Attention New Moms In Postpartum!
Pregnancy isn’t easy but that bundle of joy in your arms at the end of 40 weeks makes it more than worth the struggles and discomfort that pregnancy brings. At postpartum, once the baby has arrived and the dust has settled, you might take a minute to look at yourself and think, ‘boy that pregnancy did a number on my body’ and wonder ‘how can I get my pre-pregnancy body back?’. We often turn to exercise in order to reach those goals, and why not focus on those abs by starting with a few sit ups? I’ll tell you why…
In the third trimester of pregnancy, our bellies get big – I mean, really big.
Our pelvis goes through some changes in preparation for birth and our abdominal muscles have no choice but to stretch out as the belly grows. Virtually every woman with a full term pregnancy belly will experience a separation of their rectus abdominis muscles, called diastasis recti. The diastasis, or separation of the rectus abdominis muscles, occurs as the linea alba, the connective tissue between the left and right sides of your rectus abdominis, stretches under the strain of a growing belly (see illustration). A normal separation of the rectus abdominis muscles is 2 finger widths or less; anything larger is considered diastasis recti.
