PT and pee pee

This is another one of those blogs you might not want to read if you haven't yet had a child. Or maybe you do want to read it, because these are some of the things I wish I would have known!

Anyway, I will leave out some of the gory details to spare you and spare me the embarrassment. I have been having some issues with my pelvic floor ever since R was born. You may remember I have a fairly small pelvis, and he had a pretty big head. I suffered a third-degree tear and was pretty uncomfortable for awhile there. My poor muscles were stretched and shriveled. Whoever knew how important those were? I do now.

I had some issues with my bladder when I went running, and I kept hoping they would just go away. Finally, I sucked it up and told my ObGyn. She referred me to physical therapy. I was dreading it, but finally made the appointment. Better to take care of this now and minimize problems down the road.

I had my appointment Tuesday. It was not awful, but it was far from pleasant. There was a lot of probing and palpitating. I have pretty much lost all shame after having two babies and now this. After the basic probing, we moved on to the high tech exam. Again, I will spare you the details, but it involved a little mechanical thing which I squeezed and a computer measured the strength of the squeezes. Fun, huh? Now I have to practice at home and go in every week for her to measure my progress. I feel like she should at least buy me dinner.

In a related story, I have been doing crunches like crazy, trying in vain to flatten my belly. I still felt like I looked three or four months pregnant. My stomach muscles are still separated and rounded, which is pretty common during and after pregnancy. Then, I was reading the other night that if you do crunches and your stomach is pooching out during them, you can make that roundness permanent! No! I stopped my crunches immediately. As I read more, I learned that my weak pelvic floor muscles, my separated abs, and the lower back pain I had been feeling are probably all connected. So, now I am working on toning it all up and getting a little closer to how I used to be. But I fully understand now, after a baby your body is just never the same - inside or out.

--MM