stomach muscles splitting??

[blondiep14]

The other day when I sat up I noticed my bump made a really odd cone shape.
Later I had my eyebrows done at the beauticians and she saw the cone shape when I moved.

She said it was where my tummy muscles have split but it was very common.
This is my 3rd pregnancy and not something I noticed in either previous pregnancy.

Does anyone have any experience of this?

I have my 31 week appt next week so will speak to MW then. Friend says I shouls ask for support belt which should help backaches etc.

Am really pre-occupied with it no and am trying to get/sit up by rolling over a bit first but it's more difficult than I thought

I had that it's no big deal and not much you can do about it, but it can leave your tummy extra jiggly once babies here you may need to wok a bit harder to get rid of the baby belly.

Thanks lola
I had a feeling an even jigglier tummy might be on the cards!

Did you get a support belt or anything?

Yeah... went to this sort of baby running group and the leader was a pilates teacher. If you do a gentle 'crunch' you can feel a ditch in your abs where they separate for your bump to expand (you need to root around quite firmly - it's normally 0.5 - 2cm wide). It's kind of why ultra buff women only show right at the end - their muscles hold on for ever!

Afterwards, do gentle crunches to knit them back together - you can also hold your sides and pull inwards. If you go full-on with mega-crunches or abs work, you can 'set' them like that and they won't rejoin.

In my last pregnancy I had very strong abdominals but still had this, I just can't remember when it started.
This time I'm 19+5 and have had this for a few weeks already. I'm no longer that fit woman I was before DD.

Mine did with DC1 and I'm now pregnant with DC2. You can find out more about it if you Google 'diastasis recti' or 'rectus diastasis'. I had a gap about a four-finger width after birth but following the appropriate exercises managed to get it down to about a finger width and am now hoping it doesn't get worse with my second pregnancy! You need to be careful about the kind of stomach exercises you do as some can make things worse if you do have a separation -- standard crunches for instance. "Lose your mummy tummy" on Amazon is a useful read and you can also Google Tupler exercises. Good luck :)