A caesarean is abdominal surgery and deserves rehab.
Skin, fat, fascia and muscle are cut through and repaired, and then almost nobody is offered a single session of rehabilitation for it. A knee replacement gets a course of physical therapy. Major abdominal surgery performed while you are also caring for a newborn tends to get one follow-up and a vague clearance.
That is why the numbness, the shelf sitting over the scar, the tugging when you reach overhead and the sense that your core is not connected all stay put. None of that is the price of a caesarean. It is what an unrehabilitated surgical site does, and it responds to treatment.
What an untreated scar keeps doing.
These turn up months and often years after the birth, and they usually get put down to how the surgery healed. Scar tissue stays responsive to hands-on work long after the wound has closed.
Numbness Around the Scar
A patch of skin above or below the incision that feels dulled, tingly, or oddly not yours. Common, and it often changes with treatment.
Pulling and Tethering
A tugging at the scar when you reach overhead, stand up tall, or stretch. The tissue is stuck to what sits underneath it.
The Shelf Above the Scar
A ridge of tissue sitting over the incision line, where the scar is bound down and the wall above it cannot flatten.
A Core That Will Not Engage
You try to brace and nothing fires. The abdominal wall was cut through, and it does not switch back on by itself.
Low Back and Hip Pain
When the front of your trunk cannot transfer load, the back and hips do it instead. This often starts months after the birth.
Painful Sex or Leaking
The pelvic floor is loaded by pregnancy whether or not you delivered vaginally, and it is assessed and treated the same way.
Free the scar, then rebuild the wall.
Treatment starts at the scar. Hands-on and instrument-assisted work restores glide between the layers, so the tissue moves with you instead of anchoring you. For a lot of people this is the first evidence they have had that the area is treatable at all.
Then the rebuilding: breath, deep abdominal wall, pelvic floor and hips, loaded back up until lifting your child, carrying the groceries and getting under a barbell are ordinary again. Pelvic floor work runs alongside it through our pelvic floor therapy service.
No referral needed in Illinois. In-network with BCBS, PPO and Medicare, and we verify your plan before you start.
It is not too late to rehab a scar.
No referral needed in Illinois. We are in-network with BCBS, PPO and Medicare, and we will verify your plan before you come in.
It does not matter whether your caesarean was six months or six years ago. Scar tissue keeps responding to treatment, and your first visit is a full one-on-one evaluation of the scar, the abdominal wall and the pelvic floor together.
You’re all set.
We’ll reach out within one business day to confirm your appointment. If you need to speak with us sooner, call us directly.