Well hello, and welcome to wait six with Vic. We're here with our pelvis again. So you're nearly there, you're seeing the runners down the road, you're thinking, I really want to be one of them. But that's here to tell you. Not quite yet. So we thought that we would break down the inner workings of your pelvis with a bit more detail now that it's healed a bit, you can probably isolate the muscles a little bit more.

So that's gonna run through a bit more on the pelvic floor and how it works. Thanks Donna. So the pelvis and it's worthwhile because often we think about the pelvic floor but not really have any idea of what it actually looks like. So this is your pelvis is brought up here where we often think of putting our hands on our hips. This is the pubic symphysis the area That might be sort of France during your pregnancy. around the back is the sacrum and the sacral ligament area, which again my throat sore through pregnancy, the spine, the coxy.

And then if we turn the pelvis this way, we have the pelvic floor and it is in fact, the floor of the pelvis makes sense. We have the openings. So, we do away the urethra, the vagina, the anus, and we have all these awesome muscles interconnecting everything that go from the pubic bone to the toxic bone out to the sitting bones, and everywhere in between. If we take that outer layer, we have a deeper layer so there's actually two layers of muscles. So this is superficial layer and a deeper layer. And you will notice here So again, this is our anus here.

There's a lovely big gap in these muscles. And that gap vagina comes through. that gap gets wider The size of your baby's head. Okay, so it's quite, it gets stretched and strain quite a lot. So hopefully it does, there's a bit of appreciation for how stressed that tissue becomes, if you think about your hamstrings, and you can do a hamstring stretch or putting your legs right up in the fat, nine degrees from the ground, you're getting a little bit of a pool. And then you take it back over your head.

And just think about how that might feel. Now we have hormones kicking in, so it's not quite like that. But it's that science sort of striking to the tissue that needs some repair. Isn't that awesome? That's awesome. That's awesome.

The body is designed to do that. Okay, it is designed to do it, but we have to respect it and give it the time it needs to recover afterwards. And that's why you shouldn't be running just yet. That's wrong. So by six weeks, all going well. You can feel your pelvic floor you can contract your pelvic floor you can relax and the relaxing component is really important.

Postnatal We always talk about the squeezing, but you have to be able to let it go. And we see lots of girls who actually have lost the ability to relax that which is really quite interesting, I think. So both those things are important, you should be able to tractor and relax. That's right. You shouldn't have any leaking at this stage. So cough, sneeze, it should be okay.

But most of the daily activities, okay, you should be able to hold when hold on for a brief period of time when you need to do away or approve or apart. Mm hmm. There shouldn't be any issue. So but it should be better than it was at week three, but the whole minds going through your body still. And it may still be quite tricky. And don't be alarmed if that is the case, but you need to respect it.

So if at this time say, you know, we, you felt that you didn't have a lot of strength in that area or you're a bit confused about your pelvic floor exercises. Or, you know, you just lost that sensation from time to time. Is it a good time to say see, yeah, that's right. So yeah, if you really you don't I just not sure I'm really not sure you can speak obstetricians, you can speak to your midwife or you can come and see us comments and women's health physios. And to have those pelvic floor muscles assessed by then there's some healing occurred, it hasn't fully occurred yet. So we do understand that you're not quite back at your full strength, but if you're not sure, come and see us.

And that's where you're gonna get that expert knowledge from. So were you talking about the hormones a minute ago? So, um, which hormones is it that's playing? Well, there's, there's a few there's the lower levels of estrogen for status. So easterns really important for muscle development. Yeah, it's the lubrication and tissues as well.

So without that, particularly the fact that your muscles don't get as strong as easily and at the same time you're trying to strengthen the muscle, it can take a lot longer. So that's one of the main ones and the other one is the relaxing and relaxing makes everything as you've probably heard through your pregnancy and know from your pregnancy, everything a little bit sloppier so your ligaments are a bit sloppy, your joints are a little bit sloppier. And and your tissues just Feel not as taut as perhaps they they were. How long does that take before it's gone? Oh, decrease. Yeah, well, it did.

It decreases gradually but it can take months you know, we're up to that sort of that five to six months postnatal Hmm. And so keeping that in mind if you have got the sloppier joints, and we're not talking about joints to the moving excessively, just not as strong as they were yet we want to be really respectful in the amount of impact of activities we are doing in those first, those early months postnatal, and not so new moms at six weeks are keen to get out and about some other moms. So, you know, they're up to walking 2530 minutes easily feeling comfortable, very comfy. They're like this is good, Prime's getting heavier because the baby's getting bigger. But what other exercises should they be starting to look at? Yeah, so continuing on with their pelvic floor exercises.

So by now they should hopefully be able to contract and hold the pelvic floor while they breathe. And hopefully spend several breaths three weeks Be nice and be able to do that over and over again. So that's the first thing. Hopefully they can protect their pelvic floor in lying down and sitting and maybe settle hopefully standing there walking more. They're doing what to their upper back exercises they've been doing all the way through the postnatal. And now they're starting to think about getting into some gentle exercise.

Now the lock here is finished or finished up, then we can get back into the pool and do some some gentle swimming and that's not smashing yourself yet. By doing hundred laps or anything like that, it's just getting in there and moving. We can start thinking of the hydrotherapy type of classes again. So again, exercises support the joints, and we can think about posting answers to the exercise classes run by preferably by physiotherapist. Our postnatal boot camps are just not appropriate in those early months because of the strain on the joints and because these muscles aren't ready and it will exhaust you. Yes.

And we really again being kind to ourselves and building up slowly investing. That's good. And there's always time you know, Everything is fine. Mm hmm. took nine months to stretch out, it's not going to be stretched back in all tucked away six weeks. So, you know, the expectations that you see in the media are not realistic and you know, many new moms feel under pressure with that and that's why they're trying to get back into better off and the marketing of like, oh, Lucy baby weight and you think oh, yeah, the baby wipes there for reasons.

We're looking after ourselves looking after our babies and, and we can't fight nature. We've not worked with it. And the gentler we are ourselves, the better we will feel the better our babies will feel. And try to surround your people yourself with people that share those views really does go a long way. So again, those specific classes that are designed for postnatal women in a safe environment so that mothers can get together and they can chat, but they can't so they can check safely and openly and and have good advice. Yes, so making those good networks is very important.

Rather than hearing about the newest fad on the market, stay away from it, which is probably not any of those things you said being kind to yourself being realistic or supporting you as you transition to a new amazing mum. So you want to be realistic with what your body can do after this baby realistic of the exercise level that you can have and realistic of what your pelvic floor can handle because you only get one. You don't want to mess it up. Thank you back. I found it very enjoyable to hear such intricacies with these muscles. And lots more about how the body recovers after a baby.

Thanks for having me, john. It's been great. Thank you.