Episode #12: What Does Listen to Your Body Mean?
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In this episode, Dayna and Rhonda talk about what listening to your body means. This is often advice given to pregnant/ postpartum people with good intent, but it often lacks context.
Symptoms to listen for that we discuss in this episode include:
Bleeding
Pressure/ heaviness in the vagina
Leaking
Doming/coning in the abdomen
Pain/ pressure anywhere in the body
This is also a helpful episode if you’re feeling lost about how to modify exercise if you’re dealing with any symptoms/ pain during pregnancy/ postpartum. We hope you find this helpful!
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Episode 12 - What Does Listen to Your Body Mean?
We're excited to have you join us for this episode of Pelvic Health and Fitness. I'm Dayna Morellato, Mom, Orthopedic and Pelvic Health Physiotherapist. And I'm Rhonda Chamberlain, Mom, Orthopedic Physiotherapist and Pre Postnatal Fitness Coach. On this show, we have open and honest conversations about all phases of motherhood, including fertility, pregnancy, birth, postpartum, menopause, and everything in between.
We also provide helpful education and information on fitness, the pelvic floor, and many aspects of women's health, including physical, mental, and emotional wellness. Please remember as you listen to this podcast that this is not meant to treat or diagnose any medical conditions. Please contact your medical provider if you have specific questions or concerns.
Thanks so much for joining us. Grab a cup of coffee. Or wine. And enjoy!
Hey everyone. Welcome to episode 12 of the Pelvic Health and Fitness Podcast, Dayna and myself here today. And we are going to be chatting with you all about listening to your body and what that means. So often we're going to focus mostly on postpartum.
We'll have a couple tips for pregnancy as well. Often during the pregnancy and postpartum period, the advice given to women is listen to your body, but what does that even mean? So I know for myself as someone with athlete brain, which we've chatted about on this podcast before I sort of took that to the extreme.
And unless something really terrible was happening to my body or I was feeling extreme pain, I just assumed everything was fine. And there wasn't. Definitely not enough context given to me about what listening to my body meant. So we're going to chat about those things today and give you all some tips of what to listen for.
So do you want to start us off Dayna, just with a summary of what women should be listening for in their body? Yes, absolutely. And I think it's important to note before we even get to the list too, that we are focusing mainly on postpartum here and kind of the, We can use these immediately and should probably use these immediately.
So like day one of postpartum, but then certainly as you have been given the quote, you cannot see me, but air quoting here, the six week clearance. These are really, in my opinion, pretty important. Um, and what you are listening for as you start to add more load to your body. For sure. For sure. Oh, five big ones that we Rhonda and I like to chat a lot about with our clients.
The first one is postpartum bleeding. Second is your abdominal. So looking for any doming or coning and we'll chat about what that means and what that, um, how you can manage that. Any leaking of any kind will primarily focus on urine. But of course, we always like to remind you that if you are experiencing leakage of stool, this applies to you as well.
pressure and pain. So I'm going to start with postpartum bleeding. Um, as most of you know, if you are in the postpartum period, uh, and if you are pregnant and do not know this spoiler, spoiler, I can't even say spoiler alert. Oh boy. You get kind of like a heavy period following birth. So this postpartum bleeding can really be a fantastic gauge of how much rest your body needs.
So in the first two weeks, it tends to be pretty heavy and then it peters off for most people by four to six weeks, but I certainly have plenty of clients that continue to get some spotting. 8 to 10 weeks. And I always just have them make sure they're checking in with their healthcare practitioners, whether that's their GP, their OB or their midwives, just to make sure that that's okay.
But this postpartum bleeding will tend to increase if you're doing a little bit too much. So if you are going for a walk, even if it's a short one, and you come home and you notice that you have some bigger clots or the bleeding is heavier, then that's just a sign that we want to add in a little bit of rest that day, maybe shorten the walk up.
If you're going again the next day, just pay attention to how How that looks in your body. Um, and it's a good barometer fast forward to the six week mark. If your postpartum bleeding has subsided or gone completely away. I have had clients before start to add in exercise and then they start to get a little bit of spotting that is not associated with their period returning or their cycle restarting. So it's just always something to make note of, chat with it about your healthcare practitioner for sure. But it often is just that a little bit of spotting because you're doing a little bit more and we maybe need to still be focusing on restful periods in your day.
Yes, and that was 100 percent something that wasn't necessarily explained to me very well, um, and I definitely looking back, um, you know, I was told going for walks is fine, but no one again really gave me guidelines about. How to ease back in, even with walking, we think it's such an innocent activity, but that can also be, um, you know, tough on the body when you're still trying to heal.
And so, yeah, looking back, I, you know, probably pushed it a little much on my walks and my bleeding got a little, little heavier. And with my athlete brain, I just chalked that up to that being normal. And I probably could have eased off a little bit. Yeah, and I chat with my clients a lot about what rest actually means, and I, and this was not easy for me either, but really truly in the first several weeks, so it's different for everybody, but two to three weeks for sure.
We want to be practicing. Rest. And that means feet up off the floor, not having any sort of extra load down on the pelvic floor for periods of the day. It doesn't mean you have to be on bed rest for those. Although if that is what you want to do, all the more power to you. You just did the workout of a lifetime.
Um, and I realized also on the other side of this, that there is a mental health component. So if you feel like you need to get out just to move your body, absolutely. I'm not here. Great. to tell you not to do that. I know there are some clinicians of various backgrounds that will kind of limit it to two minutes or five minutes in the first two weeks.
Just listen to your body. And this is what we mean by listening to your body. If five minutes brings on heavier bleeding, then maybe we do need to keep it under there. Um, and if you find that It maybe does get a little bit heavier, but then you balance with 45 minutes of watching some Netflix and that seems to settle everything, then go ahead, right?
We just want you to have the tools to listen. Totally. Yeah. Awesome. All right. So next one is just watching for changes in your abdomen. So we did an episode on diastasis. So basically, uh, just to review totally natural process that happens through a pregnancy is our abdomen, uh, muscles spread apart to allow room for baby.
In some women, the gap that's there can close up automatically. In some women, a little bit of a space remains. So, asterisk with this one, it's not something we need to get obsessed with, especially in those early postpartum phases. 100 percent normal to still have a gap there, have some squishiness in your tummy.
That's totally normal. Um, it is something as time goes on, as you're getting back into exercise, um, to watch for just seeing if there's a bit of cloning or doming happening in between those two sides of your abdomen. Again, nothing to get obsessed over. And that's definitely something that's really worthwhile to work with a pelvic floor physio or pre postnatal fitness coach to reassure you that everything's okay.
Um, again, just something to sort of watch for. Yes, absolutely. And I think again, to know that That coning during pregnancy is normal. You just still want to be mindful of it, mind the gap, but don't obsess over it. For sure. It's just information. Yeah. Sometimes during pregnancy, that is that can tell you perhaps if you're pushing it a little too hard.
Um, I know some clients, uh, as they get more pregnant overhead movements, so pushing like dumbbells overhead, we'll start to see a bit of that coning and often we'll just say, okay. Maybe we don't need to do overhead movements anymore. That's fine. You can still choose to use you. That's totally your choice, but it might be putting a little more pressure into that abdomen than we need to.
Yes. It gets into that. Well, just because you can, should you, which we could flush out. If listeners are interested, for sure. Um, number three is leaking. So leaking of any kind is very common, but it is not normal. If you've heard that sentence out there. Um, and that includes anything from sneezing to jumping on a trampoline.
We don't, we don't want any leaking and it certainly can give us a lot of information on what's happening with the pelvic floor. Um, we did a whole chat about this recently, but often people will assume that your pelvic floor must be weak if you're getting leaking of urinary stool, and that can be the case, but you can also get leaking if you have a tight pelvic floor.
Mm-hmm. , and you can get leaking if your pelvic floor is tired. Right Postpartum. It could be tired, right? I think the thing about the postpartum period is you carry this baby for a marathon, so let's just say 40 weeks, give or take, and then you have a marathon of a birth, whatever that looks like, vaginal or cesarean, that load has still been the same throughout pregnancy.
With the vaginal delivery, obviously we've got a little bit of physical, a little bit, a lot of physical strain on the pelvic floor as baby passes through there and then you're healing, but you have this baby that you need to Bounce and feed and figure out a lot of load on this healing floor. And so sometimes it really can just be if you've been on your feet all day trying to walk baby around, getting them to sleep or bouncing on a ball.
Um, and then you notice you sneeze and you leak. Certainly it could just be about balancing some time. But please don't freak out if this is the first several weeks leaking is very, very common again, because you're healing. And it might just be that that pelvic floor is fatiguing. If you are returning to exercise at the six week mark, we want to pay attention to leaking.
It's not in general, a symptom that is going to just go away. If you push through, here's the athlete brain here. This is not a push through and. Certainly, can that happen? Sure, like anything it can, uh, but often what I'll find with clients is they'll, it maybe goes away for a little bit and often will return.
Right. So, um, we want to pay attention to it. In general, the research is showing us that we want to wait until the 12 week mark postpartum to return to any sort of jumping, hopping, running particular to allow sufficient exercise, allow sufficient strength to return in that pelvic floor to Handle the load, right?
Not uncommon at all to have leaking with those activities prior to that 12 week mark. Totally. And then that we did a whole episode with Kathleen white physiotherapist about even when you're at that 12 week mark, similar to the six week checkup, that it doesn't mean green light, go back to a 5k run. I mean, you have free will, you can do that, right?
But that's not necessarily setting up your pelvic floor for, for success, uh, highly recommend sort of easing back into those activities once you're at that point. Yes. A hundred percent. It will pay off. Go, go slow to go fast. I think I've heard you say that. Yeah. Yeah. Slow is fast in the end. Slow is fast in the end.
Yes. You do your service by listening to these signs from your body or symptoms from your body. Totally. All right. So the next one is any, um, heaviness or bulging in the vagina. I often, um, sort of relate this one to feeling like a tampon is falling out. Um, so typically that is a sign and symptom of a prolapse and, um, we will do an episode on prolapse.
Um, fully basically very again, a very common process that not many people talk about, um, but it is the lowering of the organs towards the vaginal opening, which doesn't only happen to pregnant and postpartum people as well. Very common for those that have not had children. Um, so I know Dayna and I've both experienced this and we've talked about that on the podcast.
Um, I dealt with a bladder prolapse, still deal with symptoms here and there that have mostly resolved, but still kind of show up at certain times of the month in particular. And again, as with any of these symptoms, it's not something to freak out about and panic and think, Oh my goodness, I'm pushing my organs out of my body.
Um, just something to, again, listen to and potentially could be your body's way of telling you maybe ease off, maybe change what you're doing. Um, so many strategies you can work on to minimize that symptom and like anything to over time as your body heals, very likely it will start to get better too. So just be patient with that symptom as well.
Absolutely. And sometimes good old fashioned rest. Yes. Totally. If you don't walk the floor, watch some Netflix. We are not sponsored by Netflix, I just love it. Totally. Um, and our last one is pain, which seems obvious, uh, in particular, if you're having pain. In the pelvic floor or the pelvis or the abdominals, particularly over a cesarean scar is what, you know, number one pain, but pain anywhere.
Yes, we don't want to be pushing through pain in the hip, the back, the neck, anything pain is there to tell us that something is not quite right. Mm hmm. And so we want to respect that. And again, try not to push through it, particularly in the abdominal wall, um, or the pelvis. I mean, in terms of long term pelvic health, I don't want you to push through pain really anywhere, but it's not going to service you, um, in the long run, likely, even if we're dealing with an ankle for sure.
And that's, that's something interesting until I, you know, got into the pelvic health world that. Those people that have sort of like chronic low back hip pain can often be due to pelvic floor dysfunction, which I didn't necessarily know that connection until I got into this world. So if that's you, even if it's, you know, before you're having babies and, um, if you're listening, um, and you've dealt with chronic back pain, hip pain, very, um.
likely that it could be related to the pelvic floor and worthwhile to visit a pelvic floor physiotherapist if you have the means to see if there's a connection there. Absolutely. I see that often in clinic. I think any that we're a canister again, in the middle of our body and the back part of that canister is our back and our pelvic floor and our abdominal wall helps support.
Our back muscles and our spine. So they're all very interconnected. So if you're a post and then again, all this extra load on our bodies, postpartum, it's not uncommon to have back pain and it can very well be from those back structures, but it can also be helped by addressing any abdominal or pelvic floor dysfunction for sure.
Um, and I just wanted to say as well, just a reminder, I sort of touched on this with the bulging symptom, but. symptoms are just our body's way of talking to us. It doesn't necessarily mean that you're doing damage to your body. So we, you and I are very similar in our approach. We never want to fear monger people and, you know, make people paranoid of every little thing that they're feeling in their body.
Just remember, it's just your body's way to talk to you. Um, instead of it. Having fear about it. Just get curious about it, right? If my body's giving me a symptom. Hmm. I wonder what this is telling me. Maybe it's telling me I did a little much today and now I'm going to do some resting. Um, and also when it comes to exercise, I, my favorite thing to work through with people is still being able to move and do what feels good for your body, even though you have symptoms, right?
I think that's the thing too, is you don't have to be. Symptom free or zero out of 10 pain in order to slowly ease back in exercise. There's so many ways to modify and try different things to ease back in exercise without worsening those symptoms. Oh gosh. Yes. A hundred percent. I think. And I have clients where it's a hard sell, they get terrified, right?
Especially with prolapse, there's a lot of fear around this. And, um, sometimes movement is what is going to help. You just have to figure out what that is in that moment. Um, same with pain. Pain is an interesting thing, right? We've been like, listen to pain, don't push through pain. But you want to, at the same time, move your body in ways that are comfortable and And then actually reduce pain.
So it's almost all of these things are finding that balance. Where, where do you, what can you do in this moment that leaves you relatively symptom free, but still move? I mean, our muscles and our ligaments and everything require movement to stay healthy. So, you know, I think it's, it's always about balance.
And I, I really like to think about these things, like you said, not fear mongering, but It's kind of a roadmap in a, in a little bit. Yeah. A little bit of a way that was not eloquent, kind of like a roadmap postpartum because truly, and I had this experience and I think you did too. I was a physio, so I, I know how to do this.
I know how to return to these things. I'll wait the six weeks. I understand the importance of rest and then ended up with symptoms. Because I was ignoring, truthfully, a lot of these things. Right. Oh, and me too. And, you know, I've shared my story that I waited, I think I waited 10 weeks and I thought, Oh, I'm doing all the right things.
I'm resting. I'm taking it easy. But then my mistake was just getting way too quickly back into exercise thinking I was healed. But you know, spoiler alert, it takes longer than 8 to 10 weeks for your body to heal after having a baby. So, you know, definitely take that time to rest and then also honor what your body went through.
By slowly easing back into exercise and that can be with injuries too, right? So if again, you're someone that's maybe years postpartum listening to this podcast and you deal with, um, and that's the thing. It's a very normal human experience to deal with pain. I think once we sort of normalize that too, we're all, you know, changing creatures that pain will come and go throughout our lifetime.
If we don't panic about it and we are curious about it. And just honor what our body's telling us. And sometimes that means easing off of our strict exercise routine to get back in again, slowly so that we don't exacerbate those pains. Yes, for sure. And I always say to clients to like, please, when you feel these things, don't feel like you have ruined anything or set yourself back to the beginning.
It doesn't mean that at all. It just. I liked how you said, get curious about it. I always encourage people to think about their last several days and often the pattern is just more load on their body that they didn't even realize they had a teething baby or they had a toddler who was home from daycare as well.
Yes. Or you know, so many people are moving right now. Yeah. So packing all the boxes and just pushing them to the front door so they're ready for the movers. Like that all counts. Several loads of laundry over a weekend. Like all of that counts as load on our bodies. So I think it doesn't mean you ruined anything.
We just have to build in rest. You know, we are not great at that as a, as a race of humans, we are not good at rest. Um, and so I think just get curious, what did that look like? And also I, you've shared this graph, I think on your Instagram before this idea that postpartum healing is not this beautiful, linear, always upward motion.
It kind of looks like a jagged upward with.
And I always kind of draw that in the air to my clients so they know that you're likely to have setbacks. I hope you don't. I really truthfully hope you don't. But my job is to educate you so that you know when that does happen. You have the tools to manage it and it doesn't mean that you've ruined everything.
Exactly. And just reminding them that's totally normal. It's totally normal to have those minor setbacks. And that's again, why I'm so passionate about talking about easing back in is that, yeah, so I have a, I do have a graph on Instagram where it shows sort of like. You know what I did where I dived way too quickly back in exercise.
You can't see what I'm drawing, but you dive right back in and then you have a setback. So you go back to doing nothing. And then you dive back in again, cause you feel guilty that you're missing out. And then you have a setback and you have these huge. Big dips and dives versus if we ease back in, yes, you're going to have setbacks, but hopefully they're minimal.
And then over time you just keep going sort of up and down. And then you end up with a much higher tolerance for exercise versus the person that dove back in, did nothing, dove back in, did nothing. Right. So like you said, it can be a hard sell to people, especially the athlete brain types that want to just get back to everything they were doing before they had a baby, but it really, the slow road truly is.
It's the fastest route in the end as hard as that is to understand for sure. Absolutely. And if you're listening to this and you're a little bit further postpartum and that can be anywhere from beyond six weeks, so years down the line and you're still noticing these kind of dips and or ebbs and flows, I guess it's very normal.
We're hormonal creatures. And so you've already mentioned it, Rhonda, that you have periods, periods during your cycle, periods during your period, um, where things are a little bit more sensitive, it is very common, very, very common to have pelvic symptoms, no matter where you are in your recovery around ovulation, around the start of your period, during your period, I have a couple of clients I can think of right now that they just don't run.
And I think Kathleen was saying this too. They just have. Um, times in their cycle where they just don't run because they're symptomatic, doesn't matter what they've done. They're just symptomatic. And so starting to honor your body where it's at, and just knowing that you're going to plan your runs around those two days, mid cycle.
Totally. And that comes back to like not blaming yourself and questioning what did I do wrong to make my symptoms worse? Right. I talk about that with my clients all the time too, because you know, we often. Get into the shame spiral of, Oh my goodness, I must've overdid it. What did I do wrong? And, you know, hormones as a reason, stress as a reason, so many reasons why our symptoms might ramp up, you know, lack of sleep, which, you know, as a new mom, that's a given.
Um, you know, when you go back to work, just imagine all the added stressors in your life, then that might ramp up your symptoms. So many reasons. So again, get curious. What has changed in my life recently? That has potentially made my symptoms worse. And you might be able to come up with some things to sort of validate.
Oh, no wonder I'm feeling horrible right now. I have so much going on in my life. Right. And I know that helps me when my symptoms get worse. I think about everything going on. I'm like, of course, my symptoms feel worse. I have a lot of stress going on. Right. And that's when we honor what our body's telling us.
And those are the moments I try my best and I'm very getting much better at this, but I have a challenging time. of slowing down, doing more of those restful stretches, poses, meditation, all that stuff to settle my nervous system and surprise, surprise, my symptoms start to feel better when I do those things more often.
Absolutely. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. So let's just sort of quickly review recap. Um, what does listen to your body mean? So we're going to look for bleeding. So any return of your bleeding or any worsening of the bleeding, um, any changes in your abdomen. So again, nothing to obsess about, but just looking for any coning or doming in the abdomen, any leaking, um, any pain or pressure in the pelvis or, um, the vagina, um, any hip, tailbone or low back pain.
Um, I think that's it. Right. Yes. Awesome. So just watch for those everyone, but again, don't panic when they happen. Totally normal process. Just get curious and, uh, lots of help with a pelvic floor physio pre postnatal fitness coach. If you are dealing with these symptoms to get you back to feeling your best, get you back to the activities that you love to do.
Absolutely. So let us know, did you find these tips helpful? We'd love to hear from you. Yes. Thanks. Thanks for listening to today's podcast. We hope you enjoyed the conversation. If you liked what you heard, we would love if you could share this with a friend, leave us a review, or subscribe to anywhere that you listen to your podcasts.
Thanks for being here.
