C-Section scar still causing you bother?

When the skin layer was parted and pulled apart to get your baby out lots of nerve endings were damaged. These nerve endings are what give you sensation by taking the information from the skin up to your brain to process. They struggle to recover if they are never given any surface information to figure out what’s normal again. It’s like re calibrating the pressure sensors in your car tyre after the damaged tyre has been swapped with a new one. Unfortunately your body doesn’t have a button for this, ; it takes time to recalibrate our nerve endings. This means that even after all the acute healing has finished, the nerve endings can translate normal pressure or touch as painful or not give you much feeling at all. Essentially the calibration of your sensors is too high or low.

We improve this by giving your scar and the surrounding area lots of non-threatening touch. You can do this in a few simple ways; gently dry your tummy and scar after washing, moisturise your tummy with mindful touch, massage the scar itself gently with coconut oil. We want touch to be gentle so we don’t overstimulate the scar, it isn’t a sports massage! The more we touch, the more information we give our sensors to process, but be patient it does take time.

Unfortunately some C Section Mums can experience low back pain, abdominal pain and pelvic pain longer term, as well as pain at the scar itself. There’s a few potential reasons for this. It could be due to the disruption that the C section causes in the fascial layer of your body. Fascia is between your skin and muscles, I like to think of it as the clingfilm wrapped around your muscles and organs giving support. When you had your C section this was parted just above your pubic bone and stitched back up. Think of a fishing net that was torn and sewn back up with rope, it will mean this net now has a rigid point. This could therefore cause pulling that you feel somewhere else, like your low back for example. This is called myofascial dysfunction.

The other cause of pain can be scar adhesions. Even though the surgeon stitched up each of the layers in your body separately, scar tissue can be like a spider web and stick to surrounding structures. This can cause pain when that area is doing it’s job. For example, you can get pain when weeing if adhesions go to your bladder, or when using your abdominal muscles. This is treatable with expert support.

The other key area present in most with postpartum pain is we are a little bit stuck in our fight or flight mode, constantly ready for action which puts our pain system on high alert. The first year postpartum is the perfect cocktail for what we call central nervous system hypersensitisation. We aren’t getting good quality sleep, we’ve had a massive life shift changing our key relationships, we’re often depleted in various key nutrients as our body is still recovering from pregnancy, and our body rarely gets an opportunity to go into a rest and digest state for any period of time. Looking wider than the site of the pain is vital in improving it.

The belly falling over the top of your scar is so common that if you’ve managed to avoid it then it’s a minor miracle, and every other C section Mum will likely be jealous. This overhang takes time and sometimes a bit of extra TLC to reduce, patience is key.

There’s a few factors that can be involved. Not all overhangs are the same. Here are some of the more common factors involved.