Did you hear the one about the woman with incontinence who just went with the flow? OK, not a very funny joke, but with some issues it does help to break the ice a little bit first.
After all, incontinence is not exactly the sort of subject you’ll natter about with your friends in Costa’s.
That’s not to say it isn’t an issue that many suffer from, especially given the physical toll that pregnancy and childbirth takes on you and your pelvic floor.
It’s difficult to pinpoint exact numbers, but the NHS reckons somewhere between 3 and 6 million people suffer from some degree of urinary incontinence.
Although many will suffer as a result of old age, up to a third of new mums will discover they have some form of incontinence problem in the weeks and months after giving birth. It’s completely normal and, as we’ll discover, very treatable.
Why does childbirth cause incontinence?
When we get pregnant, the outward changes to the body are pretty obvious. What’s less clear are the changes to the pelvic floor muscles and nerves.
But a common side-effect of these changes is that women can experience some level of incontinence. Now, incontinence is a pretty big and serious-sounding word. Actually, it means everything from a bit of wee that can escape during a particularly raucous laugh to the sudden urge to make a quick dash to the nearest facilities.
In more serious and rare cases, such as after a major tear during childbirth, women can suffer from faecal incontinence.
What can you do about it?
The good news is that you don’t have to just accept incontinence and get on with it. It can be easy for women to forget about their own needs after baby arrives and just concentrate on their newborn, but you don’t have to just grin and bear it.
In fact, in France women don’t even get to choose. Every single woman who goes through childbirth is prescribed a series of pelvic floor strengthening sessions, paid for by the government.
Such a system doesn’t exist in the UK unfortunately, but that’s no reason why you shouldn’t take the matter into your own hands and give your pelvic floor muscles a bit of love and care.
Pelvic floor exercises with Neen
Your pelvic floor is an area of muscles, ligaments and tissues that supports your bladder, bowel and uterus. If your floor weakens, it’s harder for you to squeeze the muscles that normally stop wee escaping.
Strengthening these takes a few minutes each day and a bit of dedication to stick at it for a few weeks, but the exercises themselves are pretty straightforward.
Breathe in and as you breathe out, pull up and in as though you were trying to stop a wee or a bit of wind escaping. Hold the squeeze for up to 10 seconds while breathing normally. Relax for another 10 seconds, and then repeat 10 times, for three times a day.
It’s that simple – and yet it’s not. Unless you’re exercising the right area, all your efforts could be a waste of time.
Neen have come up with two products that can really help to make sure you’re doing the right thing. The Educator is a visual aid that reassures you that you’re contracting the muscles correctly, while the Aquaflex is a pelvic floor toner to accompany the exercises.
For more information about Neen’s range of products designed specifically to strengthen the pelvic floor muscles, visit www.neenpelvichealth.com.
there are a lot of people who suffer from this, My Mother was one of them and that was a while ago , I have notices that there are also a lot of new products on the market that can help with these exercises . If it is more extreme then there are products out there that can help you live a normal life.
Hi, this was a great post with some very good information. My name is Andrea and i used to really suffer with incontinence (post natal) i was using incontinence pads and to be fair they worked pretty well but i still had the social discomfort, yes these worked well but what made a difference was doing pelvic floor exercises at a Pilates class, i can not emphasize on how brilliant it was to attend a class with people who suffered the same issues who all had positive results.