From the ground
“And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.”
-J.K. Rowling
They say that a mother should take the first 40 days after giving birth to rest, recuperate, and focus on taking care of her baby while others take care of her basic needs. Wouldn’t we all love to have someone there to do the shopping, cooking, cleaning, and the dozens of other things for the family while we recover from bringing a new, little life into the world?
It’s common in traditions around the world to treat this special time as sacred. Some call it the fourth trimester, as an acknowledgement that mother and baby are still united very much on a physical level and also an emotional level as they get to know one another face-to-face.
How strange it has been to have a baby during the COVID-19 pandemic. I was already used to sheltering in place, so the idea of the fourth trimester and taking 40 days to stay home and recover has sometimes made me feel restless. I’ve had lots of moments of FOMO and also sadness from a basic feeling of disconnection with the community around me. Our lives were already so confined, and as I entered the postpartum phase, I felt very restricted on a physical level. After a long labor (attempted VBAC), followed by a Cesarean, I was exhausted, sore, and peeing blood. The doctors told me my bladder had probably been bruised by all the downward pressure on my pelvic floor during that 40-hour labor, and that most likely it would resolve and heal on its own.
It did resolve within a week, but I was still left peeing uncontrollably throughout the day. Not just a trickle, but sometimes full-on peeing whenever I stood up. I know, TMI, but I had to look at it from a humorous angle: my baby and I were both in a diaper-wearing phase!
The solution? The doctors, nurses, and midwives were all telling me to start doing my kegels. I never did kegels before, during, or after my first pregnancy, and when I found out they were not necessarily advisable for all people, I was glad that I had never done them. In the yoga community, I kept coming across conversations questioning the usefulness of kegels as a blanket solution for women.
In my second pregnancy, I began having symptoms of sciatica and pelvic girdle pain, so I began going to a chiropractor and a physical therapist. After an internal exam with the physical therapist, she told me I had tightness in my pelvic floor and that I didn’t need to do kegels.
So now, as I go through this recovery period, I haven’t been on my yoga mat a single time, not even for a restorative post or yoga nidra. It’s been almost 3 weeks since my son was born and my yoga has consisted of meditation, gentle breathing practices, and healing my pelvic floor.
You might not be peeing your pants every time you stand up or cough, but everyone could benefit from getting more in touch with their own pelvic floor. It’s not to say that kegels are completely useless, but the way we work with those muscles ‘down there’ should be treated with a much more nuanced approach, and with an equal emphasis on relaxing as well as engaging those muscles.
Here are some resources I highly recommend for getting to know your pelvic floor:
Yoga for Pregnancy and Birth by Uma Dinsmore-Tuli. Specifically, she touches upon a practice she calls Healing Breath. This breath is also described in her book Mother’s Breath, now out of print but available on Kindle or as audio files on her website.
Modern Yoga: Everything You Want to Know about the Pelvic Floor, by Kerry McInnes.
The Breathing Book, by Donna Farhi. Look at the section where she talks about the 3 diaphragms.
I’m a little more than halfway through my fourth trimester and even though I feel a little better each day (well....except for the sleep deprivation that comes with having a newborn), I know that 40 days isn’t a magic number. I wish I could say that after 40 days, my son and I will reach a perfect harmony and that I’ll feel totally recovered. But I know from having my daughter 4 years ago that healing through yoga is a forever kind of job. There will always be something to work through, struggle with, heal from, and resolve. Isn’t that why we practice yoga? The traditional texts emphasize reaching a state of yogic perfection, but I believe the real satisfaction of sadhana are all the small daily actions and moments that make my whole life a yoga practice.
Do you have any practices and resources for working with the pelvic floor?