Women who have had more traumatic deliveries can suffer from severe cases of diastasis recti and should seek treatment prior to working out. "From my perspective as a clinician, we want to see, again, the overall function on the women: Do they have incontinence? Do they have pain? What is the integrity of their abdominal wall? And how meaningful do we think the impairments we see are for their particular function?" Prendergast said. "Then, we address it from there. We want to try to help that woman do the proper exercises to close it and also keep her abdominal wall working with the pelvic floor."
Dr. Gupta noted that safely working out before and during pregnancy to strengthen the abdominal wall may help make this separation less severe, but the key to correcting diastasis recti is to go to an experienced physical therapist who specialises in postpartum rehab and can guide you through muscle-strengthening exercises (and, again, it's normal to see separation of the abdominals after childbirth). If women don't respond to these exercises, they may need surgery, Dr. Gupta said.