Tending to Your Womb: Pelvic Floor Therapy, Grief in the Body, and Pregnancy After Loss with Anietie Tia Ukpe-Wallace

want to go back to something that you talked about, because I don't think that I talk a lot about this in the book, but I love I love in my book as well.

Never Healing Alone about how a lot of the ailments that we have shows up in our body and our body has held on to this grief.

And we just have not found space or grace to release it.

We think it's something else, but it really is grief.

So I would love for you to talk about from your perspective.

I mean, obviously, you talk about this in the book about just about how grief can show up, you know, overall in your pelvic floor.

I think first we got to go back, really talk about what pelvic floor therapy is, because I don't think people really understand how that can help them.

um getting pregnant staying pregnant bringing a healthy baby home and in their postpartum years um yeah that's the first part of the question and then i really want to talk about just how grief shows up in your pelvic floor like your abdomen your breathing your posture like you know how can that show up overall in your body um and some symptoms people could be experiencing

Yeah.

So, yeah, definitely to speak to the first question.

So about pelvic floor therapy, everybody, you know, men, women, children, we all poop, we pee.

And then if you're an adult, you're also potentially having sex as well, too, whether it's with a partner or self.

And so we all have pelvises.

We all have a pelvic floor because we're doing those like peeing and pooping.

And we're doing that multiple times a day, every single day.

So I think understanding that, you know, it definitely ties into just like basic functioning of your body.

Earlier, like I mentioned, so like you don't think about it very much, you know, because if we're, you know, going to the bathroom and you know, we're not constipated and we're able to poop and we're peeing and we're not leaking.

We don't think about how it's functioning, not until there is an issue and things aren't working the way that they're supposed to, or, you know, we got pregnant and then like there's extra weight being put on the bladder or hormones have an impact on, you know, our bowel movements and then we're not going as often, or if there's been birth trauma and then that definitely will shift how a lot of things, you know, are working and functioning, you know, in the body.

And then we definitely pay attention to it.

But I think it's important to know like what are like what I what I call is like understanding like what's your baseline like where are you starting from.

So that way, then when you do notice that things are off.

You have like a better sense as to like, oh, OK, you know, I used to go to the bathroom, you know, like three or four times a day.

And I'm going to the bathroom like eight to 12 times a day and I'm not emptying my bladder.

You know, I have to push in order to go and pee.

I'm just noticing like it's not even just like symptoms, but like what are all the signs, like all the things that you're the clues that your body is giving you? And the pelvic floor is such a huge piece of that because it's a set of muscles.