Celebrating Your Journey to Pelvic Wellness: A Comprehensive Guide to Nurtured Pelvic Health & Wellness
Hello! It is so nice to be joining the team and providing pelvic health therapy! If you are still reading past the first line, maybe you are considering pelvic floor therapy. I can only imagine you have a lot of questions and may even feel a bit strange about how the process may look. I’m hoping that this blog can provide a little background on what to expect. Pelvic floor dysfunction can be a difficult, possibly even isolating time in someone's life. BUT, here you are taking the steps to wellness and health, so congratulations! Knowing something doesn’t feel right is one thing, but taking the time to explore solutions to get you feeling better, you are certainly on the right track. You may be wondering, is pelvic floor therapy right for me? What are the sessions like? In this blog, I will introduce you to what most pelvic floor treatments look like at Nurtured Pelvic Health & Wellness. If you have specific questions regarding your condition, don’t hesitate to call or schedule a free 15-minute discovery call: 201-338-0727 or email me at RachelKellyOT@nurturedpelvichealthwellness.com
So What Does the First Visit Look Like?
You will enter into the fantastically calming feeling of Core Therapies Family Wellness where you will be greeted by the smiling faces of the receptionist desk. At your appointment time, you and I will spend a good amount of time talking. I know talking for a good amount of time with a healthcare provider may seem novel, it isn't very common that you get so much in depth time in most healthcare settings. Providers usually will have to rush through history taking, but at Nurtured, we have the luxury of taking time to truly understand your condition, how it affects you, as well as any relevant health history that could be contributing to your pelvic floor dysfunction. We have all had those appointments at doctors’ offices where you walk away feeling like you weren’t seen or heard, you were rushed out or feeling like you have more questions than answers. At Nurtured our value is our clients, we take time to listen and put you at ease, because once you are seen and heard, you can heal. Beyond having a chance to understand you and your health history, a thorough subjective interview also allows me to zero in on what may be driving your symptoms and to decide on the most important elements to check out during your physical exam.
After we have had ample time to discuss what you are experiencing, when it started, and most importantly, how it affects you, we will start the pelvic floor therapy exam. This may be the point where some people can be understandably nervous. A typical pelvic floor exam involves checking the muscles of the pelvic floor both internally and externally for tightness, spasms, weakness, and coordination. This is done as gently as possible with a gloved lubricated finger. This exam can tell me so much about what may be causing your symptoms by getting a true sense of how your pelvic floor muscles are functioning.
Knowing that you are the leader of your body, it is vital to discuss that consent, and comfort are my top priorities. There are times that some may just feel they are not ready for the pelvic floor exam, (if you think you are someone who feels they need time or you are someone who is just not ready, no worries, you are not alone). If you are not ready for the pelvic floor exam, we can spend our time evaluating the many other parts of the body that affect the pelvic floor. Did you know that posture, visceral mobility, and hip strength and mobility all can greatly affect the pelvic floor? For some that aren’t ready for a pelvic floor exam, these assessments can be a great place to start and can go a long way towards establishing the drivers of your pelvic floor dysfunction. Funny enough, these aspects of the physical exam are so essential that I include them in many of my evaluations regardless of completing an internal examination or not. The role, strength and mobility of the hip alone in pelvic floor function is a whole conversation!
After gaining your in-depth history and finding our results from the physical examination, the journey toward wellness begins! Together we will create a plan, individualized and complimentary to your lifestyle. Goals and treatment plans will be attainable and allow you to be the driver to recovery. Some treatments may look as simple as manual in office work followed by specialized homework . Then there are other cases that may need neuromuscular re-education to teach them to move throughout their day without clenching their pelvic floor in response to stress or heavy physical exertion. Variety and individuality are the name of the game, thus two patients may present with the same or very similar symptoms, the causes of those symptoms are different, thus they require specialized and thoughtful care.
At the end of your very first visit, you should leave with a good idea of what is going on, how we are going to treat it, as well as a general estimation of how long it should take to feel better. I take time at the end of our very first treatment to discuss exactly what we will be doing in follow up visits and why doing these treatments are essential. It is so important to me that you leave treatment feeling confident in your next steps.
Neuromuscular Education
What a term, sounds pretty fancy right? And it is, but it’s also fairly straightforward and simple. It is the answer to the question, “After I’m done with therapy, what keeps my symptoms from coming back?” Neuromuscular education is a broad treatment modality that is used across different disciplines, teaching a survivor of a stroke how to rise from a chair independently to teaching the office worker with a sore neck how to sit in a more ergonomic fashion at work.
In the pelvic floor world, neuromuscular education is a huge part of what we do and forms a crucial part of treatment regardless of the individual practitioner’s treatment philosophy. At Nurtured, I use neuromuscular education in many, many ways with the goal of fostering pain-free pelvic floor function.
The first step of pelvic floor neuromuscular education is to teach the pelvic floor what “relaxed” feels like, what an effective contraction (kegel) feels like, and what an effective “push” for bowel movements feels like. In folks with pelvic floor dysfunction, these movements can sometimes be difficult and it is not uncommon for folks to believe that they are pushing effectively for bowel movements when they are actually closing their anal sphincters. This is known as paradoxical contraction. By taking time to “teach” the pelvic floor how to contract and more importantly, relax when it needs to, you can reduce any clenching patterns that can generate pelvic floor dysfunction in the future.
Strengthening
It’s so much more than kegeling! And if someone tells you “oh to fix your pelvic floor, JUST do some kegels,” RUN! We require more complex training to be able to meet goals like running without incontinence, being able to jump and dance without the feeling of prolapse and so much more. No one should be afraid to laugh, cough or sneeze because they may leak. You should be abe to jump on the trampoline with your kids or take that run to clear your mind.
Let’s look at the example of someone who leaks a bit when they lift something heavy. When we pick up something heavy, say your toddler, we require a heck of a lot from our core muscles to stabilize our spine and allow us to lift that kiddo up. The pelvic floor is part of the core and absolutely needs to be strong to accomplish this task, that said if the rest of our core is weak, because we’ve only been doing kegels we may find ourselves straining and holding our breath to lift our kids. When we strain to lift, we can put a heck of a lot of downward pressure on the bladder resulting in leaks. In order to fix this issue, we must treat the pelvic floor, but in order to give the pelvic floor a real fighting chance to keep us dry, we have to also address the rest of the core as well.
Additionally, strengthening outside of the pelvic floor can allow us to return to the activities and exercises we love, that we may have thought were causing the pelvic floor to over-tighten. As we have discovered, the pelvic floor is part of the core and if the rest of the components are weak or not working at the appropriate time the pelvic floor can overwork and over-tighten. It truly benefits us to approach strengthening from a holistic standpoint when rehabilitating the pelvic floor.
How do I know if Nurtured Pelvic Health & Wellness is Right for Me?
This is the question I was hoping you would ask! Well first off let’s chat, schedule the discovery call and let’s get you on the road of wellness. Pelvic floor therapy is a specialized niche in the OT/PT world. To become a diverse, well rounded and educated therapist you must be someone who loves to learn and carries the compassion and understanding of functional movements. Researching pelvic floor practitioners and practices can be overwhelming! I have spent years studying maternal health, pelvic floor and developmental continuums. My phylosophy is and will always be that my clients lead their treatment with myself as the guide. No one knows your body better than you. With that said, as a mother myself I have experienced the overwhelming amount of pregnancy appointments, followed by the loud, over stimulating, medical delivery with nothing more than a 6 week check up. I know that recovery and building a team of professionals is essential in your wellness and your motherhood journey.
We help optimize your motherhood journey through personalized pelvic health care to take you from a place of pain, leaking or discomfort to a place of recovery and wellness. Becoming a Mom is incredible, but it’s definitely not like the movies depict it! Recovery from childbirth can be difficult, and not just physically. No one prepares you for the combination of physical and emotional challenges of birth recovery. And let’s be honest…a 6 week “check up” just isn’t enough. And just because some symptoms are common during pregnancy and postpartum that doesn’t mean they are normal and you have to live with them.
Still have questions? Call or email today for your free 15-minute discovery call!
call: 201-338-0727 or email me at RachelKellyOT@nurturedpelvichealthwellness.com