If you’re like us, you know how delicious a good hip-opening stretch can feel postpartum. It’s like unwrapping a present, and the gift is some long-lost muscle relaxation from your shoulders to your knees.
But sometimes, even if you’ve stretched your hip flexors like a boss, your hips are still locked up tight. If enough time passes, the tension can become unbearable.
If you’re working hard but you’re still dealing with the double whammy of pain and inflexibility, you might feel like you’re doing everything wrong — which is no way for a beautiful mama to feel.
We gotchu, honey.
Sometimes in a good mystery, like when someone eats the last of your chocolate, the villain is someone you least suspect. (Your MIL? Your partner? The cat??)
And our possible villain today?
Scar tissue.
Scar tissue & postnatal hip problems
Remember the layers in your abdomen that we talked about in the last post? Well, one of those layers of fascia is called the peritoneum. It’s really slippery. And super necessary. Because it’s a big sack around your organs that keeps them from sticking to everything outside it – like fatty tissue and skin.
In fact, you’ve seen it if you’ve ever handled raw chicken. But your peritoneum is way thicker, just visualise that slick sheet between the skin and the meat. Yum!
And it’s so important that surgeons need to sew it shut. So, when you’re healing from a C-section and losing yourself in bub’s slowly opening eyes, the peritoneum is sealing itself shut. And if there is significant scarring in the peritoneum, your inner organs could be sticking to something they’re not supposed to.
Sorta like how some of us stuck way too long with that one boyfriend back in the day. No thank you, please.
So we bet you’re asking, Wait, what does this have to do with my hips, ladies?!
How does scar tissue lock up my hips?
Understandable. Here’s the point: your peritoneum is attached to your hips, and if you have any sticking points, called adhesions, it can affect the mobility of your hips.
And if the problem isn’t in your hips, the treatment ain’t gonna be, either. So if you’re the Divine Empress of hip stretching, but you haven’t gotten results, it might be time to familiarise yourself with some deep fascial stretching and get your scar tissue moving again with scar mobilisation or dynamic stretching.
Scamper on over to this post for some help, and then check out our Instagram @bodybeyondbirth – we’ve got a ton of ways to help you become your body’s best friend.
