by Samantha Montpetit-Huynh
What no mom wants to talk about, never mind admit… You know what I’m talking about – down there.
Your Vajayjay, V-J, vagina or on a whole, your pelvic floor.
The “special place” that most moms don’t talk about especially after they have had kids. And really, there usually isn’t a need until something goes wrong and then they may talk to their doctor but that’s usually once it becomes a real problem.
So why is that? Well I guess the obvious. It’s not like you’re going to start chatting about your privates with the neighbour while you’re own cutting the lawn.
But more so, it’s just something we have been taught not to discuss. And I bet if you asked your mother, she would say “sure, I leak or wear a pad” but I had three kids. So???
It has becoming increasingly disturbing to me the amount of women that have incontinence. Whether it’s just spurts when they cough or sneeze, not being able to hold their urine when they have to go badly or wearing a pad to workout, it’s a lot more common than you think. What a shame when you have young children but can’t run after them without being prepared.
The average age of my clients are in their mid-thirties and approximately 70% of them have some degree of pelvic floor weakness and as much as they think it’s “normal” after having kids, it’s not normal. All you have to do is ask yourself: “If I am having an issue now, what’s going to happen once I hit fifty?” This is when Depends starts to make all their money.
But you can fix it or certainly slow down the process and I am going to approach it from a personal trainer’s point of view. The biggest error people make is forgetting that the pelvic floor muscles are like every other muscle in your body. So in other words, if you don’t use it, you lose it!
Never mind that, combine that with the strain of pregnancy and delivery and it’s a whole new machine all together. Take this and add the fact that as we age, we lose muscle and tone and the only obvious way to counteract this would be strength training. i.e. Kegels!
However sometimes standard Kegels are not enough. Once you start an exercise program, any exercise program, you are eventually going to plateau. Same goes “down there”. At some point you must increase the resistance or change up the program to get your muscles to respond again and perform better.
This is why there are products that help you kick it up a notch when it comes to strengthening these muscles and did you know that there are even pelvic floor physiotherapists out there? Like I said, it’s way more common than you may think.
So think about this the next time you’re sitting around at your computer. Why not start right NOW and do some Kegels? You’re in control of what the future holds. Do you want to run and play with your kids, start running or just wear pads every day of the week? It’s up to you.
Samantha Montpetit-Huynh is the mother of two beautiful girls and the founder of Core Expectations, Toronto’s only full services wellness team that delivers personal training, abdominal rehabilitation and other support services to the homes and offices of pregnant women and new moms across the GTA. For more information, you can reach her at info@coreexpectations.com
