Pelvic Floor Exercises in and after Pregnancy

Pelvic floor exercises help strengthen the pelvic floor muscles, which come under significant strain during pregnancy and childbirth. Your pelvic floor consists of layers of muscles that stretch from the pubic bone (in front) to the end of the backbone (spine).

If you have weak pelvic floor muscles, you may leak urine when coughing, sneezing, or straining. This is quite common, and there is no reason to feel embarrassed. It's known as stress incontinence, and it can continue after pregnancy.

You can strengthen these muscles with pelvic floor exercises, which help to reduce or avoid stress incontinence after pregnancy. If you are pregnant, you should do pelvic floor exercises, even if you are young and not suffering from stress incontinence.

How to perform pelvic floor exercises in pregnancy

• Get as comfortable as you can. This can be in a sitting position or lying down with bent knees.
• Tense the muscles around your back passage, then relax them.
• Keep your breathing normal while doing these exercises.
• Perform the exercise quickly to start with, then slow down and hold the squeezes as long as you can. If you are unsure how long to hold it, try counting to 10.
• Aim for 3 sets of 8 reps of these squeezes a day. We understand that it can be easy to forget to do these every day, so we recommend picking specific times to complete them (at every meal, for example).

We also recommend practising tightening your pelvic floor muscles before and during sneezing and coughing.

Pelvic floor exercises after pregnancy

Continuing to perform these exercises after pregnancy will help to improve sex and stop incontinence.

Follow the same steps as you did during pregnancy, and remember to keep breathing during the exercises.