Home Remedies to Shrink Your Belly After a C Section

15 Home Remedies to Shrink Your Belly After a C Section

1. Breastfeeding:-

No need to wait to start breastfeeding. As soon as your precious bundle of joy is born, you can start breastfeeding. Believe it or not, breastfeeding can actually help flatten your belly. Not only does breastfeeding burn about 500 extra calories per day according to Women’s Health, but it also releases a hormone called oxytocin that stimulates uterine contractions, speeding up your uterus’s return journey to its pelvic home. So how does breastfeeding burn so many calories? Well, the American Pregnancy Association says a breastfeeding mom will secrete 425 and 700 calories into breast milk per day. Because the body does not generally produce this highly specialized milk that includes tons of nutrition for baby, it has to work super hard to do it. To burn roughly the same amount of calories through exercise, a 140 pound woman would have to run a 10 minute mile pace for 45 to 60 minutes every day.

2. Use a Postpartum Support Belt:-

Generally within 12 hours of surgery, doctors encourage new moms to get up and move around. Some women find that not having any pressure on the site of the incision is uncomfortable. Others find their abs feel loose and unsupported. To combat this discomfort, some obs actually recommend wearing a postpartum support belt or girdle. The jury is out in the medical community. While some obs swear they help with postpartum discomfort and to compress the uterus, thereby helping it shrink, others think these waist trainers are nothing more than a gimmick. Whether or not it helps shrink your waistline, doctors have been recommending similar belts for a long time to people with back pain due to weakened abdominal muscles.

3. Eat Right:-

While dieting isn’t recommended during the initial postpartum recovery period, it is always a good idea for your health and for your belly to eat healthy. Fill your plate up with nutritious fare and avoid empty calories. Snack sensibly and don’t pick junk when you could have a handful of nuts, veggies with hummus or some whole milk dairy to get a healthy bite between meals. Don’t drastically cut your calories, especially if you are breastfeeding. Remember your body needs an extra 300 to 500 calories per day to sustain your milk supply. To calculate your new caloric needs, check out this calculator for nursing moms. For a sensible diet plan, check out the 1700 calorie diet, but remember your body may need a few extra calories.

4. Get Some Exercise:-

Though you won’t be cleared for heavier exercise until 8 weeks after your c section, you can start by doing some light walking each day as soon as you feel up to it. Don’t push yourself too hard, especially in the beginning. After the initial recovery period, you can begin to do some other exercises. Remember to go easy on yourself and follow these tips for postpartum exercise: Easy does it. Even after the initial waiting time, you will likely not be back to your pre-pregnancy self. Take it slow and work up to your pre-pregnancy fitness level as you can. Check yourself for diastasis recti. If you do have the abdominal separation, doing traditional ab exercises can actually make the separation worse and exacerbate the post baby pooch. To check yourself for diastasis recti, lie on your back and gently lift your shoulders off the floor, bringing your rib cage closer to your pelvis. If you feel a gap in your midline that is wider than 2 finger widths wide when your abs are contracted, you likely have diastasis recti. If you find that you have abdominal separation, avoid certain exercises that stretch your abdominal wall like the yoga pose cobra. Additionally avoid lifting heavy objects or any exercise that flexes the upper spine off the floor or causes the abdominal wall to bulge like a traditional crunch, bicycle crunch, or oblique sit up.Instead, try these exercises to heal your diastasis recti and gently close the gap in your abdominal wall:

 abdominal compressions
– pelvic tilts
– toe taps and heel slides
– single-leg stretches

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