My body is destroyed.
I feel absolutely broken.
I’ve heard this before, and also felt it myself. Things that I never knew could happen post birth happened and I felt like I was a stranger in my own body.
Before I got pregnant, I thought I was pretty in tune with my body. I knew how hard to push to not get injured. I knew what each twinge and tweak that I felt was a result of. I could control my body and do with it pretty much whatever I wanted. I was in shape, could move it however I wanted, and do that whenever I wanted. Never did I begin a workout with a connection breath warm up, or any type of warm up really.
Once I got pregnant, my body seemed to revolt. I was tired all the time, had heartburn the entire 9 + months, and felt like I couldn’t do anything that I wanted to do with my body. I hated it. Every moment of it felt like an eternity and I couldn’t wait to have my baby so that, along with having my baby, my body could return to how it was before.
Yet, it didn’t happen that way. After I had my baby, my body didn’t move the way I wanted it to. It ached in ways it never had before. It started doing things that I didn’t know were possible - I peed when I jumped (something I thought would stop once I didn’t have a baby sitting on my bladder, I had back pain while just standing, and on top of that, I felt like my muscles down below had no tone whatsoever. It felt like a hallway that you could throw a pencil down without feeling it (gotta love a good pencil down a hallway analogy eh?). Apparently there were so many things that can happen after having a baby whether you have a vaginal or c-section birth that I had NO clue about.
Needless to say I felt absolutely broken. My body was foreign to me and I HATED it. I’m the kind of person who will find any way possible to fix my body. I couldn’t stand not knowing what was going on so I checked out a pelvic health physiotherapist.
Firstly, I had no clue that there was such a profession. I knew about physiotherapy of course, but had never heard of a pelvic health physio. But, having no other information on how to fix myself, I searched out whatever I could to fix my problems. I reached out to an amazing physio who taught me about relaxing my pelvic floor muscles. Relax? WTF! I was told that you want to Kegel the crap out of your muscles while pregnant. Relaxing seemed ridiculous to me. But low and behold, that piece of advice, as small as it seemed, fixed some of my symptoms. I mean I did do some exercises, learnt some other valuable information but the best part of it all was that I knew how to fix myself.
Do I have days that I still feel annoyed with my body? Yes.
Do I have to be mindful of what I do now? Yes. I do.
My body is different and needs different exercises added into my training plan than it did before pregnancy, but it is NOT broken. Most definitely not. I’ve learnt ways and strategies to train smarter and with a plan to ensure that I can do what I want with my body, whenever I want.
It is possible. We are not screwed into a body that we don’t want. We are not broken.
If you are feeling like you are broken, please reach out. Along with some great pelvic health physios that I know, we can work through your symptoms and get a plan set up for you to get you ready to do whatever you want with your body, whenever you want it.
Let's take the worry out of getting back into fitness and let's get you moving again.
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