Looking after your Pelvic Floor, with Anita Lambert
Your pelvic floor is one of those things that you take for granted before giving birth. It's just there. Then you give birth and it's not! After my first pregnancy, I went to a weekly buggy workout where we were talked through the kegel exercises and I remember being so utterly bored by them that I quickly lost interest in doing them. Give me crunches or squats any day, but kegels?!
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All those well meaning pieces of advice about doing them while sitting at a red light or while making a cup of tea didn't help at all. My head is way too full of thoughts to remember doing things like that. The thing is, I'm paying for it now. I didn't realise quite how much until I went trampolining with my daughter. Yikes! Well after ten minutes, let's just say that I was sitting it out.
So, when I'm sitting here telling you how important it is to look after your pelvic floor, I mean it!
Thankfully, I have Anita Lambert on the podcast today, who is going to help you look after your pelvic floor. But not only that, but she is also going to share with us her wonderful positive birth story. Anita starting listening to the podcast before she was pregnant as she wanted information for her pregnancy and post-natal clients. Then she got pregnant and had two super reasons for listening. She also shares how she used the head trash clearance method to tackle some of her fears duing her pregnancy.
One of the fears Anita worked on during her pregnancy was her fear of pain and interestingly, she says that she didn't really experience pain during labour. I say "interestingly" because I'm sure that has a lot to do with the fact that she didn't fear it. There is a known scientific link between a fear of pain and our experience of it and *that* is why is find that so interesting! Anita went on to have a lovely birth which you can hear all about.
Here she is with her gorgeous little daughter!
Looking after your pelvic floor
Anita is a physio from Toronto who works with women during pregnancy and afterwards to help them to improve their pregnancy and birth experience, but also to assist them with their post-birth recovery. There is so much that Anita shares in terms of how you can work closely with a physio during your pregnancy and afterwards that it's well worth a listen. She's also makes it all sound so straightforward! Some of the things Anita shares include;
what your pelvic floor actually is and how to think about it
the pelvic floor check you can have BEFORE you're pregnant
the physio appointment that is worth having at 37 weeks to check that you're well aligned for birth
pelvic floor exercises you can do other than the dreaded kegel ones
why it's important to be able to relax your pelvic floor as well as tighten it
what you can do to help you go trampolining again
what you can do to help make sure you can sneeze or laugh without looking silly
why it's not too late to get your pelvic floor "fixed" and what you can do
the importance of the mind-body connection when it comes to your alignement
We also talked about Pelvic Girdle Distress aka symphysis pubis dysfunction (SPD) as this was something that I suffered from during my second pregnancy.
This is an important episode and I would urge you to listen.
Resources
Anita has kindly shared some fabulous resources to support you in this area.
Spinning Babies - this is a great resource by midwife, Gail Tully, for creating pelvic balance and alignment during pregnancy and labour to help with a smoother childbirth (and can help turn a breech baby)
Julie Wiebe, Women's Health and Sport Medicine physical therapist explains how to find your ideal alignment to access your deep core to support your body during pregnancy and af...