By Kimberly Johnson
Rant alert.
Each week women come into my office with a troubling problem that their doctor, midwife or even physical therapist has told them is normal.
I am here to tell you that:
Wetting your pants is not normal. Ever. Not if you just had a baby. Not if you are doing Crossfit. Not if you are walking on the beach. Not if you sneeze. Not if you are pregnant. If you are wetting your pants, there could be a few causes. The main ones are each that your pelvic floor muscles are too strong and tight or too weak and lax.
“Urinary incontinence”, the technical term for “leaking” or “wetting your pants”, is common however. You don’t need to panic or feel bad. Many women experience less bladder control during pregnancy and birth. It is not a life sentence or an inevitability.
Seeing your organs from your vaginal opening is not normal. If, in any position, you can see your cervix, your bladder or bulging from your rectum into your vaginal opening, this is not normal. If you have to manually push your organs back up and in, that’s also not normal.
These are all signs of organ prolapse. Unfortunately, because many doctors don’t know what to do about organ prolapse, they tell many women that it is normal. Many women avoid sex, feel unsettled and sad about the state of their lady bits, and generally confused by the disconnect by what they are feeling and what their health care provider is reflecting back to them. It doesn’t have to be that way.
Pain during sex or avoiding sex is also not normal. Total aversion towards sex, pain upon penetration, or pain internally is not normal. “Low libido” is a term that seems to define a fixed thing, but actually refers to a whole combination of factors that could contribute to feeling what you might throw into the category of “low libido”.
All of these are common. There are many reasons you may experience pain during sex, including lack of lubrication (nursing requires a lot of moistening), lack of sufficient arousal time, lack of emotional connection, scar tissue that burns or is pulling the pelvic muscle tissue in different directions. “Low libido” is a term that seems to define a fixed thing, but actually refers to a whole combination of factors that could contribute to feeling what you might throw into the category of “low libido”. Aversion towards sex may be the visceral fear of returning to the area that had to completely reshape, resounding echoes of birth trauma, a changed view of what you want out of sex and relationship currently or physical birth injury that affects your relationship to your body.
If we see them as normal, that basically infers that we need to suck it up and live with it. When we understand that it is common, but not at all optimal functionally, we can do something about it!
The main reason to understand that these things are common but not normal is so that you can GET SOME HELP. If we see them as normal, that basically infers that we need to suck it up and live with it. When we understand that it is common, but not at all optimal functionally, we can do something about it!
SO, what can you do about it?
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