Pelvic floor....or what's left of it

[Gooders79]

I know 100 seems a lot but if you think if your pelvic floor as the muscle it is,you can see how easily effected it will be by fatigue. By the time you've been up for a couple of hours squatting to do washing, tend to children etc before you've even picked one of them up (!) you can appreciate how tired it will be, once tired it just won't be effective. I think it's a really individual thing as well, for one person contracting in standing might be the best thing, for another side lying is the only way you can get a flicker of movement and then that's your starting point. Current recommendations are for no impact exercise for 6 months post partum and after that you should still proceed with caution if you are getting stress incontinence symptoms

[Life After Babies]

Thanks so much everyone.

I now realise that whilst I have stress incontinence things could be a lot worse - you've helped me put things into perspective.

I can do 100 reps fine, it's just if I cough or sneeze unexpectedly - without time to 'brace' & cross legs, or if I run without being careful to use the loo first. The final straw was dancing at a party the other week & having an accident, it just made me feel horrible on so many levels & so ashamed (thank goodness only I knew).

I just thought by now with both kids at school I'd be sorted.

Like an earlier poster I had pretty easy & fast births & under 8lb babies. I just hate, hate, hate this.

No more babies for me. I will speak to Kings & see what they say. I suspect it will be a renewed effort on the PFE's. I've downloaded 2 smartphone apps to get me started - thanks for that tip.

Thank you everyone, I really appreciate your openness & support on this.

[supergolden88]

Have you checked whether you have any levels of prolapse causing this problem? Only saying this because stress incontinence was the warning bell - have since discovered I suffer from mild prolapse. I have been seeing the physio team at Kings and they are excellent - very understaffed initially but think it's getting better.

I have been very lax with my pelvic floor exercises of late and have noticed worse symptoms as a result. I do think 100 contractions a day is counter productive though or so my research tells me.

Can someone post links to those apps I cant find them

[Princess]

I'm not sure how to put links up to app store but this is the one I use as a screen grab. Kegel trainer by Olson Apps.

[Life After Babies]

Super golden, in the app store look up 'Pelvic Floor' & a few apps come up.

Tell me why 100 reps a day is counter productive?

The app I'm using suggests 10 slow (10 second contractions) then 10 fast ones three times a day. But I've been doing the fast ones 10 x 10 each time.

I'm at Kings gynie soon so will ask them to check my situation to see how bad it may or may not be.

[supergolden88]

Quality of the exercises is more important than quantity. Also the pelvic floor is a muscle and it can get overfatigued. And doing 100 a day for the rest of your life is a tad unrealistic. I would say 60 is a very good number. But whatever works - I struggle to do even 10 good ones despite having very good motivators. Be careful when you do the fast ones to fully release the pelvic floor muscles before doing the next squeeze.

The Hab-it DVD is very good for pelvic floor rehabilitation. You can get it on Amazon I think.

[Gooders79]

Sorry if I've been misunderstood, I wasn't advocating completing 100 a day, merely that you should be targeting completion of 100 in Quick succession before reaching fatigue, signs of which would include use of stomach mscles, adductors and breath holding. I completely agree that quality is more important but ultimately you should be able to do 100 without fatiguing otherwise you are likely to have a suboptimal pelvic floor.

[Life After Babies]

6 weeks on I wanted to post an update.

SO - I got 3 apps for my iphone, and set reminders to go off all through the day, so one way or another I did at least 3 sets of exercises every single day bar maybe 1 or 2 since early October.

The other day I sneezed and realised I don't have to THINK about it any more. I seem to have resurrected my pelvic floor and I am more happy than you can imagine. Yesssss!!!

The App I like the best is PFE the logo is a pink box with a purple tick in it. I think I did actually pay a little bit for it, but what I like is that each set of exercises varies in duration, length of squeezes etc. and also it records how many sets you've done that day, the average for the week, average since you started etc. It kind of drives you on.

I have also bought the Aquaflex Pelvic Floor thing - this http://www.neenpelvichealth.com/professionals/products/aquaflex-r/?gclid=CLPl8qLplbQCFQzKtAod-jYAKw

Which was the top rated option on Embarrassing Bodies. I find it tricky to use every day as you have to stand

up for 20 minutes and there never seems to be a good time in the day for me to do this. But it does mean I can

test my strength and understand where I am (about midway at the moment). Maybe I will manage to use it more over

Christmas to support what I am doing with the App.

I wanted to share this as I really doubted I could improve the situation myself, but thanks to others posting on here I was inspired to try, and I am in a much better place as a result. Thanks guys.

:-)

[srisky]

That's brilliant news and thank you for being brave enough to share in the first place. I think the majority of us at some point (either after first baby or subsequent ones) will find the information useful!

[supergolden88]

Thanks for the update sounds very promising. I have been neglecting (completely) my exercises and am paying the price for it. Thanks for posting the app suggestion am getting it now and hopefully it will motivate me!