A Strong Pelvic Floor Will Complicate Your Labour!

Whilst I was pregnant, I was religious about doing my pelvic floors and transverse ab exercises. I wanted to give myself the easiest time in labour possible, so I did my exercises 3 times a day every day - and 5 times in the last trimester.

I knew that a weak pelvic floor would lead to stress incontinence, (where you leak urine when you cough, laugh or sneeze, etc), both during pregnancy and after and that was a problem I definitely wanted to avoid!

One day whilst training I got chatting to a couple of ladies in the gym who had children and we got onto the subject of, "your body will never be the same again". We started talking about pelvic floor exercises and they both said to me that my strong pelvic floor would slow down my labour and make delivery difficult!

I asked them why they thought this and they said they'd been told that the pelvic floor was used "to help everything stay closed" and therefore it would work against me when I wanted to push my baby out!

Apparently this was something one of them had read in magazine somewhere and she'd been telling all the pregnant women she knew - me included!

I could see where she'd gotten mixed up. In a way the pelvic floor does help keep everything closed. The pelvic floor is a saddle of muscle that sits like a hammock across the bottom of the pelvis. It has several functions:

1. It helps your bladders stay closed - stopping leaking and incontinence, especially when sneezing or coughing

2. It supports your pelvic organs and the contents of the abdominal cavity and keeps everything in place. Older women with weak pelvic floors can suffer slipping - where the organs slip down and an operation is needed to put everything back in place. (My ex-boyfriends mother had this and it's not pleasant I assure you)

3. It controls wind and your bowel movements

4. It improves your sexual awareness

In pregnancy the pelvic floor is stretched and weakened by the increasing pressure and load of your baby so it is EVEN MORE important to do pelvic floor exercises to maintain its strength and prevent stress incontinence both during and afterwards.

A strong pelvic floor will not hinder labour but in fact it will help in the second stage of labour and will reduce your pushing time - that's got to be good!

A Real Life Example

After I gave birth to River, I had a pretty speedy recovery - I was back training within 10 days of giving birth and I felt pretty strong and in shape. I was still doing my pelvic floors and transverse exercises, but as the weeks wore on and I got more and more tired and sleep deprived, I started to forget to do them. I became very blase about the whole thing, thinking that as I had done so much work already, I didn't need to stay on top of it to keep my pelvic floor at the same level it was.

BIG MISTAKE - BIG - HUGE!!

I had stupidly forgotten, (in my new mum foggy brain), that the pelvic floor is a muscle just like any other...

IF YOU DON'T USE IT - YOU LOSE IT!

I started back at the gym 5 weeks ago and my first foray on the treadmill was not a pleasant one! Within 3 minutes of jogging I had my first experience of stress incontinence! I was severely disappointed in myself. I knew that if I'd have kept up my pelvic floor exercises, that would never have happened.

So now I'm having to work very hard to get it back. So my message to you today is

DO NOT FORGET YOUR PELVIC FLOOR EXERCISES!!!!


Here's some simple exercises you can do:

1. To find your pelvic floor try stopping the flow of urine midway when you go to the toilet. This is what it feels like to contract your pelvic floor.

NB: ONLY DO THIS ONCE! This is just so you know what it feels like to squeeze your pelvic floor. You should not not do this regularly whilst urinating as you may cause urinary tract infections.

2. Now that you know how it feels - contract and hold your pelvic floor for a count of 5 seconds. Repeat 10 times, working up to a set of 20 as you get stronger. Remember to breathe!

3. Imagine your pelvic floor is an elevator. Move your pelvic floor up inside you from floor 1 to 5. Hold for 1 count then descend slowly from 5 to 1.

You will probably find the descent very difficult to control at first. You'll know you are getting stronger when you are able to control the descent better!


Repeat 5 times, working up to a set of 10 as you get stronger.

How I beat morning sickness!

Morning sickness playing you up?

Don't you think it's weird how they call it morning sickness when it can happen any time of day? I know mine was worse in the afternoon and early evening, when I would hit my tired points. I also suffered really badly in the middle of the night.

The last thing I wanted to do then, when I got home from work was cook dinner. If I did manage it, more than likely it would be somthing less than substantial like porridge, or an egg on toast as I wasn't prepared for it! I also started to grab at sugary quick fix snacks that would give me a temporary sugar rush then leave me feeling exhausted, moody and even more nauseated. To add to all this, more than a few times I found myself skipping dinner altogether and feeling 10 times worse later on in the night and the next morning.

Thankfully I soon realised that these bad habits were by large causing a lot of the nausea and sickness I was feeling. My blood sugar was all over the place what with bouts of starving myself followed by huge hits of sugar, sending my insulin into huge spikes and troughs. I also realised that I was just asking for trouble with my erratic eating as I was doing all the right things to create an insulin resistance in myself as well as putting my baby's development at risk.

It was time for a major change and quick style! For years I had implemented the Elimination plan with all my clients, both prenatal and postnatal and had amazing results, now I got to experience it in pregnancy myself.

Elimination is all about eating from only whole and natural food sources and eliminating all foods that are toxic or denatured by processing and manufacture. There is no counting calories or cutting out food groups so there's no need to worry about whether you'll be getting a balance of nutrients - as long as you eat from a wide variety of all natural wholefood sources, you'll be supplying your body and your baby with foods that are jam-packed with high quality nutrients. Not only that but eating the Elimination way and avoiding all toxins means that your body will get rid of any excess water and surplus fat that it is holding onto, (that is non-essential to your pregnancy). What more could you ask for from a pregnancy nutrition plan?

Well within days my sickness and fatigue had stabilised and within one week, it had disappeared altogether. I believe this was largely due to cutting out all added and refined sugars as when I finished the 30 day Elimination plan and introduced sugar back into my diet, the sickness returned with a vengeance. Needless to say, I didn't make this mistake again!

OK so I know you're gonna be asking what the nutrition plan entails. In order to clean out your system and get ot working at peak performance you need to cut out all denatured, manufactured and artificial foods. These are:

Alcohol

Wheat Products (including soups, sauces and other products that use wheat as a thickener)

Processed dairy (milk and cheese - you CAN still have eggs, live yoghurt and real butter)

Processed foods - anything with non-natural ingredients (i.e. something you can't pronounce on the label or ingredients with numbers in)

Sugar - in all forms including honey

Microwaves (as they alter the structure of food cells)

Caffeine

That's it. So all you should be left with are foods that are whole, unaltered and natural in source, i.e. your food should either come from the ground, swim in a river or sea, walk on land or fly in the sky!

In my Complete Pregnancy Support System, I take you through a complete 30 day nutrition plan to help you detox your diet and free your body from toxins safely and gradually. It is important to note that if you attempt to detox your diet too quickly you will suffer with detox symptoms which include headaches, nausea and flu-like symptoms.

As with any change in your diet you should always check with your physician and pregnancy care team first. This post is for information purposes only and is not intended to replace advice given by your medical practitioner, registered dietician or nutritionist.

Top 5 Nutrition Tips for a Perfect Pregnancy Profile!

Ever wonder how some mums to be have a perfect neat bump without piling on pregnancy poundage anywhere else? You know the ones, you see them from behind in the supermarket and you wouldn’t even know they were pregnant, then they turn around and, hey presto, there’s a perfect neat bump!
Is it to do with their body type? Well in some cases yes. We’ve all got a friend who can eat whatever she likes, never exercise, (apart from on the dance floor), and not put on an ounce, whilst we struggle to maintain our figures on high protein, low GI diets and an exercise regime that would scare the marines, but thankfully these skinny minnies are in the minority. Most of us fall into the category of watch what you eat and exercise regularly and your body will obey. Indulge one too many times and you’ll pay the price in those skinny jeans!
The same applies in pregnancy. It’s amazing just how many women will use pregnancy as an excuse to “take a break” from their healthy lifestyle, just because they know they’re going to get bigger anyway. In fact someone close to me said to me in the early stages of my pregnancy, “this is the only time you get to eat whatever you like and not worry about it!”. I was amazed as she had just had a baby herself and was struggling to lose her pregnancy weight a year on. Didn’t she realise that the more you put on in pregnancy the more you have to lose after?
So here are my top 5 tips to make sure you keep your sexy mama figure through pregnancy and pop back into shape quickly afterwards:
1. Eat small meals little and often – yes I know you’ve heard this one a million times before, but it’s important. For one it’s even more important in pregnancy to keep your blood sugar stable to avoid feeling exhausted, faint or sick. Two; small meals mean you won’t feel bloated and uncomfortable or suffer with indigestion and heartburn. Three; if your blood sugar is stable you won’t go rushing for the chocolate in a desperate bid to get your sugar levels back up quickly. Stable blood sugar = No sugar cravings.
2. Avoid processed food – all those chemicals, preservatives and stabilisers just aren’t any good for you or baby, not to mention all the hidden sugar and salt. Processing denatures food and kills off the nutrients so that the nutritional value of a processed food versus a natural product is virtually nil. What that means to you is that you will have to eat a lot more processed food to provide your baby, and your body, with the nutrients it needs to function properly and feed the growing life inside you. Eat all natural and you won’t feel the need to eat nearly as much food to satisfy your body’s nutritional needs.
3. Eat lots of fibrous fruit and veg – pregnancy brings with it the joys of constipation so make sure it doesn’t become a pain in the proverbial by including a big variety of fruit and vegetables in your diet. Aim to eat fruit and vegetables of all colours in the spectrum to provide you with a balance of vitamins and minerals and try to include more of the high fibre fruit and veg, such as apples, pears, berries, clemetines, broccoli, cauliflower, leafy greens etc.
4. Avoid all sugar – Sugar, dextrose, high-fructose corn syrup, honey, maple syrup, beet sugar, it all does the same thing. Creates an aggressive insulin response. Insulin is your fat storing hormone. The higher the insulin response the more fat you’ll store. So eat added sugar = store more fat. All food contains sugar so there’s no need to add it to anything.
5. Eat protein with every meal – protein is essential for the cellular growth and development of your baby. It is also necessary for the placenta, amniotic and maternal tissues and the 50% increase in blood volume that accompanies pregnancy. Not only that but protein also makes you feel fuller for longer, and doesn’t create an aggressive insulin response, meaning that you won’t be craving a sugar fix an hour after eating.
If you follow these simple rules you should find that you only put on what’s necessary during your pregnancy in order to support you and your growing baby. A healthy weight gain is between 24 – 34 lbs over the course of your pregnancy. That’s roughly just over ½ pound / week. You’ll also find it a lot easier to return to your pre-pregnancy size afterwards if you’re already eating a healthy and balanced diet.