Your pelvic floor plays a huge role in pregnancy and birth (and the rest of your life)! That’s why it’s crucial to learn how to prepare your pelvic floor for the big day.
During pregnancy and birth, the pelvic floor helps to:
Support the pelvic organs, including the uterus that grows over 40 times its pre-pregnancy size;
Helps to maintain continence, or the ability to keep things inside, such as your pee, poo, and gas.
Plays a major role in stabilizing the spine and core canister by countering the pressure increase by the diaphragm within the abdominal cavity.
And then during birth, the pelvic floor helps to encourage head flexion. But if the pelvic floor has uneven tension, it could cause your baby’s head to tilt sideways.
And then the pelvic floor needs to stretch to accommodate for your baby’s birth out of the vagina!
If you’re looking to prepare yourself even further for childbirth, our Childbirth Education Course is the perfect way to do it!
This comprehensive course covers everything from the stages of labor to pain management techniques, and empowers you with the knowledge and skills you need to confidently navigate your birth experience.
Don’t miss out on this opportunity to prepare yourself for one of the most transformative experiences of your life. Enroll in our Childbirth Education Course today and take the first step towards a positive and empowering birth journey.
3 Ways To Prepare Your Pelvic Floor For Birth:
The pelvic floor is so important, so how can we prepare our pelvic floor for its role during birth? Here are a few ideas!
1. Diaphragmatic Breathing: Find the full range of motion in the pelvic floor
The pelvic floor can both contract (think Kegels) and shorten, which is what we may commonly associate with strength. But, strength is rather the amount of force something can produce over a given range of motion. If our pelvic floor can only contract and shorten, it ends up being really tight.
Our muscles operate best in midrange positions, so when we are stuck in the end ranges (being really short would be an end range), we may not have the optimal function of our pelvic floor.
The pelvic floor can also lengthen, or stretch, and then has the ability to find midrange or relax. We need to be able to find all three for our pelvic floor to support preparation for not only daily function, but for birth, where we need the pelvic floor to be able to completely let go and release.
Learn the science of pregnancy and birth to take the mystery of labor away! Understand why you are feeling what you feel, and learn strategies to confidently move through pregnancy and birth!
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We can use different breathing drills to help focus on finding the full range of motion in our pelvic floor. When we inhale, we want to focus on finding lengthen and stretching sensations in the pelvic floor. When we exhale, we have two options. We can either totally relax and let go, or we can contract and shorten the pelvic floor. Watch this breathing drill to learn more.
2. Perineal Massage
Starting around 36 weeks, you can begin to do perineal massage to prepare for pushing and try to prevent tearing. When doing perineal massage, it is usually not comfortable. Think about if you put your fingers on each edge of your mouth and pulled away so that your smile increased in width.
It usually has a little bit of a burning sensation. It is a similar feeling for perineal massage; doesn’t feel great but shouldn’t be painful. Your partner can assist with perineal massage, as well.
Think about the vaginal opening as a clock, with 12 being towards the urethra, and 6 being towards the anus. When doing perineal massage, we want to avoid massage between 10 and 2, or towards the urethra, as it may irritate or damage that area. Hayley has some great resources on perineal massage on her website!
Perineal massage may reduce the likelihood of tearing during delivery but doesn’t take it all away. In one study, they found that 24.3% of women from the perineum massage group and 15.1% of women in the control group that did not perform massage had intact perineum at birth or did not tear at all.
Although, there didn’t seem to be much difference in women have had had a previous vaginal delivery; so, the perineal massage only really seemed to benefit if it was your first vaginal birth.
3. Relaxation Breathing Drills
During contractions, we want to find a way to surrender and relax as much as possible to allow the pelvic floor to release and help your baby descend through.
We can practice this during pregnancy! We incorporate labor preparation workouts into the last 4 weeks of our prenatal strength and conditioning programming and included it as a part of our 4-week birth partner preparation program.
The labor preparation workout includes 10-15 rounds of a short burst of effort to increase your heart rate and create exercise-induced stress. Then, the relaxation portion is where we make our money!
For 1-3 minutes after each burst of effort, you are focusing on controlling your breathing so that you can find relaxation.
Try different positions and comfort techniques, and focus on inhaling big to feel expansion and then exhale to completely let go.
Explore which positions help you relax and which ones feel like they are harder to let go in to keep in mind for labor.
Watch the video below to hear more of an explanation of the workout to include at the end of your pregnancy in prep for birth.
When preparing for birth, we want to ensure that our pelvic floor can both contract and shorten AND release, stretch, and let go.
The pelvic floor plays a huge role in both pregnancy and birth, and we can prepare it for birth for better birth outcomes.
Learn more about preparing your pelvic floor for birth in our online course!
This course explore your pelvic floor anatomy, function, and how to prepare your pelvic floor for birth! This course includes educational videos, mobility exercises, relaxation drills, and how to relax your pelvic floor during labor tips.
- 2+ hours of on-demand videos
- Immediate and lifetime of the course access
- Watch on Mobile Device