Pregnancy after Prolapse

Deciding about getting pregnant after developing a prolapse is a very personal one. If and when you feel ready to get pregnant again isn’t an easy, and there are no straight forward answers. This blog isn’t advice, it’s my personal experience about pregnancy after prolapse, and the journey will look different for everyone. I’m not claiming that my experience would be someone else’s if they did what I have done. It’s just one story among many.

I’m writing this blog because the topic has been in my mind ever since I started to wonder if I did indeed have a prolapse, and because many women I work with also wonder about post-prolapse pregnancy. Every body is different, every pregnancy is different, every labour is different and every postpartum is different, so giving blanket answers is impossible. But I believe hearing the positive stories related to prolapse is very important. There is so much fear that goes with it, so we need to start balancing that, creating hope to the story as well because there is so much of it. Those are the reasons I’m writing about my experience so far.

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I have always dreamt of three children. I’ve always loved the thought of having three and the image of being a family of five has always been the backdrop for my plans of our family’s future.

After the birth of my first (a long birth ending in forceps and lots of stitches) I did have some very mild PF symptoms, which looking back now I realise were probably my prolapse already. But back then I thought it was just some pelvic floor weakness, so I trained my pelvic floor a bit harder. After the birth of our second baby (an easy, wonderful waterbirth with no tears), my pelvic floor took a turn to much, much worse. There was no denying a prolapse diagnosis.

It was a whirlwind of a time physically and emotionally. I felt unable, injured and scarred in so many ways. I tried to recover and did many things with little help for a year, until finally happening upon hypopressives. They changed my pelvic floor game completely. And even though I started to really recover and my symptoms massively eased to pretty much non-existent, the thought of a third baby was still daunting.

Eventually the confidence to go ahead did return, to some extent at least. What came back very strongly before it, was the longing for a baby, the sense we weren’t a full family yet and the emotions I experienced when I saw pictures of, read about or saw families with three children. For quite some time the fear of my prolapse symptoms returning or getting worse and the wanting of another child were very much in conflict.

The mind takes longer to heal. At least it did in my case. My body was doing so much better and to many extent was “healing” (recovering, adapting, stronger and more relaxed at the same time) rapidly with hypopressives, but my mind took many more months before it started to trust that it was actually happening. Once it did, I started to feel much more empowered and able to really consider a new pregnancy.

I realised that I knew much more about my body than when I got pregnant with my second, that I knew how to look after it (in my case) better, both during and after pregnancy. I realised I was only going to get better and stronger with time, and wondered if I would forever be regretting not having one more child - and in a way let my prolapse rob me of that as well.

Could I this time go into a new pregnancy better informed about my body, with different realism and confidence?

The first appointment with my midwife when I was about 12 weeks in my third pregnancy, I cried pretty much the whole way through. I talked about my fears of my prolapse getting worse and about how difficult it was last time after the birth of my second. We talked about what kind of support I might need and all the different options I had going forwards.

In my first trimester I was very sick, nauseous and exhausted. I had had to stop doing the hypopressive apnea breath, which had for so long been my safety and strength and support. I felt very vulnerable without my daily practice. Being sick so often was also frightening from the point of my pelvic floor, and eventually the exhaustion made me really reduce the amount I was able to practice hypopressives during the first trimester of pregnancy.

But as weeks went by and I moved onto second trimester and started to feel better, I noticed that none of my fears had come true. The sickness and vomiting hadn’t flared up my symptoms. Not doing the apnea breath and barely doing hypopressives at all hadn’t back-tracked the improvements I’d gained in the past, at all.

Actually, I felt better. For weeks I totally forgot I had ever had any pelvic floor symptoms. It could be for many reasons, either the big increase of estrogen in my body, the lifting of the uterus as the baby grows etc. But I fully embraced this time of total calm and I decided not to sabotage it in any way. I’m just taking it as it is, living in this moment the best I can, looking after my body, my baby and my family the best I can. In the most calm and serene way I can.

I am fully expecting that my prolapse will return postpartum, and that the symptoms I experienced after my second will return the same as once before. But I now feel more prepared for what’s to come. This time around I don’t have the same surprise, unknowns, fears and search of diagnosis, support, help and advice and rehab, as last time. Now I already know which path to take, what to start and when and how. Of course there is a lot of uncertainty with pregnancy and childbirth and even the best plans can’t give you guarantees. But that’s out of my hands, and even in an unplanned situation, I feel much better prepared than before.

I’m now on my third trimester and feeling bigger and clumsier and achier, but my pelvic floor still seems strong. Actually, my pelvic floor feels better than it did in my second pregnancy. I don’t get the same discomfort and feeling of heaviness or bulging or bubbles down below,  I don’t experience the same urgency and frequency etc. And I’m taking that as a good sign. This time around my expectations are probably more realistic. This time around I have a probably more suitable plan and path for my postpartum recovery. This time around I’m already practiced in it and have the skills I need to re-start hypopressives in its full glory.