How Do You Get Upper Diastasis Recti and What to do?
Upper Diastasis recti or open above navel diastasis recti happens when your growing baby inside your tummy pushes up against your rib cage.
As your rib cage becomes wider, your connective tissue continues to stretch out and accommodate the baby. The more he pushes up, the more your abdominal muscle splits. For some, the ribs go back to its normal position after delivery, and for others, they stay it is.
Poor Body Alignment Reinforces Upper Diastasis Recti
When your rib cage is constantly pressing forward while you stand or exercise, do you see where your breath go every time you inhale?
It’s all going to the front and most likely trapped in the above navel area making you a shallow breather which you breathe mostly in your chest and shoulders area.
It will continue to stress your connective tissue which prevent it from healing.
Here is the fact,
Having a baby is a heavy duty job, it makes your weight shift forward. And throughout the 9 months of pregnancy, you trigger the muscle memories to be in this “new posture”.
Think about this
After you had your baby, you habitually hang onto your spine, your back is tight. You stress the fascia on your core making your belly look bigger than it is.
Not only that, you are carrying, feeding, bouncing the baby with 1 arm while the other half of you multitask. It is a lot for your core to handle, especially when it is weak.
If you sit and stand around with poor posture 18 hours of the day, and spend 30 minutes doing your diastasis recti exercises. Who is winning, poor posture or exercise?
Let’s take a look and do some coloring
Use your kid’s non-toxic color marker and trace your ribs.
You will do this lying down on your back so you can find your ribs easier. Take a look to see how wide they are and take a picture.
If you look at your picture, the color line and your mid-vertical line should be at a 45 degree angle.
45 degree on each side. If they are more than 45 degree, then you have rib flares.
What rib flares mean is that your ribs are wider than they normally should stretching out your upper ab muscles. Your goal is to bring them down and narrowing the angle to as close to 45 degrees as possible on each side.
It is normal that you may have one side more flare than the other especially on your weaker side, think about which arm you normally hold your baby, then the other side is your weaker side and you will often find that your ribs flare more that side.
A few things you can do here:
1. Place your palms on your ribs and feel them every time you breathe and exhale everything in your lungs, so your ribs have to come down and you should be able to feel it with your plams.
2. Take a long exhale and slightly round your back.
3. Watch your posture and ribs throughout the day and see what particular movement make the ribs pop out.
4. See a health specialist for some manual adjustments or specific type of exercises.
It is not unusual to have upper diastasis recti, and I still have a slight flare myself.
However, awareness is key before jumping into exercises.
Recommend reading next: How posture impact your diastasis recti
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