How to recover after a caesarien-section? Part 2: D21-D90

Your healing is now healed (at least externally). You feel more and more ready to resume normal activities, let’s see what you can do!

Scar massages

Now that the edges of the scar are well closed, it will be necessary to start to massage it to avoid that fibrosis and nodule tissues develop externally and internally limiting the elasticity of your skin. There are several types of manipulations to do:

• Circles:

One finger above and one finger below the healing line, make small circles in opposite directions

• The drawn line:
  • Put some oil on the tips of your fingers
  • Put pressure on your belly skin with your fingertips
  • Make drawn lines between the navel and healing from right to left

Video explaining these 2 techniques (unfortunately only in French atm…)

Pelvic floor exercises

You can now start exercising your perineum without limitation. The principle is the same for all of them: we squeeze when breathing out. We also keep a hand on the belly to check it does not push out, meaning we are stretching our abdominal muscles (! diastasis !). It is better to have a gentle and only a contraction of the pelvic floor muscles than a sharp contraction that uses abdominal muscles and “strength” Upside down the desired upwind movement. For more information about how wrong exercises can stretch your pelvic floor and abdominal muscles, you can have a look this article about good and bad abdominal exercises.

• Fast contractions:
  • 10 squeeze during exhalation by retaining a need to pee.
  • 10 by holding a gas
• Slow contractions: Squeeze the entire pelvic floor while exhaling and try to maintain this contraction by inspiring, tighten a little more by blowing and release while inhaling. You can hold the time of a respiratory cycle and more if you feel your perineum strong enough but try to always relax while inhaling.

If you want to know more about pelvic floor contraction, you can refer to the article: “how to squeeze your perineum”  

Elvie and other probes

If you need motivation to do your exercises, these probes are made for you! They allow feedback when you contract the perineum and motivate you in a fun way to do them. There are more and more so it’s up to you to make your choice. For more details about the different probes and how to use them, you can have a look at our previous article about exercises with Elvie and probes.

Breastfeeding positions

You can now breastfeed in any position but always paying attention to your back. If you want to know more, you will find all the information in this article (coming soon!).

Abdo-mg

Modulated breath integration in stimulated abdominal rehabilitation guarantees a protective aspect allowing early management after childbirth and after any abdominal surgery. The main objective of the ABDO-MG concept is to allow everyone to recover a competent abdominal strap, motor of the breath and to integrate good reflexes in the daily actions. You can learn more about this technique in our article about the Abdo-MG concept or have a look at the playlist videos below:

Abdominal exercises

Now you can start a light abdominal work. The goal is to protect the healing scar and avoid diastasis. In these series of abdominal exercise videos, we demonstrate different level of difficulty but they are all accessible at this stage of the C-section recovery.

Work out

At this point, if you do not feel too tired and want to start exercising again, you can start soft gym exercises. Be careful they must be performed correctly so always ask the opinion of a physiotherapist or a Personal trainer! For your legs, you can use exercises such as squats, lunges, etc… However, do not use resistances but body weight exercises only (no weight or elastic!). For your upper body you can start simple movements but limit the opening and similarly do no use resistance. Swimming, walking or cycling are perfect exercises at this stage! Before to start jumping exercises and running, you must first have the approval of your gynaecologist, midwife or women’s health physio. And have done your pelvic / abdominal rehabilitation! When you feel confident enough, you can find an example of work out below:

Ball exercises

The first few days after birth, your Yoga ball is your best friend! Sit on it regularly, make circles to relax the lower back … Then, you can use it for abdominal exercises, so do not deflate it! For idea have a look at our article about abdominal exercises on a ball!  

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