There is little guidance given after birth in regard to postpartum recovery and even less after a cesarean birth on what to do for your c-section recovery! Guidance may include:
- Don’t pick up anything over 10 pounds (when your baby and car seat combined is well over that limit)
- Don’t exercise until we clear you
- Keep the incision site clean
While this guidance is important, it may not be realistic to not pick up anything for 6 weeks, especially if we have toddlers, but more importantly, this guidance doesn’t give any information on how to even begin c-section recovery. Remember, cesarean birth is still major abdominal surgery.
Let’s break down a few ways to support your c-section recovery.
1. Belly Band: Externally Support Your C-Section Incision
We may not know ahead of time that we are going to have a cesarean birth but having some items on hand or readily available to grab can support the first few days of your c-section recovery.
One item I recommend having readily available is some sort of belly band; and this would be for both a vaginal and cesarean birth!
A belly band can provide some external support to our healing core, and aid in stabilization demands as our core heals.
The band can also provide external feedback, allowing us to breathe into the band to stabilize.
The band can also help with splinting your incision when you need to increase pressure, such as when sneezing, coughing, blowing your nose, or even laughing!
It is important that the band is NOT too tight, or it could end up causing more issues. When wearing a band, ensure that you can still breathe deeply: your rib cage and core can expand 360 degrees. If not, we may be distributing pressure unevenly on a healing core and cause more issues for our pelvic floor!
If one of my birth doula clients has a cesarean birth, I love gifting them a c-section recovery kit from It’s Bodily. The belly band in the kit has been my clients’ favorite item, and they find it helps tremendously with their comfort in the early days of their c-section recovery.
2. C-Section Scar Rehab: Desensitization & Mobilization
The following is general guidance on scar mobilization. Working with your provider and/or physical therapist for an individualized treatment plan is a great option.
Starting around 0-3 weeks after your c-section, you can begin scar desensitization, where you touch the skin AROUND your incision site with different fabrics and textures. This could include a cotton ball, make up brush, or fabrics.
The goal of scar desensitization is to reset the sensation at your scar. You may experience numbness or sensitivity at your incision site, and while it may feel counterintuitive, introducing MORE stimulus to the area resets our brain so that we feel sensation more “normal” at our scar.
Fortunately, you can use random items from your hospital bag to start this even in when you’re not discharged yet!
Around 3-6 weeks after your c-section, we can begin to do scar desensitization ON the incision, and scar mobilization AROUND the incision site. This could include doing small circles and pulling up and down or side to side.
Start with moving only the superficial layers, then gradually increase the depth of mobilization over the weeks.
Working with a physical therapist for an individualized treatment plan can be incredibly beneficial after a cesarean birth!
Around 6-12 weeks postpartum, we can slowly begin to mobilize the actual scar! This may be really scary!! Take your time with it, take some deep breaths, and be okay with the emotions you may feel as you touch your scar.
The goal of scar mobilization is to help the 6 layers of tissue that were cut through for your c-section to glide smoothly on one another.
After surgery or trauma to tissues, the facial layers get sticky during the healing process and can stick to other layers.
Our tissue layers are meant to glide smoothly over one another as we move. If there is an adhesion, these layers can stick to one another and cause a pulling sensation and impede overall function.
Think about it as if someone was stepping on your shoelace, and you tried to take a step. Your shoe would be “stuck” and you would have a harder time moving. This happens around our lower abdomen when we have a c-section.
Instructors
GINA & CASEY
Our c-section recovery fitness program supports your healing after a cesarean birth with strength and conditioning programming. Reconnect with your core and pelvic floor! Includes access to our scar mobilization course.
- 16 Weeks
- Teambuildr App
- Lifetime Access
You may experience a pulling sensation in your low back, tugging at your lower abdomen during hip extension, or even issues with your bladder such as infrequency or urgency.
Mobilizing your scar can be helpful even years after your cesarean birth!
3. The Anterior Oblique Sling: Reconnecting the Core after a C-Section Birth
During a cesarean birth, the anterior oblique sling is severed to reach your baby. The anterior oblique sling is the fascial line of connection from your chest/obliques to the opposite inner thigh that crosses at the pubic symphysis joint (front of the pelvis).
This sling helps to stabilize our pubic symphysis joint and supports rotation to the front of the body. This sling helps our arm and opposite leg swing forward during walking, for example!
We find that more of our prenatal clients who have had a prior c-section will have more pubic symphysis pain in subsequent births, and we wonder if it is correlated to this connection.
We have found that incorporating exercises that support the reconnection of this sling has helped our c-section postpartum clients feel more connected in their core after birth.
Strengthening the Anterior Oblique Sling Connection to Support C-section Recovery
How can we strengthen the connection of the anterior oblique sling? We can focus on movements that are cross body: bringing the shoulder to opposite knee. In our 16-Week C-Section Recovery Program, we progress our clients each week with movements designed to reconnect this sling after a cesarean birth.
First, we can start with supine movements. Supine movements provide the most stabilization support as we learn to coordinate our breath to movement and core again after birth. The opposite knee press is a supine movement, where we bring the hand to press into the opposite knee. This can be progressed to a bridge position and adding a pull down with a band. Watch the video below for a breakdown.
As we progress in our rehab, we can move more upright to increase the stabilization demands, but still focus on this crossbody approach to rehabilitation exercises.
The diagonal banded pull-down is a great anterior oblique sling exercise that incorporates a rotational element.
With the outside knee up, pull a band down from the inside shoulder to the outside knee, feeling an activation diagonally across the core.
There are also numerous ways to progress this movement depending on the needed challenge.
There is little guidance given after birth, for both vaginal birth and cesarean birth, on how to begin our approach to recovery. We are usually told to just lay still for 6 weeks, then at our 6-week appointment to do everything we did before but use lighter weights or run a little slower.
This guidance provides little to no support on HOW to approach c-section recovery.
We can use support devices to provide external feedback to begin the healing process, and also use it to support comfort with pressure changes.
We can then introduce mobilization techniques to support scar rehabilitation and overall function.
And finally, we can incorporate exercises that will reconnect the core after a c-section birth!