'What is Diastasis Recti? How to do exercise with Diastasis Recti? What you should and should not do if you have an abdominal separation after pregnancy.  Lindsay sells her pregnancy and postpartum videos as DVDs and downloads on Amazon and her website https://www.momsintofitness.com SUBSCRIBE: http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=momsintofitness PINTEREST: http://www.pinterest.com/momsintofitness BLOG:  http://www.lindsaybrin.com SHOP: https://www.momsintofitness.com INSTAGRAM: http://www.instagram.com/momsintofitness  Rectus diastasis, also pronounced diastasis recti, is a separation in your core. The separation can happen during pregnancy and stick around after the baby is born. Now, most of the time, it happens later in pregnancy and usually occurs with bigger babies and/or multiple pregnancies. It is not harmful and it usually goes away after the baby is out, and there is no more intra-abdominal pressure. Now commonly, this question is asked after having a baby: Why does my stomach look so bad? And here it could be loose skin, loose muscles within the first few months after birth, additional weight, and/or the diastasis recti. Diastasis recti is defined as more than 1 or 2 finger width separation, and there\'s a specific test for it that I will show you here in a bit. After pregnancy, if you are left with the separation, do not worry. It does not mean you need surgery. But know that doing traditional core exercises like crunches will make it worse and will not help it heal because your abs are no longer contracting effectively. You can do the test on your own, but I’m going to show you here on Chrissy. Chrissy, go ahead and place your hands behind your head. You\'re going to do a crunch and I want you to place 3 fingers horizontally about 1 inch above your belly button and go ahead and perform a crunch.  And as you do this crunch, if 3 fingers fall into a valley. 4 to 5 fingers, it\'s considered a severe case. 1 or 2 fingers, you can continue on your traditional core workouts. So to recap, rectus diastasis or diastasis recti is a separation of the rectus abdominis, which is in the middle, which is also known as your six-pack muscle. Diastasis means separation, and recti is your abdominal muscles. Now there is always a small separation of the recti, and it is connected by connective tissue. The connective tissue stretches when extra force comes from the inside like a pregnancy. As you can see here, the rectus abdominis runs up and down and separates in between. It can create a small separation or severe separation when pushed from the inside. To recap, I want you to stay away from traditional core exercise if you have this condition, which is anything over 2 finger widths. It does not hurt to check with your OB about umbilical hernias. This is totally separate from the diastasis. But if you have a large hernia, only surgery can repair hernias. Everybody will respond differently. It could be a few weeks, it could be a few months, depending on the severity of your case.' 

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