Whether you know me personally, or have perhaps read my previous blog ‘To All The Strong Girls’, it is fair to say that I have always had a deep-rooted love of sport. With the exception of University and my time travelling (cue partying) I have strived to stay active, healthy and in good athletic condition however, that all changed in 2012.
On a sunny winters’ morning in 2011, I repeated the same words to my husband I’d uttered a couple of times before, “I’m really convinced that I am pregnant this time!” I took a test (admittedly this was not the first time I’d tested myself) and it came back with the faintest of shadows, but not positive. “Sorry, not this time,” he said. So, we jumped in the car and headed off to the local drop zone to do a few skydives, before meeting up with friends for lunch and a bike ride. This gives a fair idea of what our life was like back then - pretty neat!
A few days later I decided to do another test, it came back positive...we were thrilled! It did put an immediate end to skydiving though!
By week 11 of the pregnancy I had started to develop a definite bump. I felt this was a little early so one evening we decided to share our news with a close friend, who was also a doctor. Whilst she reassured me it was not uncommon to ‘show’ this early, her husband pointed out the ridiculous and mind-boggling scenario that we could be expecting twins...oh, how we all laughed at the notion!
The following day we went for my first scan. After a couple of minutes of staring at a black-and-white fuzzy screen the sonographer looked up at my husband and I, and uttered seven words that will stick with me forever “erm...do twins run in your family?” Oh. My. Goodness. It was actually happening...TWINS!
Over the next few weeks my bump continued to grow at a crazy rate, but I remained adamant that the pregnancy would not stop me being active. Outside of my usual working day, I continued to swim, run, cycle and play tennis, amongst other things. At around 16 weeks my husband came to watch me play a tennis match. When we got home he said to me, “I admire your determination to play, but you are physically holding your bump with your spare hand, do you not think that’s a sign that you need to put tennis aside for a while?” He had a point, so I slipped in a few extra games and a couple of weeks later I retired from my short but well-loved tennis career! Sadly, tennis is unlikely to make it back on to my ‘hobbies’ list.
As the pregnancy continued, I found that there were more and more activities I had to give up. Running and cycling were out of the question, but I continued to do plenty of brisk walking, swimming, yoga and strength work. It was around this stage that I noticed my belly would form a cone shape when I did certain exercises that put pressure on my core abdominal muscles. I just assumed it was part of the process.
By the end of the pregnancy, it’s fair to say that I was huge. I was having to physically hold my bump up because it was so heavy, but I had managed to keep the rest of my body from gaining too much excess weight. From behind, I still didn’t look pregnant, but when I turned to the side I looked like a steam train rolling in to town! Strangers would quite literally point and stare, some would ask inappropriate questions, and others would make cruel audible comments about my size. Walking was difficult and I found myself sitting down whenever possible, including the floor in shopping malls; by that point I was beyond caring what other people thought!
I had elected for a natural delivery, but as time went on, it was obvious that my body wasn’t going to cooperate and my consultant informed me that a caesarean section was inevitable. I don’t want to bore you with the gory details, (which, for the record I watched live on video screen in the operating theatre whilst numb from the chest down!), but the gist of it is that when I entered theatre pregnant, my abdomen was more than 4ft around, and once both babies were safely delivered, my abdomen was pretty much flat. The surgical team commented they had never seen a mother SO big, return to normal whilst still on the operating table. I was ecstatic! All that hard work to stay healthy had paid off...or so I thought!
The next few hours are a blur, I had two hungry babies and a seven-hour bout of vomiting due to the anaesthesia. I remember feeling like something was strange with my tummy and mentioned it to my husband. We pulled back the sheets to take a look. The only way I can truly explain it is as though there was an octopus under my skin, with all eight legs constantly moving over themselves. We stared, slightly confused for a few minutes, and then he called the nurse, who took one look and called the surgeon! After the surgeon had conducted her assessment, she informed me that I had an extremely severe case of diastasis of the rectus abdominus muscles, and that what we thought looked like an octopus was in fact my bowels moving and repositioning themselves under my thin and stretched skin. Yes, quite horrid!
So, there I was, day one with our new family, day one with my diastasis recti diagnosis. On that day, when my babies were still just a few hours old, I didn’t appreciate quite what the consequences would be, and how radically the term ‘diastasis recti’ would change my life. I guess you could say that I was blissfully unaware, which in many ways, I am truly grateful for.
The reality however, would hit me soon enough...
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