Love your tummy Spotlight on: Rectus Diastasis

VERNE MAREE freely admits that as her tummy has never been her best feature, she has sensibly given skin-tight Lycra and crop tops a wide berth. But what of the many women sadly robbed by pregnancy of the trim waist and flat tummy they were once so proud of? If that's you, help is at hand.

- VERNE MAREE

After the birth of our two grandchildren, my daughter-in-law Carrie had a four-finger wide diastasis – or gap between the right and left parts of the central tummy muscle – that made her a candidate for reparative surgery. Being Carrie, she instead embarked on a programme of thrice-weekly, physiotherapist-guided remedial Pilates.

Eight long months later, the gap had closed to one finger in width. Her advice? “Don’t ignore rectus diastasis (RD), or resign yourself to it as just another part of yourself lost to motherhood. It won’t magically go away.”

Ten years after childbirth, a friend of Carrie’s still has a hand-width gap, undoubtedly a surgical case. “After a meal, it looks like a vertical loaf of bread under her shirt,” says Carrie. “No one should have to live with that!”

What causes rectus diastasis? 

Plastic surgeon Dr Marco Faria Correa agrees with her, adding that cases like these are common.

“Rectus” comes from the term rectus abdominus, the long, central muscle that runs from the chest to the pubis and is interconnected with the other core muscles. The linea alba is the tendon that connects them all. “Diastasis” simply means gap.

As your baby grows in the womb, it pushes out the abdominal wall and causes a stretching of the linea alba – but that’s not all. The entire muscle is stretched and elongated, becoming long and flabby.