Many women, while excited about meeting their baby, can be nervous about the actual birth event. Pelvic floor physical and occupational therapists can be helpful during pregnancy for birth preparation in order to reduce severe perineal tearing and prolonged pushing stages. We also educate our patients how to put less strain on the pelvic floor muscles during birth that could potentially lead to pelvic floor issues and pelvic organ prolapse.
While the hospitals and birthing centers often offer birthing classes, they typically don’t cover pelvic floor education, which is why pelvic floor PTs and OTs are uniquely qualified to cover this crucial aspect to birthing education.
Here are 4 ways pelvic therapists can help you have an easier birthing experience:
Reason #1 - Connecting to your pelvic floor
Oftentimes, we don’t have great awareness or connection to our pelvic floors. A lot of people might be able to tighten their pelvic floors by doing a kegel, but do they know how to relax and lengthen their pelvic floors? This lack of awareness isn’t necessarily a bad thing, since the pelvic floor has a lot of automatic function which is nice since we don’t have to think about or pelvic floors constantly. However, for birth, we do want to have control over our pelvic floor muscles in order to make sure that the baby is coming out of the vaginal canal smoothly and not getting stuck at the pelvic floor muscles.
Reason #2 - Is your pelvic floor too tight
Most pregnant patients I work with have pelvic floor muscles that are too tight. This is especially true if they have not had a prior vaginal birth. We are often told by our mothers and grandmothers to make sure we are doing our Kegels when we are pregnant so we heal quicker after giving birth. However, most of the time, we need to be learning how to relax our pelvic floor, not tighten it. In pelvic floor therapy, we assess our patient’s pelvic floor muscles and educate them on what they need to do to help relax the pelvic floor so their birth will not be slowed down by tight pelvic floor muscles.
Reason #3 - Learn to Push
Our uterus pushes our pelvic babies out, not our pelvic floor muscles. We actually want our pelvic floor muscles to get out of the way and not tighten during birth. If they tighten during birth, it can prevent the baby from coming out and stall labor. In pelvic floor therapy, we teach our patients how to use their breath and lengthen their pelvic floor muscles so they can push their baby out effectively and reduce more severe tearing with birth. Prolonged pushing can occur when the pelvic floor muscles are not coordinating properly with the push and are actually tightening up versus lengthening. We spend quite a bit of time with our patients making sure they know how it feels to have their pelvic floor muscles lengthened at the right time to ensure their pelvic floors won’t be the thing slowing down their birth.
Reason #4 - Birthing Positions
We educate our pregnant patients about the many different positions they can consider for their birth that best opens up the pelvis and help with a smoother birth. We educate them on positioning that will work best for them personally and which ones are shown to help with different problems that may arise during their birth. All the while, we are teaching and encouraging our patients to listen to their bodies and move into positions that feel the most comfortable and intuitive.
Our goal with working on birth preparation with our pregnant patients is to teach them how they can confidently connect to their pelvic floor and know exactly what to do when it comes to the pushing stage of their birth.
If you have questions about our birth prep services, give us a call at 505-506-6943 or contact us here.
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