Did you excercise after your c-section?

[MDMDMD]

Hi

I had a c section 4 months ago which I feel has healed well. I know they say wait 6 weeks to heal but I felt that after 3 months is when I stopped feeling anything to do with it. I am sure that my insides are still recovering! To cut through all those layers and say 6 weeks is all you need is crazy to me.

I wanna know from some mums how soon you started excercising after your section and what did you do? I want to tone up my stomach so some ab workouts but am just scared I’ll hurt/damage healing process!

I walk and would start off with light cardio but it’s the strengthening excercises that scare me such as weights. Obviously if I’m hurting I wouldn’t push myself but would love to hear your experiences!

I think I started doing some exercise at 3 months but it was a class designed for postnatal fitness. So it’s weights, lunges, squats etc rather than lots of aerobic high impact (probs because we would all piss ourselves ha). A friend of mine started running at 4 weeks which I just found absolutely crackers.
My abs are still really far apart though, at least three fingers and I’m not sure what to do about that! I have this hideous saggy overhang which is very slowly reducing mainly through diet.

If you have diastasis recti (separated abdominal muscles) do NOT do sit ups and similar. You need to close the gap or you'll hurt yourself.

I was back doing a school run on day 4 after my 2nd and I started off at a slow amble and built up. I added in distance over time (baby in a sling added increasing weight). By 6 weeks I was walking a few miles at speed twice a day. By 8 weeks I was jogging and at 12 weeks I was back to doing 5 or 10k regularly. I started lifting weights again after my 6 week check.

I joined MummyFIT at 10 or 11 weeks pp. But I was pretty fit beforehand and had no separation. Also my section was planned so less traumatic (so I'm told). My trainer is amazing and all trainers are postnatal qualified so will ensure you are only doing what is safe. If you can afford it, it's not cheap, I would recommend something similar to get you back in to exercising. I miss it now I'm back at work.

I promise I don't work for them!

Ignore the shit title but Lose Your Mummy Tummy is a good book for closing your abdominals. There are exercises on YouTube too. I had a 4 finger gap, now about 5mm.

After my first c-section I walked and walked - 3-4 miles a day with an old fashioned Marmet pram just trying to get my baby to sleep! The weight dropped off. Before pregnancy I had been used to riding horses every day but stopped at 20 weeks as bump was so big it kept hitting the saddle. Anyway 3 months post section I went for a short ride and OMG - I never realised just how strong my stomach muscles were until I tried to do rising trot post baby!

Clearly my stomach muscles hadn't strengthened but I hadn't done anything specific to help them.

Sorry - this hasn't helped your question at all

I was walking the dog for an hour a day after 2 weeks, ran for the first time after 4 months
I could only manage about 1km of continuous running but ran/walked until I’d been out for a total of 30 mins
Carried on doing this making the running bits longer and the walking bits shorter until I could do 5km without stopping

I also did post-natal Pilates from about 4 months to make sure I was strong enough to cope with the running

I started building up the walking from about four weeks and started running again from 8 weeks (dr and physio were both happy for me to do so). I was very lucky that my stomach ‘gap’ was very minimal from a couple of days after. Also started doing carifit (exercise with baby in sling) from around 8 weeks.

Sorry for only getting back now, just got the notification for the most recent reply and somehow missed the others!

@bobfossil2 how do you feel for the ab gap? Never heard of this!

@showofhands this must be what @bobfossil2 is talking about? How heavy were ur weights when you started lifting! You seemed to have been pretty active from the get go! Thanks for the book recommendation i’ll Look it up.

@cazinge had no idea trainers were postnatal qualified. Can’t afford a trainer but will look up mummy fit and other postnatal classes.

@blobby10 I suppose from that I’ll take the advice of others - slowly build it up!

@tenbob @groundhogweek sounds good! Building it up seems to be my safest bet.

If only we had a check up to see how we csection mamas have healed internally!

I just walked, then started cycling again from 5 months pp.

5 months till I was fully ready. I had been very fit but infection set in at about 2months and I felt exhausted got ages after that. At 5 months I just woke up feeling healed one day, put in a Cathe Friedrich DVD, grabbed some weights and got back to it.

There's a book called caesarian recovery which has a programme of gentle exercises, starting from advice on how to move in the very early days and gradually building up from there.