If you’ve been told you have diastasis recti, chances are the first thing anyone measured was the width of the gap, but width alone doesn’t tell the full story. Where the separation is largest, and what’s happening around it, often reveals more about what’s actually going on in your body.

Why Location Tells a Story

The linea alba (the connective tissue seam running down the midline of your abdomen) isn’t uniform. It behaves differently above, at, and below your belly button, and so does the separation that can form there during pregnancy.

Upper abdominal gap (above the belly button): When this is the area that remains widened past the 12-week postpartum mark, it’s often tied to rib flare; a pattern where the lower ribs sit flared outward instead of stacked over the pelvis. This changes how pressure moves through the abdominal wall and can keep tension from ever properly returning to that upper seam.

Lower abdominal gap (below the belly button): Separation that persists here tends to point toward a disconnect between the lower core and the pelvic floor, the two systems that are supposed to work as a team to manage pressure. When that teamwork isn’t happening, the lower linea alba doesn’t get the tension it needs either.

At the belly button itself: This is almost always where the gap is widest, and that’s expected, not alarming. The collagen fibers of the linea alba are arranged differently below the navel compared to above it, and this is also simply where the tissue was stretched the most throughout pregnancy.

Alignment and Breathing Come First

No matter where your gap sits, the starting point is the same: restoring good alignment and a functional breathing pattern. Rib position, pelvic position, and how you’re breathing all determine whether pressure in your abdomen is being managed well or being pushed somewhere it shouldn’t go. This is the foundation everything else, including any targeted strengthening, is built on.

What “Closing the Gap” Actually Means

For years, the goal of diastasis recovery was framed as physically narrowing the distance between the two sides of the rectus abdominis. Foundational ultrasound research from physiotherapist Diane Lee and researcher Paul Hodges changed that understanding. Their work found that women with diastasis recti had both a wider gap and less tension through the linea alba, and that engaging the deep core (the transversus abdominis) before other abdominal muscles could reduce that lack of tension, even when it didn’t necessarily narrow the measured gap itself. This shifted the field’s thinking away from simply closing the gap and toward generating real tension through the midline.

More recent ultrasound research backs this up further. A 2026 study found that during specific core exercises, greater thickening of the deep abdominal wall was associated with changes in the gap and how the linea alba behaved under load, supporting the idea that recovery happens through the connective tissue adapting and thickening in response to multidirectional strength training, not the muscles themselves being dragged back together.

In plain terms: the muscles don’t actually move closer. What changes is that the connective tissue between them becomes thicker and more capable of managing pressure. And that’s genuinely fine; a well-sealed, well-functioning core system is the goal, and cosmetically, the visible gap can diminish substantially as a result.

When Surgery Is the Right Conversation

For most women, a structured pelvic PT program addressing alignment, breathing, and progressive multidirectional strength training is exactly what the body needs. There are cases (a more extensive separation or a true abdominal hernia) where surgical repair is the appropriate path. But this level of severity is the exception, not the rule, and it’s not something to assume without a proper evaluation first.

Does Nutrition Play a Role?

It’s a reasonable question, and one that deserves more attention than it usually gets. Much of the orthopedic and rehab world treats healing as a purely mechanical problem; do the exercises correctly, and the tissue will follow. But connective tissue repair isn’t just a strength problem. It’s a biological one, and biology needs raw materials.

Building new collagen is only half the job. That collagen also has to be cross-linked and that process depends on specific nutrients working together, not just one. This is exactly why nutrition deserves equal footing with exercise in a real recovery plan, not a footnote to it.

A few of the basics worth prioritizing, both before delivery and through postpartum healing:

• Protein — the literal building block for rebuilding tissue, muscle, and Postpartum needs run higher than most women expect.
• Vitamin C-rich foods (berries, citrus, peppers) — supports the initial building of
• Copper-rich whole foods (organic beef liver, shellfish, nuts, seeds) — supports the cross-linking that gives new collagen its strength. Beef liver in particular naturally provides both copper and retinol (vitamin A), two nutrients that show up again and again in tissue repair research.
• Magnesium — supports the enzyme function involved in tissue repair, and pregnancy increases the body’s demand for it significantly.
• Healthy fats and omega-3s — support the anti-inflammatory environment tissue needs to heal well.
• Hydration and electrolytes — keep fascia and connective tissue pliable rather than stiff and less responsive to training.

So while no single food or supplement will “fix” a diastasis, going into postpartum with strong reserves across these basics is just as much a part of recovery as any exercise protocol, and it’s a piece too often left out of the conversation entirely.

The Bottom Line

Where your gap sits can tell you more than how wide it is. Rib position, pelvic floor connection, and breathing mechanics usually explain more than the number of finger-widths you can feel and real recovery comes from rebuilding tension and function, not chasing a smaller number.