I’m a week out from surgery and doing well.
I thought I’d clear up some confusion about what exactly I had surgery for, and what that means, seeing that people have had a variety of perceptions about what I had done.
The surgery I had last week was to fix my Diastasis Recti, or abdominal muscles. I had a 15 cm (6″ separation between my abs from pregnancy) that needed to be closed.
For the past few years, particularly since Peter’s birth, I have dealt with chronic/severe back pain as a result of a weakened core because my abs were not where they should be. (I’ve attached a video below about this).
You probably don’t realize just HOW MUCH you use your abdominal muscles every day: getting up, sitting down, standing, reaching, climbing, EVERYTHING.
Right now, I have a 20″ incision from hip to hip and a 10″ incision from my rib cage down, due to repairing the damage of having triplets (muscle, skin, etc)….and No, I wouldn’t change any of this for any reason.
My incision is healing fine and isn’t causing me much, if any, pain, BUT I am not allowed to stand up straight. I have to stay in a recliner for several weeks, can’t sleep in my bed, can’t lift ANYTHING over 2lbs, I can’t drive, can’t cook or clean or do dishes. VERY STRICT RESTRICTIONS as the muscles heal back together.
Suffice it to say, I’m not leaving my house any time soon…my goal is to make it to church on Easter Sunday, but even that is a rather lofty goal.
This surgery was not a surprise and it was a long time coming. For the past two years I’ve tried alternative means of dealing with the muscle separation, but mine was just too big.
This is, unfortunately, not a surgery that most insurances cover. For some reason, insurances feel that having your muscles stitched back together is vain and a medically unnecessary surgery (ie cosmetic). Believe me, we’ve fought with them for the most of the past 2 years.
This is one of the unspoken topics of pregnancy. More women have this issue than realize, and because insurances don’t cover anything to do with it they continue to live in pain, struggling to get through daily tasks.
I have been to OBGYNs who looked at me like I have six heads, because they’ve never heard of this. I have been told by doctors, “it’s not like they can just stitch the muscles back together”. General surgeons have told me that Diastasis Recti is NEVER the cause of chronic back pain. Yea 😑
Bottom line…yes, this was major surgery. Yes, this is going to take months to recover from (3-4 months minimum to baseline, 1 year until full recovery). But, I am doing well. Things are healing nicely. I will recover from this…my biggest struggle right now is letting EVERYTHING go that I can’t do.
I’ve been sharing way more updates and detail over on my instagram account…you can find that here @JMW.Diastasis.Recti.Repair That’s where you can find all the gory pictures and gruesome details of surgery.
If you have questions….ASK ME!!! I’m more than willing to discuss this! PEOPLE NEED TO DISCUSS THIS 🙂
