Hi Melissa my Belly Buddy (and hi to you too Belfie and you too Kel),
I've been meaning to reply to this thread for aaaaages. Actually I've been meaning to write up this story as a thread of its own for aaaaaaages (but it's been a very busy week).
This is my pelvic floor story so far...
I am lucky enough to have an Uncle who is a top back surgeon and likes to ask people, "so how's your back" as a standard greeting. At a family gathering, when DS was about 10 or so months old, I made an off-the-cuff reply "Oh yeah, a bit of dull lower back pain, but doesn't everyone have that?". I actually really did think that everyone has lower back pain, I certainly didn't think that it was anything unusual or anything to worry about, just something that you have to live with when you have little ones to lift all the time.
Well anyway, DU checked me out and said everything was structurally fine so there was nothing that he could do (as a back surgeon) to help me. He said that my problems were all muscular, that I had no core strength and that I was using all my propping-up muscles for lifting, which they are not designed for, hence the pain. He gave me a referral to a physio who he works with.
So, I go to see this physio. He whips out a little ultrasound machine and goes straight to my pelvic floor muscles to check them out. He says, "yep, they're stuffed and you're well down a path of compensation" (where other muscles try to take over the roll of the pelvic floor, but don't really do a very good job because they're not designed for it). He said, "I'm surprised you're not incontinent and you're well on the way to a prolapse". Well I was amazed to say the least. I had absolutely no idea that a little bit of back pain could indicate that! And all this as a result of carrying a baby inside for 9 months, and perhaps a genetic disposition for a weak pelvic floor.
He asked me if I was doing pelvic floor exercises and I embarrassedly said, "well I know I should be but no". He said, "no don't be embarrassed, that's actually good that you're not doing them because once your pelvic floor gets this weak, what you think is a pelvic floor exercise probably actually isn't, you're just exercising all the other muscles that have already taken over and you're not strengthening your pelvic floor at all".
So, he uses his little ultrasound machine to exactly design an exercise program for my pelvic floor muscles. He argues (passionately) that ultrasound is the only way you can treat weak pelvic floors, because you have to actually see what the muscles are doing, you can't describe to someone what to do and they can't describe back to you what they are doing, you have to see it. I was amazed at how subtle the difference between a proper pelvic floor exercise and a useless pelvic floor exercise (because I wasn't actually exercising my pelvic floor at all, just all the other compensatory muscles) was. There was no way I would have been able to tell the difference if there hadn't been an ultrasound machine there actually looking at the muscles and what they were doing and a physio coaching me. It was also really important to coordinate my breathing with my pelvic floor exercises, something else I never knew.
After my first visit the physio instructed me to do 50 to 80 sets of no more than three, one second each (one breath each), pelvic floor exercises a day. He showed me on the machine how when I did more than three in a row, or held for more than one second/breath, my pelvic floor got so week that it couldn't work at all and all the other muscles took over. I couldn't feel this at all, the only way that I knew that this was happening was, as I said, I was being shown on the ultrasound.
So I went back to see him about 6 times, sometimes the appointments were a week apart, sometimes they were more than three weeks. Each time the exercises would be different depending on where my pelvic floor was at. My back pain went after my first appointment. After my last appointment my physio said that my pelvic floor was working well and that I shouldn't have to do exercises anymore because it would work automatically. I was 9 weeks pregnant at the time and he said it would be well worth coming back for a check-up after bubs is born.
It was such a revelation to me the whole pelvic floor exercise experience. My DU was at pains to point out that this approach, using ultrasound to exactly design a pelvic floor exercise program, is not exactly widely accepted. He also said that the number of women my physio has saved from surgery, when it was seen as the only option by their ob/gyns, is astonishing and really speaks for itself.
Well anyway, last week it just ached down there and it feels like something is bulging. I could be a varicose vein or is could be my insides falling out??? Then this week I've been a bit sick with a shocking cough and when I cough sometimes I get a little bit of wee leaking. Yucko!!!! Needless to say I've made an appointment to see my lovely physio, I couldn't get in till Tuesday 2nd September. I'll keep you posted...
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