Can anyone actually KNEEL after a knee replacement? Grandkids, church, garden, I miss the floor

I'm 7 months out from a total knee (right side), 64 years old, and by every official measure I'm a success story. Surgeon's happy, I graduated PT in January, I walk two miles most mornings with my neighbor. So why am I writing this. Because I cannot kneel, at all, and nobody warned me how much of my life happens on the floor.

My granddaughters are 3 and 5 and they play DOWN THERE. The kneeler at church, I just quietly stay seated now and I hate it. And I've got tomato starts in the garage that need to go in the ground next month and I have no idea how that's going to work.

I tried kneeling on the carpet last week to test it. It doesn't hurt exactly, it's more like kneeling on a golf ball while the whole knee tells you it doesn't belong to you. My surgeon says there's no rule against kneeling once everything's healed, most people just find it uncomfortable. Well, count me in on uncomfortable. Does this ever come back? Tricks? Anything?

Patty, I could have written your post at 7 months. I'm two and a half years out now and I do kneel, so let me be the good news.

The golf ball feeling was exactly how I described it too, and for me it was mostly the skin, not the joint. There's a patch to the outside of my scar that's still a little numb, and pressure on it sends this odd wrong-number signal that made the whole knee feel like it wasn't mine. What changed things was my PT telling me to stop avoiding it and start practicing. I began on the bed, then a folded comforter on the floor, then one of those thick foam garden kneelers. A minute at a time, hands on something sturdy, weight going down slow.

By around 18 months I could get down for Legos with my grandsons without doing the math first. It's still not like my other knee and I don't think it ever will be, but the floor is mine again. Year two is where it happened for me, so don't grade yourself at month 7.

Honest minority report: I never got comfortable kneeling again and I stopped fighting it. Raised beds and a little folding garden stool solved the tomatoes, and in four years not one person at church has said a word about me staying seated.

This question comes up so often I ended up writing it into the site. The long-term guide covers kneeling, what's actually protecting the implant versus what's just uncomfortable, and why so many of us describe that same golf ball: caring for your new knee for the long term.

My own file, for what it's worth: right knee at 61, and I was convinced my gardening days were done. Kneeling took me most of two years to feel semi-normal, and I still keep a foam pad in the garage and another by the flower bed. Carol's slow-practice approach matches what worked for me almost exactly, the avoiding was keeping it strange.

One thing I'd add: before you start practicing, check with your own surgeon's office that there's nothing specific in your notes. Most of us get the "uncomfortable but not harmful" answer, but a few women here have had reasons on their chart to hold off, and that's not something a forum can see.

Two month check-in since you were all so kind. Practicing most days on a folded quilt like Carol said, up to about a minute on the good days. My daughter bought me one of those garden kneeler benches with the handles and the tomatoes GOT PLANTED, me on the bench like a queen. Church kneeler is still a no, floor time with the girls is short but happening. Not where I want to be yet but it's moving, and honestly that's all I needed to know it does.