What We Treat

Diastasis Recti treatment in North Liberty.

A gap down the middle. A belly that domes when you sit up. A core that won’t hold when you need it to. Somebody probably called it cosmetic. It isn’t. It’s a load problem, and load problems have answers.

Abdominal separation Doming or coning A core that won’t hold Book My Free Consult

Sound Familiar?

Does this sound like you?

  • Your belly domes or cones when you sit up from lying down
  • You can feel a gap along your midline when you press into it
  • Your back aches by the end of the day and stretching changes nothing
  • Planks and sit-ups feel wrong, so you quietly stopped doing them
  • There’s no support in the middle of your body when you lift
  • Someone told you it was cosmetic, and you left it at that

Two or more? Keep reading.

Why It Happens

The gap isn’t the problem. The tension is.

Diastasis recti is a separation of the abdominal muscles along the connective tissue running down your midline. Pregnancy stretches that tissue, which is exactly what it’s designed to do. Heavy lifting, chronic straining, and pressure with nowhere to go can drive it too.

What matters isn’t how wide the gap measures. It’s whether that midline can generate tension and transfer load when you lift, cough or stand up out of a chair. Tension is trainable. A cause-first evaluation checks how your midline behaves under load, not just how it measures at rest, and one-on-one with a licensed physical therapist, you rebuild it. Leave it and you keep organising your life around a core you can’t count on, which is a slow way to give up a lot of ground.

A postpartum abdomen with both hands framing the midline of the belly

The Honest Truth

Waiting doesn’t make it wait on you.

If you keep waiting

  • The rest of your body starts compensating, and the compensations start hurting too
  • Flare-ups get closer together, and take longer to settle each time
  • You move less to avoid the pain, which weakens the exact things that were protecting you

If you start this week

  • Visit one is a cause-first evaluation, and you leave knowing what we found
  • Hands-on treatment starts the same day, not after a second appointment
  • You get a plan with an endpoint: a real one, not an open tab of visits

Nobody regrets starting too early. Plenty of people tell us they wish they had come in sooner.

How We Fix It

The same four phases. Built around your midline.

You’ve already bought the online core program and quit it. That’s exactly the kind of patient who does well here. Dr. Alex Furtado, DPT, CPPC, brings over a decade across orthopedics, sports PT and pelvic health, plus certifications in fitness through pregnancy and postpartum recovery. Every plan has an endpoint.

Phase 01

Pain

Get the pressure under control.

Breathing and hands-on work stop you pushing pressure straight out into the midline every time you move.

Phase 02

Prime

Find the tension again.

You learn to generate tension across the midline on demand, in easy positions, before anything gets heavy.

Phase 03

Perform

Load it, and keep it.

Real strength work: carries, presses, a toddler off the floor, with the midline holding through all of it.

Phase 04

Prevent

Take it back to the gym.

Planks, sit-ups, heavy lifting and running get retested under load before you’re cleared to go all in. That’s the endpoint, not another appointment.

I have been working with Natalie for several years now. I've used her for physical therapy, pain management, dry needling, private yoga sessions, and yoga classes. She is very knowledgably, experienced, and great at what she does. She helps my body feel and move better regularly. Highly recommend.

Shared by Kelly S. · A patient, on what it’s like to work with us

The problem: a core that won’t hold, and advice to do more crunches

The plan: lifting, coughing and training with a midline that holds

Diastasis Recti Plan with an endpoint

Related Conditions

The midline never works alone.

Your core, your pelvic floor and your breathing are one system. Here’s what else we treat.

1

Postpartum Recovery

Cleared at your checkup, still leaking, still bracing before you sneeze.

Learn More 2

Pelvic Floor Dysfunction

The other end of the same pressure system, and often the reason it fails.

Learn More 3

Prenatal Prep

Staying strong and comfortable through a pregnancy, and ready for after.

Learn More

Questions, Answered

What people ask before booking.

The wrong loading can, which is why the doming matters more than the name of the exercise. If your midline domes under a movement, that movement is asking for more tension than you can currently produce, so we regress it until you can. Nothing gets loaded before it can hold. That is the whole reason tension comes first and weight comes second.

No. A midline responds to training, not to a calendar, and nothing about how long it has been makes your core less trainable. What matters is whether anybody has actually assessed how it behaves under load. If the answer is no, then the useful next step is an evaluation, whether your youngest is one or fifteen.

That is a conversation for a surgeon, and it is not where we would start. Function and the gap are not the same thing. A measurable separation and a midline that transfers load perfectly well can coexist, and a narrow gap can still leave you with no support at all. We assess how yours behaves under load first. If the picture points somewhere surgical, we will tell you and help you get the right opinion.

Book Your Visit

Ready when you are.

Request a time and a real person calls you back. No phone tree. No ‘someone will reach out.’ Just a plan.

  • Hours Mon-Fri: 8:00 am - 5:00 pm
  • (319) 382-2743 Prefer to talk now? Call us.
  • No referral needed in Iowa

4.9 · 79 Google reviews

Typical response: under 2 business hours

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