Peeing your pants after baby
Have you ever googled something like “peeing my pants after childbirth”? If so, you are not alone!
Did you know about 33% of women experience incontinence after having a baby? According to a 2010 research study, 33% of women reported experiencing incontinence during the first 3 months postpartum. Most of these women did not experience daily incontinence, and most only experienced occasional leaking.
Even if your leaking is only occasional, it should not be happening. Incontinence after childbirth is common, but it is not normal, and it should not be something you just live with.
Urinary incontinence after childbirth is more common than fecal incontinence, but that happens too. We will save that topic for another day.
Peeing your pants is not something you should be embarrassed about. It can be awkward to talk about, but there are resources out there to help you! Pelvic floor physical therapy is one such resource. We take a comprehensive look to see why the leakage may be happening and then address what we find.
Incontinence after childbirth is something that many women laugh about with their friends. While it may seem funny to joke about, it gets less funny with time. It is no fun to wonder if you are going to pee your pants the next time you laugh too hard, sneeze, or cough. Do you wear a pad to the gym in case you leak when you jump, run, or lift heavy? If so, we can help!
Incontinence after childbirth can occur for a few reasons. First of all, the pelvic floor muscles undergo a lot of stress and changes during pregnancy and delivery. If these muscles get “stretched out” or weak, you can leak because these muscles aren’t able to contract quickly enough or strongly enough to withstand the internal pressure of whatever activity you are trying to perform (running, jumping, sneezing, etc).
Another reason you may leak is the exact opposite - a tight or tense pelvic floor. When the muscles are too tight and overworked, they are not able to contract efficiently because they are in a constant state of contraction. This would be similar to squeezing your fist all day and then at the end of the day, you were asked to squeeze your fist tighter. You would not be able to squeeze any tighter than you already were squeezing. This is the same with the pelvic floor muscles. If you ask them to contract when they are already contracting, they don’t have much length left to contract. This usually means there is work to do elsewhere in the body to help the pelvic floor muscles out!
If you have an unhealed diastasis recti, or ab separation, you may also experience urinary incontinence after childbirth. This is because there is a “pressure leak” in your core. You can think of your core as a pressure system, like a can of pop. Your diaphragm (main breathing muscle) is on top, the abdominal muscles on the sides, and the pelvic floor on the bottom.
If there is a leak in the system, such as a diastasis recti, the system lets out pressure, similar to when you open that can of pop. It is no longer a sealed system and leaks pop out if you squeeze it. Are you getting my drift?
If your core muscles are not working optimally, then your pelvic floor can’t work optimally either. This means that you may experience weakness in your pelvic floor simply because there is still a gap in your abdominals. It is not always easy, but working to heal the diastasis usually helps with symptoms of leaking.
If you are experiencing any degree of leaking, even occasionally, reach out to see how we can help! 612-568-2462
Remember, no amount of leaking is normal and you don’t have to live like that, even if you have had 5 kids, and even if you had kids 10 years ago.