Mayo Clinic Health Manager
Get free personalized health guidance for you and your family.
Get Started
About our e-newsletters
- Free e-newsletters
- Mayo Clinic expertise
- We do not share your e-mail address
Housecall, our weekly general-interest e-newsletter, keeps you up to date on a wide variety of health topics with timely, reliable, practical information, recipes, blogs, questions and answers with Mayo Clinic experts and more. Our biweekly topic-specific e-newsletters also include blogs, questions and answers with Mayo Clinic experts, and other useful information that will help you manage your health.
Housecall Archives
Mayo Clinic Housecall
Stay up to date on the latest health information.
What you get
- Free weekly e-newsletter
- Mayo Clinic expertise
- Recipes, tools and other helpful information
- We do not share your e-mail address
Causes
By Mayo Clinic staff
Pregnancy and delivery are the most common causes of rectoceles. This is because the muscles, ligaments and fascia that hold and support your vagina become stretched and weakened during pregnancy, labor and delivery. As a result, the more pregnancies you have, the greater chance you have of developing a rectocele.
Not everyone who has delivered a baby develops a rectocele. Some women have very strong supporting muscles, ligaments and fascia in the pelvis and may never have a problem. Women who have only Caesarean deliveries are less likely to develop a rectocele.
Other conditions and activities that can put pressure on the pelvic floor and cause a rectocele include:
- Chronic constipation or straining with bowel movements
- Chronic cough or bronchitis
- Repeated heavy lifting
- Being overweight or obese
