The P word. Not for my favourite French swear word. P for Pelvic floor, or Périné in French although it doesn’t 100% translate to the same thing. But we are talking about the same area, the one that gets talked about (or should be talked about) a lot during and post pregnancy, the one that supports bladder, uterus, rectum and helps them function properly. And actually men should take good care of their pelvic floor muscles too as without them, no 6-pack possible!

So why is it so important to look after your pelvis in pregnancy, might ask the novices? Because your baby puts a lot of pressure on it in the womb and this simple equation may make things clearer:
Weak pelvic floor = poor support = leakage… So, you do not want a weak pelvic floor!

The emphasis put by healthcare professionals on the pelvic floor seems to vary according countries though:

• A trusty source in Mexico tells me that it is hardly ever mentioned!
• On the other side of the scale, in France every single woman gets prescribed a minimum of 10 sessions of perineal physiotherapy (whether 100% of women need 10 sessions is another question for another day…)
• Here in the UK, doing your “Kegel” (like holding a wee wee basically) and pelvic tilts exercises gets recommended at your antenatal classes. And once you’ve given birth, you get given a little booklet (cf. picture below) as you are discharged from hospital (which can be as quick as 6 hours after giving birth if all went well. But I digress, THAT can be for another post.). 

If you like running or doing “grands jetés” (big jumps) in ballet classes like me, you need to be even more careful with the holy P. Or you could suffer incontinence later on. Or organ prolapse. We don’t want that…

Runner’s world offers good advice on returning to running post pregnancy. I followed their routine here pretty much, except that I started with my walk/runs 8 weeks postpartum, not 6 weeks as I wanted to talk to my doctor first. And as much as I’d like to, I haven’t done 100 daily pelvic contractions and 30 pelvic tilts. I just forget. Yes one can do them anywhere but it’s distracting.  I aim for a third of that, let’s hope the 70-year-old me won’t regret not doing more!

Another interesting way of doing those exercises and join the useful to the pleasant is apparently to use “Geisha balls” as we call them in French. But as I looked for the correct English translation of Geisha balls, it seems that they are called “Ben-Wa balls” or…”Kegel Balls”. It all makes sense now! Feel free to comment below if you’ve tried and tested before I do so myself. 😉