Often overlooked, pelvic floor care is an important part of prenatal and postpartum care.
If you have heard of pelvic floor care, you’ve likely heard about one exercise: kegels. Kegels are presented as the litmus test for pelvic floor health; if you can kegel (maybe to a specific beat someone is presenting on TikTok), you passed!
But Mary Sadler, pelvic floor therapist, has more to say:
“Kegels are not the answer. There’s so much more to it than just that, and the research shows 75% of women who are verbally instructed how to do a kegel do it wrong. So 7 out of 10 women who are told to ‘act like they’re stopping their flow of urine’ would do it wrong in a way that causes more harm than good.”
Reality check: your pelvic floor is not some nebulous muscle sitting in your pelvis; it’s a group of muscles working together.
“There’s actually 28 pelvic floor muscles—14 on each side. So, your pelvic floor muscles come in right and left sides. Your vagina is like a circle column that is a muscle, so it’s like a support column in the middle of the pelvis. But pelvic floor muscle-wise there’s 28, which most people are shocked to find out.”
Ready to learn more? Hear from Mary in this episode of Pregnancy Has Entered the Chat:
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