Bladder leakage can be very common after having a baby, but the one thing that I like my patients to understand when we're in the office is that it's common, it's not normal. And I think if we talk to our friends, and we talk to our moms, and we talked to our grandmas, and you've had a baby, it's just sort of expected that you're going to have leakage, and it is common, but it's not normal.
And there's a lot of things you can do from a conservative standpoint to deal with urinary incontinence of any kind. Whether it's stress incontinence, or urgency, or urge incontinence. When you're considering improving urinary leakage symptoms after having a baby, the first thing that you'll find if you go do any kind of research is you know looking at pelvic floor strengthening, or what is otherwise known as Kegels.
The important thing to realize when you're about to start doing Kegels is to really think about, "Am I doing this Kegel properly? Am I doing this pelvic floor contraction properly?" It's important that you're fully contracting, followed by fully relaxing.
That's a healthy, coordinated muscle. We really want that muscle to always come back down to its healthy, resting tone. And if we're really focused on just tightening the pelvic floor, or just simply strengthening the pelvic floor, which is what you'll see a lot out on the internet, you might miss the boat a little bit.
What we're really wanting to do is make that pelvic floor muscle more coordinated. So looking at pelvic floor contractions from a correct standpoint; looking at full contraction followed by a full relaxation.
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