Pregnancy, labor, and delivery greatly affect the pelvic floor muscles, and our birth prep services using pelvic floor therapy can bring you confidence, strength, and flexibility.

What are the pelvic floor muscles?

The pelvic floor muscles are a group of muscles inside the pelvis that form a hammock connecting the pubic bone to the tailbone. Both men and women have pelvic floor muscles. These muscles play an important part in stabilizing the pelvis and spine, supporting your organs (bowel, bladder and uterus) and toileting.

The Pelvic Floor and Pregnancy

During pregnancy the pelvic floor muscles are working overtime trying to stabilize and support the growing body of the mother and child. Read our previous blog post about preparing the pelvic floor for childbirth. During a vaginal childbirth, these muscles will utilize their strength and flexibility to help the baby be birthed. Whether or not the baby is born via C-Section or vaginally, the pelvic floor is involved, and this is where our birth prep services come into play.

A recent study connects anxiety, urinary incontinence and depression in women

What is urinary incontinence?

Urinary incontinence refers to the loss of urine, out of your control. There is actually more than one kind of urinary incontinence: the two most common types of urinary incontinence that affect women are stress incontinence and urge incontinence (also called overactive bladder, or OAB).

• Stress Incontinence: urine leaking with physical activity - sneezing, coughing, laughing, lifting, pushing/pulling, jumping.
• Urge Incontinence: urine leakage that is coupled with urgency to go- leaking while you’re in line for the toilet, leaking/urgency when you’re parking your car in the driveway, putting the key in the door, fumbling with your pants, etc.
• Mixed UI: a combination of stress and urge symptoms