Feeling deflated... (Pelvic floor)

I’m so, so sorry this happened to you. Slicing women’s vaginas open, removing babies from wombs like meat from a barbecue and pulling out a woman’s organs are all - in my opinion - violently abusive and always unnecessary as well as extremely dangerous. I’m not surprised you feel some damage has been done however our bodies are AMAZING. They are geared to heal and yours will do its absolute best. 6 weeks is still early days. Please take it easy as much as you can. In a month or two you could start incorporating a daily practice of pelvic floor exercises (not kegels) to support your healing. It might take longer than you want but God willing a year from now you will be in a very different place. I had a 100 hour labour and a hint of prolapse, everything was hanging low. It took months to feel back to how it was before which wasn’t a big deal but because I had never experienced it before I was worried and anxious that this was my new normal. It wasn’t. Sending you love

This sounds like you had such an awful experience and I’m so sorry. The emotional and physical impact of a vaginal birth is just not spoken enough about and I’m so sorry you’re feeling like this. After I had my baby girl I felt very similar to you. My baby was back to back and born sunny side up so I tore badly and had an episiotomy. I felt like everything down there felt strange and just not ”right.” I would highly recommend going to have a private Mummy MOT done as they specialise in helping mums post partum. It was the best £100 I spent. My healing took a long time but after 8-10 months I started to feel much more back to normal down there. It takes time but it does get better.

It sounds like I had a similar first birth to you, and similar problems afterwards. I'm not at all telling you to do nothing, but I will say things went back to normal for me within about 3 months and I honestly did nothing (other than rest and gentle yoga/pilates) to try and fix it. My point is 6 weeks is still very soon, give your body time. And if things don't feel better I would definitely reach out to your gp and ask for pelvic floor physio and gyne referral. x

I’m so so sorry you are going through this! My close friend is 68 and has all been through all of this and more after her births 41&43 years ago. She didn’t know what she was feeling wasn’t normal and never got help. I don’t want to scare you, but she lives with daily pain, urgency, frequency and the occasional accident. She unfortunately can’t always hold it and when she gets that gotta go urge, she’s gotta go now! But these things weren’t talked about 30/40 years ago and she thought it was normal. Until we became close and I told her it wasn’t. Anyways PLEASE get into pelvic PT right away if you can and feel free to reach out for some more specific advice if you need it (im also a women’s health nurse). Please don’t ever feel embarrassed to ask me literally ANYTHING 🫶🏼🫶🏼🫶🏼

@Sabrina omg girl I could not agree with you more. When my friend confided in me about her birth story (her youngest is now 41), I spent the whole time in tears with my legs, clenched shut because I could feel her pain. I basically had to reassure her that she wasn’t crazy and that I honestly believed that she was assaulted. So her extreme fear of anything gynaecological now, makes so so much sense. She has PTSD. What the doctor did to her and what he said to her would never ever fly in the delivery rooms that I’m in and the doctor should’ve been reported and his license taken away. 40 years later and she’s still having issues. We have come so far, yet still have so far to go in terms of how we treat birth and women’s health in general 😡

@Leah thank you for sharing this 🤎 absolutely - there is something very wrong going on on L&D wards even to this day. Not only are women leaving with physical and psychological harm done but they are trained to thank their abusers after having had their wishes ignored, being patronised, humiliated, violated and degraded.

@Lena thank you so much for your message, I will definitely have a look at the mummy MOT 🙏 just a question, is it 100£ for the assessment session only ? Are there follow up sessions with extra cost?

@Suzie thank you for your reply 🙏 Yes I'm trying to be patient, it's been 8 weeks now and I've not had my GP checkup yet ... They forgot about it but I'm now booked so hopefully gp will know what to advice.

@Leah thank you so much for your message. Honestly, all of you have been so helpful and really motivated me into getting help. I can't imagine what your friend went through... And unfortunately it seems like a lot of us have similar stories. It's just so sad that most think it's normal to suffer this much, that it's the price to pay as a woman. I'll not hesitate to message you 💖

OP - I paid £100 for initial assessment, which was almost an hour. She then gave me pelvic floor exercises and video links related to what I needed to work on. I didn’t need to go back as I felt the exercises she gave me were enough to feel an improvement but she said if I wanted to I was welcome to come back but guessing it would have been around the £100 mark for each follow up. I live in London though and everything is always more expensive here 🙈for me it was definitely worth the money though.

@Lena thanks you are a star ✨

@Lena what does Mummy MOT include please?

@Emma the one I went to it included a talking debrief about what happened during your birth (was basically an extra therapy session!), physical examination of any tears/episiotomy to check healing, assessment of pelvic floor/muscles, examination of stomach muscles. Then afterwards based on what she saw she gave me exercises of what to do to help the areas I needed to work on.