than later. The longer you wait to start your postpartum recovery, the higher the risk.

Postpartum recovery 101

Here I am going to go over when one can start her postpartum recovery and how to start it.

Postpartum recovery doesn’t need to wait. You do not need to wait for your 6 weeks check up to start this. There is absolutely no gym exercise involved at this early stage, it’s even completely out of the equation.

So first, you want to start, as soon as you feel up for it, with a specific type of breathing. I call this DCP breathing. It stands for diaphragmatic-deep core-pelvic floor breathing. Remember the whole environment I was talking about earlier? You are working on making it all work together with this simple and very effective exercise.

Once you feel you master it, count at least 2-3 weeks, you can add some more core muscle activation to address this postpartum diastasis recti. This is where we begin to work on the obliques, rectus abdominis, TVA and pelvic floor with isolating some muscles. Adding a push starting from your core with your hand on a soft ball will go a long way.

After practicing these kinds of exercises for at least 6 weeks, while progressing them along the way, you can begin to work on strengthening your whole body. Here, you want to keep working on your deep core muscles and pelvic floor muscles at the same time. This can take up to 3 months, depending on your prior exercise level or if you were active during your pregnancy and to what extent.

Then, and only then, you are ready to go back to the gym if you want to. Even for my clients who don’t really want to hit the gym, I always recommend going through the strengthening phase.

Motherhood comes with a lot of new physical challenges and your body needs a bit of training to avoid getting hurt.

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About Leslie Abraham

She is the founder and owner of Bonjour Baby, and the creator of the prenatal and postpartum Bonjour Baby online courses. Leslie is a prenatal and pediatrics Osteopath DO (France), certified pre and postnatal personal trainer and women health coach. She has devoted more than 10 years of her career to help woman be ready for birth and recover from it in the following months and years.

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And start your Postpartum Recovery now!

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If you want more details, you can head over to this blog post, where I go a bit more in details on the best postpartum recovery program and on this one, if you want to see what kind of exercise you can do (this one is good for all mamas, not only the ones having diastasis recti).

If you need some help to start your postpartum recovery, I offer a free consultation where we could talk about it and dive more into what you need to do to start feeling better, more energized and more confident. You can schedule your call by clicking here.

Disclaimer: Bonjour Baby strongly recommends that you consult with your physician before beginning and enrolling in any exercise program, even if you are in good physical condition, not suffering from any complications, and able to participate in the exercise.
Bonjour Baby is not a licensed medical care provider and represents that it has no expertise in diagnosing, examining, or treating medical conditions of any kind or in determining the effect of any specific exercise on a medical condition.