surgery

From Mummy Tummy to My Tummy

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I have never been thin. I am compact, sometimes very fit and sometimes Rubenesque if I have been on a particularly gluttonous path. My favorite feature has always been my stomach. In my prime, I could roll a quarter down it. I think years of singing kept it in  shape. In shameful honesty, it has been a point of vanity throughout my life. When we first saw a fertility specialist, she told me I was “way too skinny” to have a baby. I knew she meant my stomach. It was one of the greatest days ever, minus the fertility issue. After having my first tiny one, I bounced back very quickly. I assumed the second one would be the same. How wrong I was.

Tiny 2, or the lion cub, was a painful pregnancy. He was totally worth it. Look at this beauty!

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I now realize it was so unbearably painful to be pregnant with him because I had diastasis recti and my stomach muscles were not holding him in place. He would just bear down onto my pelvis. I would float in my bathtub at the end of the day and notice how my stomach came to a point, instead of a nice round sphere like it had been the first time around. It was a curiosity but I didn’t think much about it. After my lion cub was born, my stomach seemed unusually large for a much longer time. My elderly neighbor asked me when the baby was going to be coming, while I was pushing him in a stroller. (Cue hormonal tears) SOMETHING WAS WRONG AND IT WAS THE ONLY GOOD PART OF MY BODY!! Everyone tells you it takes a while for your body to bounce back, but this felt different.

I googled ferociously and found out about diastasis recti. It was me to a T. Roughly, diastasis recti is when your stomach muscles separate and your innards push forward with nothing to keep them in place. It’s “mummy tummy.” When I did a stomach crunch, I could put 4 fingers in between the muscles of my stomach. This was humbling and awful. I started physical therapy, avoided traditional abdominal exercises and started a serious weight lifting program to help it. (ok I also gained 10 pounds and nothing fit.) It all helped a little bit, except for the horrible binder I had to wear. That was discarded after a very terrifying ride home after wearing it to eat sushi. #neveragainshallwebind  I digress however. Nothing fixed it and I had lower back pain and a protruding stomach with a major outie belly button. Try googling belly button covers….

I looked into everything. There is a lot out there about exercises you can do, but not a lot of personal stories. The exercises did not work for me and I had a lot of back pain. I decided to explore the surgical route. When I first dug for information I learned that insurance covered general surgery where a vertical incision is made and the muscles are stitched back together. This leaves a wicked scar, and my vanity proved to be an obstacle for this route. I consulted a plastic surgeon, but he (and others) did the surgery in conjunction with a tummy tuck. I did not need the tucking and insurance would not cover this. Hmmm. I needed time to think.

God works in mysterious ways and solved my entire problem by allowing my kindergartener son to bring home the most vicious stomach virus I have ever encountered. The virus lurked in hidden corners and became the real life boogie man. I cleaned in a mask and gloves and washed linens, pillows, towels, robes, etc with the vigilance of a woman possessed.

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I still got it. Oh I got it. I got it so violently that I popped a hernia because my ab muscles couldn’t hold my dear insides where they needed to be. I thought it was my last straw. I cried. I had had it. I was beside myself with that hernia. Here is what a hernia with diastasis recti looks like.

I saw a surgeon, Dr. Wes Powell in Pasadena, CA. Dr. Powell had trained a new technique where he could make a small incision and fix both my hernia and my diastasis recti with the help of a robot. My mind was blown. No hip to hip scar and a tummy tuck, just a laparoscopic robotic surgery, outpatient. I signed up as quickly as I could. It might as well have been a 5 star vacation I was signing up for. I could not WAIT for surgery to happen.

I bounced into the hospital the morning of surgery on May 2, chipper as one could be. Dr. Powell marked my belly to follow the diastasis path and I was ready to go. I chatted gleefully while wheeling back to the surgical site. The anesthesiologist was very kind and gave me a little something to relax and I remember nothing else. I awoke, recovered and learned how to use a surgical drain. I was fairly grossed out, but a woman on a mission and this was one step closer. I got home and snuck a peek at my belly. Hmmm, not exactly what I had envisioned; perhaps a little bit of panic snuck in but the pain pills knocked me out and I moved on with trust.

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The recovery was a full 2 weeks in bed. The first week was painful. The second week was somewhat painful and really exhausting. I did make it to part of the Eric Church concert, with my surgical drain pinned into my dress. Once the surgical drain made its exit, I began slowly exercising. I could already feel the difference. My stomach was tight. I couldn’t stretch very far and coughing or laughing was excruciating, but I could feel progress. The anniversary of my 39th birthday came on May 22 and I knew I was going to be happy with the next year and my new fixed stomach.

Today is 9 weeks from surgery and I am thrilled. I have most of my range of motion back and I can laugh until I cry with my family and it doesn’t hurt, much. I am lifting weights and jogging slowly. In 3 weeks I can start to work my stomach muscles and build back up to heavier weights. Dr. Powell did it. He fixed my stomach. My belly button looks relatively normal and my days of googling belly button covers are gone. I feel strong with the surgery. I feel like me. I always appreciated my stomach, but I never fully appreciated my strong body, until I didn’t have it. I share this story because I promised myself if I ever fixed my diastasis recti I would help the next mummy with a tummy who is searching for a happy ending.

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The Day of Surgery

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It is common knowledge that teenagers have no sense of mortality. What I learned last week is that not all adults do either. I know that I will age. I know that I will not live forever. I thank God for my strong and imperfect thighs when I run past someone who is struggling to simply walk. I knew these things but I had not viscerally felt them until last week.

Our in vitro fertilization journey has been very different from the first journey when we had the tiny one. The drugs are different; the time line is a different. The medication made me sicker than I could have imagined. I sobbed uncontrollably from the hormones. I saw the needles being prepared and would sit, shake, and sob all the while knowing they were not that bad. My husband would apologize as he shoved 1 of 3 needles into my belly. I was awake most nights trying to breathe shallowly so I would not vomit. It was not like that last time….

Like last time, I produced a gazillion eggs. I am a hen. I was ridiculously proud of this. They cut short my injections and scheduled my surgery. I bought an US Magazine and looked forward to being in bed because, at my core, I am lazy. They retrieved 24 eggs during surgery. 16 were mature and I happily went to bed. I remembered the last recovery being palatable, so I forced my husband to take our tiny toddler to run at the park after his long and boring morning. They left and I read. I started to not feel great, so I went to get my anti nausea pills, which were no more than 15 feet away. I fell. I could not get up. Please Lord, do not let me vomit. The only thing worse than vomiting would be pooping my pants in public. Ok, let me vomit if it means never pooping my pants in public. I crawled back to bed and called Pat. It got worse.

I never know when it is appropriate to call the doctor so I waited. I could no longer stand up without dizziness and nausea, and pain started spreading all over my torso. I could not sit down, lay on my back, or on my right side. I knew it did not make any sense, but wondered if it was a heart attack. Ok, perhaps now it is ok to call the doctor. My doctor said I needed to come back to his office. I had to kneel in the back of the car because I could not sit and I said things that were not nice at all whenever my husband hit a bump in the road. Really.Not.Nice. The doctor sent me across the street to the hospital where we waited for 7 HOURS to be admitted. This entire time was spent on my left side. They were unable to do a cat scan because I could not lie on my back, even after 3 rounds of intravenous pain meds. I waited 6 more hours to be told that I had fluid and most likely blood in my abdomen from an ovary follicle that failed to clot during my egg retrieval surgery, and now I needed more surgery to fix it. They thought the surgery would take 15 minutes. It took 2 hours. My sweet, precious husband was in a full panic mode waiting to find out anything. He said he was so desperate he asked a maintenance worker if he could find out what was going on in surgery. They removed 2 liters of blood from my abdomen. I could finally rest on my back and sit. It was glorious until a few hours later I was too weak to move at all. I am not sure which situation scared me more. I needed to decide if I would accept a blood transfusion. The people in my life who know me deeply know I am terrified of this. I have irrational fears of diseases and am also a control freak. I had to let go and trust because otherwise I would not be leaving the hospital anytime soon. The beautiful view out my hospital room window of the foothills, bright blue skies, and wide lanes where I could walk and run convinced me just as much as my father’s voice over the phone to embrace the transfusion. I left the next day.

My husband asked me if I thought God was punishing us for being greedy and wanting another child. That probably saddened me the most of anything we had gone through during this procedure. I do not think we were being punished. I, too, lost faith briefly, but looking back, I think a small gift was being in that room with the beautiful view. That was a small nudge to remind me what waited for me outside those walls. Life. Running. Hiking. My family. More time to depend on my body while I am young. And just maybe in a year or so, another baby. Maybe. Hopefully.