What I have learned as a pelvic floor physical therapist after having a c-section
My son’s birth into this world.
My first child’s birth ended up being an unplanned c-section. My “birth plan” was a home birth in Northern California. Long story short, I had failure to progress and transferred to the hospital after 4 hours of pushing with no progression. I personally think I had failure to progress for a couple of reasons:
I started pushing way too soon because I was in my head rather than listening to my body.
I didn’t do any pelvic floor work and had a history of having a very tight pelvic floor.
I didn’t know how to effectively push.
Before having children, I had been a pelvic floor therapist for 5 years. I had taken all the courses about working with patients who were pregnant or postpartum. I had learned all the things to help them from a textbook.
Let me just tell you learning from a textbook is great and can be very helpful; learning from real life is 100% better! I thought I knew all the things I needed to do to prepare my body for labor and delivery. I did not. In our courses they taught us that it was not necessary to do internal work on someone who is pregnant. I 100% think this is doing the pregnant person a disservice and as long as they are not on pelvic rest and they are okay with having internal work, they should absolutely have internal work during pregnancy. Internal work teaches them how to connect with their pelvic floor muscles, how to relax while pushing their baby out, and make sure they have good coordination to help them during the early postpartum time.
After experiencing a vaginal labor and an abdominal delivery, I can tell you that they are both hard on the body. RESTING is absolutely necessary, which is really hard especially in the hospital where they want you to get up and walk and where your baby is kept a couple of feet away from the bed. They do NOT teach you how to get in and out of bed, how to roll over in bed, how to pick up your baby while protecting your body from a surgery where they cut into six layers of tissue.
Having a c-section is not an “easy way out” of child birth. First, is 100% still child birth. Whether you birth a baby from your belly or your vagina- both are 100% child birth after growing a baby for however long you did. With a c-section, whether it is a planned or unplanned, it is still a MAJOR abdominal surgery. Do you know what else your abdomen does? It literally helps your body stay upright and it connects the lower half of your body to the upper half. It is REALLY important. It is also REALLY important to learn how to move, get into and out of bed, up and down from a chair, hold your baby, and basically live and function after having a MAJOR abdominal surgery.
More and more hospitals around the country are having physical therapists work with moms after having a c-section, which is wonderful! The physical therapist can teach you how to get your abdominal muscles to fire again after having surgery. They can also teach you effective ways to get into and out of bed, hold your baby, pick up your baby, feed your baby in a position that helps your abdominal muscles heal, etc.
If you don’t do any work on your c-section scar you might experience decreased sensation in that area or you might experience pain or pulling. Physical therapists can also teach you ways that you can work on your scar to help decrease pain and the loss of sensation.
Even though I had a c-section, I still needed work on my pelvic floor. I think it can be a common misconception that people who have c-sections have no pelvic floor issues after delivery. I wish this was true, but it simply is not. There are many reasons for this, but one reason is because you were still pregnant for a long time and a lot of changes happen during pregnancy that can put pressure or more demand on your pelvic floor. Another reason is that your pelvic floor and abdominal muscles work together so it is important that they are both working and the coordination is there to be able to do all the things you want to do without leaking, pain, pressure, or anything else.
If you have had a c-section, please reach out to us or another pelvic floor therapist to help your body heal and make sure your muscles are optimally functioning so you can live your best life!
