A combination of your body producing the hormone relaxin (to allow your pelvic ligaments to separate during child birth) and the pressure from a heavy baby, amniotic fluid and perhaps twins causes the separation.

No longer being joined together in the midline makes these muscles less effective at doing their job of flexing the lower spine, and thus weakens your ‘core strength’. Lower backache often results.

Although a program of exercises, such as pilates, may help considerably, in some women only a surgical repair of the rectus abdominus muscles will restore them to normal.

In some women this may occur without the skin excess that is treated in a standard tummy tuck, and it can be surgically corrected without the extensive skin or umbilical incisions required for a full abdominoplasty.