What are the pelvic floor muscles? Quite often when you are pregnant, you are told to do pelvic floor exercises but no-one really tells you what they are and why it’s important. So hopefully this blog will help you to understand this.
What are the pelvic floor muscles?
The pelvic floor muscles act as a hammock to cradle and support the uterus, bladder, bowel and other pelvic organs. They form a ‘figure of eight’ around the urethra, vagina and anus. Below is an image of this to make it easier to understand.
Throughout pregnancy, the uterus grows and the pelvic floor muscles have to support this extra weight. This can weaken them and lead to pelvic floor dysfunction. This can lead to leaking of urine, constipation, haemorrhoids and occasionally prolapse.
During labour and delivery, the pelvic floor muscles relax so the baby can be delivered. Relaxin (as mentioned in a previous post) does help to relax the pelvic floor but an enormous amount of stretching is still required. Having a strong pelvic floor will help to turn the baby and push it out.
Therefore it is important to strengthen these muscles throughout pregnancy and after birth to make sure they stay strong, so that they work properly during pregnancy, birth and beyond.
What exercise can I do?
Pelvic floor exercises are often referred to as ‘Kegel’ exercises. So how do you do these?
Basically you want to tighten the pelvic floor muscles. So the best way to think about this is to contract the muscles you would use to stop urinating if you were half way through and the doorbell went (and you wanted to go and get it straight away). Or if you were surrounded by people and needed to pass wind but didn’t want too, you would contract all the muscles in the pelvic region to stop it.
How often should I do them?
When you are pregnant, you want to do about 5 sets a day. This will consist of 1 contraction for about a 10s hold and then 10 quick, short, sharp contractions.
I found it easy to do these whilst travelling too or from work. Or just before going to bed; I set a reminder on my phone as until it was habit, it was easy to forget to do these!
After you have given birth, it is still really important to do these. Generally 3 sets a day (in the same way) initially is great and overtime you can reduce it down to 1 set a day. After 2 years, I am still doing a set a day!
Of course doing other core and strength exercises will help to strengthen these muscles but the ‘Kegel’ exercise is one of the most important. So if you don’t do anything else, do these at least!
