A guided tour through post pregnancy rehab.
You’ve just given birth and you’re finally home. You no longer have the luxury of hospital staff making sure you’re fed and room cleaned. There’s no midwife reminding you to watch your baby’s latch and no physio telling you to strengthen your core and watch your posture. You look around your house, not only do you smell the horrid stench of millions of dying flowers (you’re too tired to get rid of), you’re holding your unsettled, restless, crying baby and you think to yourself; How am I going to clean this? When am I going to clean this? What am I going eat? And when the f*** am I going to make it? Thankfully there’s UBEReats for all your food cravings, but as for the cleaning, welll... that’s just going to have to wait a while until your little one settles in.
Your mind is on over drive, ‘am I doing this correctly? Have I got mastitis? I think I need to buy this baby product. Is bubs getting enough milk?’ etc etc. Don’t stress. It all falls into place, trust me. The worst part of it all is that every time you feed your baby, burp your baby, walk around the house trying to settle your baby, pick up your baby, put down your baby, bath your baby, etc etc, you realise your back is absolutely killing you. Your spine feels thin and your abdomen feels empty. Your organs feel free, floating and tangled somewhere inside your abdomen just like a bowl spaghetti meatballs. You feel broken, unsupported, unbalanced and in pain. This is all normal. You’ve just had your insides ripped to shreds (or sliced open), so right now you have absolutely no support apart from wearing your SRC recovery shorts I posted about earlier. The duration of back pain will vary between individuals and it all goes back to normal providing you seek the right treatment.
Start with booking yourself in for some regular chiropractic, physiotherapy or massage appointments. However these options will only provide temporary pain relief, of 1 - 2 days. Next step is to get straight onto core and pelvic floor strengthening exercises. As soon as your core is strong again (which takes up to 3-4 months) your back pain should disappear for good. You are pretty much starting from scratch, take it seriously! You don’t want a prolapse or back pain affecting you in the future.
A basic guide for returning back to exercise or sport post pregnancy is listed below thanks to 'The
Pregnancy Centre' (2014). They also have a pelvic floor exercise ap. with instructional videos and exercise guides to help your through this rehab. I strongly recommend visiting your local women's health physiotherapist first to assess the degree of your abdominal separation, inform you what exercises you should start with and to help you perform pelvic squeezes and abdominal braces correctly. And if you're an exercise enthusiast like me you would have initially found this very depressing, but just like most hurdles I face, this has only motivated me to get the job done as quickly and efficiently as possible without jeopardising my motherly duties of creating a perfect life for my little man and husband.
0-3 WEEKS
• Walking
• Abdominal bracing
• Pelvic floor exercises
3-8 WEEKS
• Walking
• Abdominal bracing
• Pelvic floor exercises
** Make sure you have your 6 week post pregnancy check before the following
• Low impact aerobics/ post pregnancy classes
• Low intensity water aerobics classes / swimming
• Specific individualised gym program (maintaining posture and light weights)
8-12 WEEKS
** Follow the above guidelines but gradually add weights and lift the intensity
12-16 WEEKS
** Return to your physio, get reassessed, provided your pelvic floor muscles have returned back to normal then you’ll be given the thumbs up to return to your previous activity levels.
Websites to help you through:
1. pelvicfloorfirst.org.au
2. thepregnancycentre.com.au
I will be uploading my post pregnancy exercise program shortly.
