Making Babies: Physical Symptoms After Birth

How common are issues like urinary incontinence or pelvic floor weakness?

Pelvic floor is quite common.

So it is.

I think the problem is we as women don't do our pelvic floor exercises.

So then with childbirth, there's the stretching of this pelvic floor exercises.

And it's really important that we start the exercises very slowly and gradually build it up.

For most women, it's very mild urinary incontinence.

But for mothers whose persist or urinary problems, if the incontinence persists, and certainly after, and there's no improvement after a few weeks, we refer you to a physio at about six weeks postnatal for assessment to see can they assist with improving your incontinence.

Yeah, because as I said earlier, I think there's lots of women just living with that and perhaps wearing pads constantly, feeling they can't walk upstairs or sneeze or cough.

And that's impacting on your quality of life.

That's not something you should have to live with.

That's something you should get checked.

I think so.

And we don't talk about complications.

We don't talk about urinary incontinence and problems with our bowel.

So therefore, we're slow to seek help.

But it's really important

to seek help.