A story about my beautiful, loving, and pregnant wife. She has just entered her third trimester, and has been doing a great job exercising, strengthening, and keeping a healthy diet. Which, when she experienced urinary leakage, was quite surprising.
We decided to go for a nice walk through Nehantic State Forest for a change of pace. The trees and forest scenery were wonderful. There were new sounds, but lots of bugs. There were even owls hooting to each other.
At some point my girls wanted to race and everyone started to run. It was pretty fun, even my old dog got into it, loping beside us.
No issue at all, a bit out of breath but a nice race. Further down the road, they wanted to race again, so we did. This time, my wife tried to talk while she was running, and abruptly stopped short with wide eyes. “I think I just peed.”
What an unexpected occurrence. She has jogged a few times a week on the Niantic Boardwalk for the last few months with no issue. What had changed about this time? The answer is, a different stress to the body.
By simply trying to talk, she significantly increased her abdominal pressure while also adding the pressure of running, placing an even greater stress on the pelvic floor muscles. In this situation, the muscles weren’t up to the task. Or conversely, when she was exhaling to talk, she allowed her pelvic floor muscles to relax too much. Either way, this is a classic example of stress incontinence.
PRESSURE!
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This is a great time to work on neuromuscular training (training the muscle pathways to work when you want them to). Remembering to "check in" or be mindful with the muscles is key to keeping things nice and dry. I recommended to try and walk and talk first to see if the stress incontinence happens again, and slowly build up to trying to jog again. A good exercise specific to this issue is to manage a Kegel exercise (drawing those muscles up and in) when increasing the gait speed. Equally important is to only use enough force in the pelvic floor muscles that you need, and try to relax, or down regulate the muscles when you don't need to counter a greater force such as jogging. Always remember we want a nice long, relaxed, but strong muscle to avoid pain and dysfunction.
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We both had a little laugh and I said, how could we let this happen. There is no issue at all though. We know pregnancy changes the body, and each pregnancy is unique. These things do happen, and quite frequently. Just like I am there to help my wife, I will help you through it as well.
---- Yes I received permission and support to write about this. (Thanks Berit)
The more open we are, the healthier we become.
Rob
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