5 Benefits of Pelvic Floor Therapy During Pregnancy

Chances are, you’re reading this article because you’re currently pregnant or you’re planning to get pregnant, and you want to know how you can best care for your pelvic floor and core health during this incredibly special time of life. Whether this is your first baby or fifth, you want to best prepare your body for the marathon of pregnancy and birth. 

While your body can thrive in pregnancy and childbirth, it is inevitable that your body will experience changes that will impact your health. Things like genetics, lifestyle choices, or non-optimal movements all have an impact on how our pelvic floor and core muscles accommodate pregnancy and birth.

The good news is that there are factors in your control and support is available to help guide you through the process! I work with pregnant women to educate and treat in preventing the common dysfunctions that can come with pregnancy and childbirth, as well as prepare for childbirth and the postpartum period.

Today, I would like to discuss the benefits of pelvic floor therapy during pregnancy, and the abundant benefits you can gain from working with me. 

1.Preventative Care Rather Than Diagnostic Care

Pelvic floor therapy doesn’t have to happen only when you have a pelvic floor or core issue. Ideally, pelvic floor therapy happens as preventative care so you can avoid injury. 

In pelvic floor therapy during pregnancy, you will learn to move, breathe, and have a better bowel movement that works with your pelvic floor instead of against it. So if you’re wondering how to move or exercise in a healthy pregnancy or you want to decrease tearing during birth, pelvic floor therapy can help you with that. 

2. Learn to Manage Your Breath

The first thing you can do to optimize your pelvic health is through your breath. It almost sounds too simple, right? 

But there is a direct relationship between your breathing and your pelvic floor. Your breath has the ability to directly assist with lengthening your muscles, or as well as constrict them. Think for a moment; when you move throughout the day, do you breathe out and allow the muscles to lengthen and flex properly? Or do you hold your breath and prevent your core muscle's full range of motion?

When you bring awareness to your breath, you optimize your pelvic muscle performance. The most common complaints of pregnancy and childbirth include urinary incontinence, constipation, pelvic girdle pain, pain with sex, and pelvic organ prolapse. And all of these issues start with the management of our breath. 

Try this quick exercise: place your hands on your rib cage. Now take a deep breath in and expand your rib cage while allowing both your chest and belly to rise. Then slowly exhale. This is called a 360 breath.

Inhaling like this allows your pelvic floor muscles to relax and lengthen. Try to perform this breath which relaxes your pelvic floor muscles. This is just one of the techniques you will work on with your pelvic floor therapist.

3. Help With Movement With Your Growing Belly

With all the physical changes that are required to accommodate the growing baby inside you, you may have to modify your movement and exercise to help your body with these changes. Some changes, like clothing options and nutrition, you have control over. While some, like stretching skin and muscles, organ shifts, and hormones, you don't.

Your abdominal region will gradually expand throughout pregnancy, causing your abdominal muscles to become stretched and weakened. As a result, our posture begins to change and other specific muscles in our body begin to work overtime, causing aches and strains.

In addition, one hormone, relaxin, handles opening your pelvis to accommodate your growing baby. But this hormone can make the ligaments supporting our pelvis looser and can cause pubic symphysis pain or make you more susceptible to urinary leaking.

As all the changes come about, changing the way you move your body with exercise or simple everyday activities can also improve the integrity of your core and pelvic floor.

Pelvic floor therapy helps you to learn to work with your changing body instead of against it. Your therapist will help guide you with when to change your movement and exercise routine so you can continue to move your body in a way that is comfortable and beneficial.

4. A Guide for Labor and Birth 

A pelvic floor physical therapist or occupational therapist offers guidance on what movements and stretches help through pregnancy. They also come in handy for easier labor and birth.

Pelvic floor therapists have multiple techniques to help you find the most comfortable positions for labor. And they help you connect to your body so that you can assume the best position for pushing your baby out.

Speaking of pushing, closed throat, forced pushing that is most commonly utilized actually works against your pelvic floor. And it can result in increased possibilities for perineal tears. The same open-throat pushing you practice while going to the bathroom is the same pushing you should use when having a baby.

Learning how to push with an open throat while you relax your pelvic floor will help your pelvic muscles to open more efficiently and efficiently.

It all comes back to your breath! And when you work with a pelvic floor therapist, she is your guide to efficient and effective labor and birth.

5. Support for Postpartum Recovery 

Once you’ve gone through the marathon of labor, how can you help your body recover? The truth is you’ll never get your “prepregnancy body” back. You had a miracle come through your body but that doesn’t mean the recovery is a walk in the park.

There are traditions around the world that encourage mothers to rest and recover for 40 days after giving birth. The village takes care of her so her body can heal and she can feed and bond with her baby. We now live in a culture that tells us we need to get back to work, exercise and resume a “normal life” days or weeks after having a baby.

Most of us don’t generally live in small communities with a support system at our beck and call, so we have to create our own community of support. A pelvic floor therapist is an essential part of your healthcare team. She can help you with reconnecting your breath to your changed pelvic floor, when to resume exercise, and how to gracefully move into your new season. 

Just like you want someone to help with chores around the house, your pelvic floor physical therapist or occupational therapist can guide you through the physical postpartum recovery process.

Work With Calko Pelvic Rehabilitation & Wellness to Move Through Pregnancy, Birth and Postpartum With Ease and Comfort

With the internet at your fingertips, you might wonder why you should bring a pelvic floor therapist onto your pregnancy and birth team. Sure you can try to do the research and exercises on your own but there is something very different about trying something on your own for months on end vs. having a trusted partner in your healthcare journey who has helped other women in your spot many times before.

It’s one thing to say “release here, relax there” but to have guidance on where, when, and how to relax and bring awareness can make the difference between you struggling for months or finding healing in just a few sessions. 

When you choose to bring me onto your birth team you’ll get my 4 therapy sessions during your pregnancy journey, which walk you through the changes pregnancy brings, as well as how to have an efficient labor and birth, and then gracefully recover after.