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The Importance Of The Pelvic Floor Muscles
During Labor & Delivery
For women, understanding the importance of their pelvic floor muscles during labor and delivery is essential to help have a safe and positive childbirth experience. These muscles play an important role in the intensity, pain management, duration, and overall success of labor and delivery.
What Are The Pelvic Floor Muscles
Most people have heard of the pelvic floor muscles, but understanding what they are and how they work can be confusing. The pelvic floor muscles are a group of muscles that span the bottom area of your pelvis, connecting your tailbone to your pubic bone at the front. These important muscles help you with bladder and bowel control, sexual function, and childbirth.
Having your pelvic floor muscles in good condition is essential for a smooth and successful pregnancy and childbirth experience. When these muscles are strong, these muscles support the pelvic and abdominal region like a hammock. During labor, contraction of the pelvic floor makes it easier to push effectively.
The Role Of The Pelvic Floor During Labor
During labor and delivery, the pelvic floor muscles play an important role in helping the baby travel through the birth canal. It’s important to understand how to use it properly and take care of it before, during, and after labor. Your pelvic floor muscles are responsible for providing support and control to your uterus during labor contractions. They provide a cushioning effect that helps protect you from becoming too uncomfortable as you go through contractions. In addition, these muscles help coordinate the rhythm of your contractions in order to facilitate passage through the birth canal for your baby. These strong muscles also aid in pushing out the baby during delivery by providing strength and control to women who may need to push for long periods of time or multiple times. After childbirth, these amazing muscles help return the body back to its pre-pregnancy shape and condition.
As you approach your due date, it’s important that you keep up with regular pelvic floor exercises that not only help strengthen these muscles but also allow them to relax which is just as important as contracting. This will help ensure that they are healthy enough to handle the intensity of childbirth.
How Does Pelvic Floor Dysfunction Occur
Pelvic floor dysfunction is a condition that can cause pain and discomfort in the pelvic region. This condition can affect both men and women, with some common symptoms including bladder, bowel, sexual problems, and hurdles with delivery.
This disorder occurs when the muscles of the pelvic floor become weakened, damaged, or dysregulated causing them to not properly relax or contract. The pelvic floor muscles are responsible for supporting our internal organs, like the bladder and uterus, as well as helping to control our urinary and fecal continence. When these muscles become weakened due to various causes, it may lead to difficulty controlling urination or defecation, chronic pain in the lower abdomen area, difficulty having intercourse, and labor complications.
There are many potential causes of pelvic floor dysfunction such as childbirth trauma, age-related changes within the body’s connective tissues, chronic straining due to constipation, obesity, or trauma.
During pregnancy, these muscles can become weakened due to an increase in hormonal changes that cause them to relax. This can make it difficult for your body to stay balanced while pushing during labor & delivery. Fortunately, there are several ways you can help rebalance your pelvic floor muscles before giving birth.
How To Assess Pelvic Floor Health
If you're looking for a way to assess your pelvic health, there are several methods that you can use. Looking at and feeling the muscles that make up the pelvic floor is an important part of this process. This can help to identify issues such as dysfunction or weakness in these muscles.
To start, it's important to familiarize yourself with what these muscles look like and how they feel when functioning correctly. When looking at the area between your legs, try to identify which muscles form a diamond shape between your hips and pubic bone. There should be four main points in this diamond: two at the top just inside your hip bones, one on either side of your pubic bone, and one at the bottom near your anus. Once you've done this, try contracting and relaxing those muscles to see if they are balanced or if one or more areas aren't contracting as well. By taking the time to visually inspect your pelvic floor muscles, you can begin to understand the overall health of the area and if you have weak pelvic floor muscles.
Pelvic Floor Exercises To Promote Muscle Strength
Pelvic floor exercises can be a great way to promote muscle strength in the pelvic region. It's important to build up strength in this area of our bodies, as it helps us maintain bladder and bowel control, sexual function, and even posture.
These simple exercises are easy for anyone to do at home. They help strengthen the muscles around your pelvic area that can become weak after childbirth, aging, or trauma. All you need is a few minutes each day - with regular practice you'll start feeling the benefits before you know it!
If you've never done pelvic floor exercises before, don't worry - they're easy! You just need to focus on squeezing your pelvic floor and releasing your pelvic muscles - sort of like when you stop yourself from peeing mid-flow. By practicing this simple squeeze and lift exercise correctly, you can help your muscles work in unison, increase muscle tone, and prepare for the day your baby is born.
An added benefit to starting an exercise program to strengthen your pelvic floor is increased blood flow to the area. Muscles with increased blood flow are able to stretch more easily allowing for the passage of your baby with increased ease.
Get Ready For Birth By Practicing Relaxing Your Pelvic Muscles
One of the best things you can do to prepare for birth is to practice relaxing the pelvic floor. Many of us focus on contracting our muscles, we rarely spend time practicing the opposite but our pelvic floor muscles need the opportunity to relax. Don't be surprised if it takes time to fully get the hang of relaxing the muscles that make up your pelvic girdle, especially if you have a weakened pelvic floor. Relaxing these muscles fully can help make delivery more comfortable, and makes pushing easier.
During pregnancy, pelvic floor exercises are important to keep your pelvis flexible and mobile so that when it comes time to give birth, your body will be ready. Practicing relaxation techniques such as deep breathing and progressive muscle relaxation can help you prepare for this big event. Focusing on the sensations in your pelvis while doing these exercises will help you learn how to relax them specifically. By taking some time each day before your due date to practice relaxing these muscles, you’ll be more prepared when it comes time to push during labor.
How A Properly Functioning Nervous System Helps Your Pelvic Floor Muscles
Having a healthy nervous system is key to having a properly functioning pelvic floor. Did you know that your pelvic floor muscles actually rely on your nervous system for optimal performance and function?
The best way to ensure that your pelvic floor muscles stay strong and healthy is by keeping your nervous system in tip-top shape. Properly functioning nerves help keep the messages from brain to muscle clear, enabling the pelvic floor muscles to do their job efficiently.
At Base Camp Health, we help to make sure your nervous system is functioning optimally through gentle and specific chiropractic adjustments and bodywork. Having chiropractic care throughout pregnancy not only helps keep your nervous system functioning well, but it also helps with your pelvic alignment.
During the prenatal period, Base Camp Health uses the Webster Technique to specifically adjust your pelvis and spine throughout your pregnancy. Sign up for a consultation today and see how we can help your body function at its best so you can enjoy your pregnancy to the fullest.
Care at Base Camp Health
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At Base Camp Health, we specialize in helping women going through pregnancy with gentle, specific, and holistic chiropractic care. Our chiropractors utilize the Webster Technique to allow for the ideal positions for your body during pregnancy to help decrease the discomforts that are common during pregnancy. Schedule a time for our doctors to come to you in the comfort of your own home today.