Tan your belly, heal your diastasis rectii.

The way this works is manyfold.

And I can tell you it works, because it has worked for me!

During the stressful brighterdaysdarkernight…, the abdominal muscles above my belly button “popped,” making a strange flat spot on my otherwise nice and round pregnant belly.

After the pregnancy, many assured me my belly would never look the same again.

Cue my fourth pregnancy, and sure enough, when my belly grew to a certain size, the same spot in my belly “popped.”

My midwife measured with her fingers and agreed it was diastasis recti. Dun dun dun!

She suggested a belly band and coached me on ways to move that wouldn’t make it worse. (Such as carrying my toddler up and down the spiral staircase).

When it comes to the web’s advice for healing this postpartum, it’s supposed to take a lot of work and abdominal exercises to resolve this situation and bring the muscles back together.

If you are anything like me, and you have this condition, you probably also don’t want to be locked into some crazy complicated workout routine.

Sure, if it’s fun and easy, but as a postpartum mama with now 4 children running about, I like my self care to be fun since it’s usually pretty brief.

As I was thinking about what I was going to do, I remembered vaguely something I had read from Dr. Jack Kruse (this was part of what inspired me to do the research I did to create the brighterdaysdarkernight…):

Without sunlight, not enough dopamine is present in smooth muscle in the uterus. This is why so many get diastasis recti of their belly when pregnant. Mom's with this were sunlight deficient before pregnancy. The proof is also found in the little yellow babies who need to be put under blue light in the hospital to clear their blood of bilirubin to protect the unmyelinated brain from the early breakdown of RBC's that make the bilirubin levels rise. This is evidence of a circadian mismatch in mom that shows up in the baby. This means Mom was likely blue light toxic. The environment of the mother/dad and baby were created by choices born of the environment parent allowed without knowing how light destroyed these cycles in cells in the blood and circulatory system.

Source: linkedin.com/pulse/your… by Dr. Jack Kruse

Sure enough, just as with my brighterdaysdarkernight…, a couple quick web searches confirmed his words about diastasis recti.

Sunlight increases dopamine, and dopamine increases muscle strength.

With a careful rebuilding of my brighterdaysdarkernight… after my brighterdaysdarkernight…, I noticed my belly indeed seemed to be tightening up nicely as I worked my way up to full-blown sunbathing (one of the benefits of brighterdaysdarkernight…).

At my final 6 week visit with my midwife, I asked her to check my diastasis recti.

It had closed to a nearly negligible gap—she could hardly even fit one finger between the muscles where they had been separated.

Amazing! she said. Especially for a 4th time mom.

Another big sunlight and circadian rhythm win!

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