Understanding how pregnancy, childbirth, and postpartum changes impact your pelvic floor and core muscles can help you appreciate why things might not be working as smoothly as before. It’s a reminder to be patient and kind to yourself as your body goes through this incredible healing journey.
Pregnancy Changes and Your Pelvic Floor
So, what’s really going on down there during pregnancy? Many changes are having with postural shifts, joint laxity, abdominal muscles stretching, organs shifting, and heart and lung changes occurring. Growing a human is not an easy task and our body must shift and change to now support another life on top of our own. So let’s chat about what changes to expect and how that can affect our body.
Posture and Center of Gravity: As your baby grows, your body naturally adjusts to keep you balanced. Your posture changes as your pelvis widens, rib cage expands, and your center of gravity shifts forward and up. These adjustments are crucial for supporting your pregnancy, but they can also make your pelvic floor muscles work a bit harder to keep up.
Abdominal Muscles and Organ Shifts: Meanwhile, your abdominal muscles stretch out and separate, making room for your little one. This can make it harder to feel connected with your core muscles and disrupt the natural teamwork between your pelvic floor muscles and your body’s stability. Your organs even get pushed around—hello, intestines in your rib cage! This shuffling can affect your breathing and throw off the natural rhythm between your diaphragm and pelvic floor muscles.
Increased Blood Flow and GI Changes: And let’s not forget the increase in blood volume—by 40-60%! That’s a lot more blood for your pelvic floor to manage, along with supporting the extra weight that naturally occurs with growing a baby. Plus, the influx of pregnancy hormones can slow down your digestion, leading to constipation, which adds even more pressure on your pelvic floor muscles.
Learning this can help encourage us to be more cognizant about how and when to properly activate our pelvic floor and core muscles. Learning how to properly strengthen our pelvic floor muscles and activate our core muscles through these changes is key in prevention of pelvic floor issues later on down the line.
What Happens During Birth?
Whether you have a vaginal or cesarean birth, your pelvic floor and core muscles are put to the test. Pushing during a vaginal birth not only makes for expansion of our pelvic floor muscles 150-300% their normal stretching capacity, but it also places strain on our abdominal muscles during pushing. With a c-section we are looking at incisions into our abdominal wall and that recovery process. If we had an unplanned c-section and had to push prior we are dealing with more recovery and have to give ourselves grace and time with not rushing or expecting our pelvic floor and core muscles to be back to their strongest state too quickly. Learning how our pelvic floor and core muscles are impacted during both of these types of birth is critical in understanding why recovery may take some time.
Vaginal Birth: During a vaginal birth, your pelvic floor muscles do a lot of stretching and may even tear, which can affect how well they function afterward. If you experience perineal tearing, it can lead to tightness, sensitivity, and pulling in the pelvic floor area, which might cause discomfort or even pain. Perineal scar tissue can cause pulling on the fascia that connects into your core muscles too, this along with the stretching of these muscles during pregnancy make it more difficult to activate your core muscles in the first 2-3 months postpartum.
Cesarean Birth: Even with a C-section, your pelvic floor isn’t off the hook. The changes from pregnancy and the scar tissue from surgery can impact the fascia that connects to your pelvic floor muscles. Not only that, but the fascia connecting your abdominal muscles has been cut into and separated which can cause scar tissue and pulling at your abdominal muscles. This can cause pain and difficulty with activating these muscles. This scar tissue can and will heal, but allowing for proper healing and working on scar mobility and desensitization once you’re cleared medically to do so is crucial in recovery.
Postpartum Changes
The changes don’t stop once your baby arrives. Hormones changes, lack of physical activity through pregnancy and/ or postpartum, and adjusting uterus size is going to impact our recovery postpartum. Then add in lack of sleep with the natural stresses of having a baby and it just shows how we must give ourselves time and patience to fully recover.
Hormonal and Physical Adjustments: Postpartum recovery involves a whole mix of hormonal, postural, and physical adjustments as your body transitions from being pregnant. With breast feeding you are still at risk for more laxity within your soft tissue and this can cause instability within your pelvis and difficulty with engaging your muscles around your pelvis in the most optimal way.
De-conditioning: After childbirth, it’s common to feel a bit out of shape, especially if your exercise routine took a back seat during the last trimester. This overall weakness includes your whole body, but your pelvic floor and core muscles went through extreme changes during pregnancy and may need some extra love to get back to their best.
Shifting Internal Organs: As your uterus shrinks, your internal organs have to find their new home. This shifting can cause your pelvic floor muscles to feel pressure, discomfort, or even a sense of heaviness or bulging.
So how do we move forward and heal?
Ready to take the first step? Join our 6-week Early Postpartum Rehab Program today and start your journey towards regaining strength and coordination. Let’s empower your postpartum recovery together!
