I learnt something very interesting today, which I had never considered before. The window of opportunity for introducing new foods to infants is limited. It best time usually ranges from around 4-6 months to around 12-14 months. This, interestingly, corresponds to the … Continue reading
Does anyone else think the traditional oral glucose tolerance test to screen for gestational diabetes, is enough to put anyone in to a diabetic coma? For regular healthy women who are conscious about what they eat, this test is highly … Continue reading
Out of all the embarrassing pregnancy, birth and post partum issues women love to talk about – gas, excess sweating, varicosities, pooping while pushing, leaky boobs, this one hardly ever makes it to the coffee table. Incontinence is a huge issue that affects more women that you think. Around 25% in fact. That’s 1 out of every 4 of your mommy friends. While we all sit around forgetting to do our kegels and hoping it will never happen to us. For many women this is a very real reality.
When I was approached by the Public Outreach Department at DrugWatch.com to see if I was interested in hosting a guest blog regarding this issue, I was happy to accept. Below is their post. Whilst doing my own research on the topic, I came across another fantastic blog post from fellow blogger CrapAtPregnancy, ‘Nobody wants to be ThatWoman‘.
Childbirth is a joy in many ways, as any mother knows, but some of the effects it can have on the body aren’t always quite so joyful, such as incontinence. If you are one of the many women who feel the need to keep the incontinence pads just as handy as the Kleenex when cold and flu season arrives, joy probably isn’t the term you’d use to describe that particular problem. The good news is you probably won’t have to live with the threat of flash flooding when you cough or sneeze forever, since most women can reduce or eliminate incontinence with treatment.
If you have a tendency to get a little moist “down there” when you laugh or sneeze, what you have going on is a common condition called stress urinary incontinence, or SUI, which often has its roots in the strain that pregnancy and childbirth place on the pelvic floor muscles. It affects about 25 percent of women at one time or another — during pregnancy, soon after childbirth or around the time of menopause.
Causes
SUI happens when the pelvic floor has been weakened or stretched to the point that it lacks the strength to hold back urine flow when pressure is placed on the bladder, resulting in that annoying dribble that can happen when you laugh or cough. Pelvic floor weakness is most often caused by pregnancy and childbirth, but there are other factors that can contribute, such as obesity, heavy lifting, chronic coughing or frequent straining due to constipation.
Treatment
Physical therapy is the first line of treatment for SUI and has helped many women. Since the pelvic floor muscles are the ones at that are at the root of the problem, therapy typically involves Kegel exercises to strengthen and tone the pelvic floor, often with the addition of biofeedback to monitor muscle function and specialized weights and other tools to enhance results. Many therapists also use other exercise techniques in SUI therapy, such as yoga and Pilates, which aid in strengthening core muscles as well as the pelvic floor.
If you’re carrying around a few extra pounds, losing weight can help, since that extra weight puts pressure on your bladder and pelvic floor. Adjustments to your daily diet can help control your moisture problem too, such as limiting foods and beverages that can irritate the bladder. So cut back on coffee, tea and soft drinks that contain caffeine, and avoid spicy and fried foods. Constipation can worsen SUI symptoms, so make sure you have plenty of fiber in your diet, and make sure you’re getting enough vitamins and minerals every day to support muscle function and healing.
Surgery
If non-invasive treatments don’t help, surgery is an option that has helped many women. However, you should know that procedures that use vaginal mesh implants, such as bladder slings, to treat SUI are riskier than traditional surgeries. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has released safety alerts on these products due to a drastic increase in reports of serious complications over the past few years, such as mesh erosion, organ perforation, mesh shrinkage and infection. These complications have caused many women severe pain. Thousands have sought justice through the filing of a transvaginal mesh lawsuit. Since most SUI cases can be resolved without mesh, talking to your doctor about procedures that don’t use mesh is probably your safest bet.
Elizabeth Carrollton writes to inform the general public about defective medical
I came across an article earlier this week on Honest.com titled, ‘What’s Inside Disposable Diapers?’, which discusses, as you may have guessed, the contents of your average disposable diaper. They revealed that disposable diaper companies have no obligation to state … Continue reading
I have come to realize over the last couple of months, that I am in fact, a ‘Crunchy Mama’. It never really dawned on my before. I thought everyone was in to this kind of stuff. However as I’ve sat … Continue reading
I came across this on Facebook, and it struck me as a fascinating topic, and one in which I’d say affects the majority of women in some way after the birth of their children.
Why is it that we have come to accept our pregnant bodies as a thing of beautiful which is celebrated and praised, yet we are so ashamed as a society of our post birth body.
Why is this subject never talked about?
Margaret Lazarus‘ film BirthMarkings explores our post-birth bodies, and how our self-image changes after giving birth. BirthMarkings reframes the concept of beauty and motherhood, raises important questions about body image, and reveals the incongruity of western standards of beauty with the natural process of pregnancy and childbirth.
How do you feel about your body since giving birth?
Related Topic – ‘Beautiful Whatever’
The Beatiful Dr Nancy (Nancy Salgueiro), an Ottawa birth coach, chiropractor and mother of two, has been kind enough to welcome viewers in to her home to witness her home birth…LIVE!!
Years ago, birth was a normal part of life. Women would often witness many births before becoming pregnant with her own child. Women would support other women through birth. But as birth moved out of the home and in to the hospital, we took away the generations of information handed down from one woman to the next. Birth become shrouded and private. Dr Nancy wants to help change the ‘visual blueprint’ of birth as most women know it today. Many women today have only ever witnessed birth in front of a screen in their living room. ‘Reality’ TV shows such as ‘Birth Stories’, or ‘Birth Day’, or births on programs such as ER, depict birth as an over dramatized, medical emergency-people running around screaming and shouting, dad’s passing out, women out of control and hooked up to machines, treated as passive participants in their care, births lasting no more than 30 minutes, series of unlikely emergencies and events and so on, and so on. All these things are great for viewing ratings, but are not good for creating an accurate image of birth. Women are entering in to birth with no real sense of reality of what is going to happen. Less and less people today are attending prenatal parent education classes, and instead, turning to the internet as their source of information. But we all know how the internet works. There are plenty of good sites out there, however there are many many more that are not!
This is an important issue, and one we need to address if we want our image of birth to change to improve our outcomes, and to stop cheating women out of the true potential of birth.
“For me an empowered birth is one where I am the one who makes the decisions for me and my baby. Where I am in an environment of love, support, and respect for the power within my body to successfully birth my baby. Where I can be free to express anything I need to express; sound, movement, fear, love, ecstasy in a place that my expression will not lead to interference from the outside. I believe women have the ability to create an empowering birth experience regardless of if the birth outcome is natural, medicated, or surgical. When women are making the decisions for their bodies and their babies out of education, faith, belief and confidence in themselves and not out of fear or manipulation they will be empowered. I believe in the human body, in it’s power, and in birth’s ability to transform a person, woman, wife, and mother.” Dr. Nancy, Your Birth Coach.
-’Even in the midst of tears and pain, liquid gold flows forth‘
An inspiring and courageous story of Jennifer Coias from Brazil, who so tragically lost her baby due to stillbirth at 35 weeks, who in the face of everything, as a way of honoring her son Jude, is giving the amazing gift of breast milk to donate to other babies in need. She is still only 9 days post partum, and has been pumping around the clock with an old, used, broken pump held together by a bungee cord!
Through heart-felt donations from individuals, including a couple of mothers who had lost babies of their own, intactivists Jennifer had worked with in the past (the Barefoot Intactivist, among others), and a gift from The International Breastfeeding Symbol Store, they were able to secure a quality pump for Jennifer, as well as a few much needed breast shields and supplies.
The pump is currently on its way via flight (with a friend) to Brazil and we all hope it will be in Jennifer’s hands soon.
If you would like to donate, or read more about Jennifer’s story, click here, or visit Jennifer’s Facebook support page
Truly, she is the epitome of all that World Milksharing Week represents: liquid love bottled for any baby and mother in need.
‘If a Doula were a drug, it would be unethical not to use it’ Dr John Kennell 1998 DONA International Founder I believe every mother should have a Doula.I believe that Doulas have the power to enable women to experience … Continue reading
“Natural birth has become an endangered species…and we need to save it, and we need to save it because our future physical, emotional and mental well-being of our culture depends on it”
Sarah Buckley, MD, Author of ‘Gentle Birth, Gentle Mothering’
‘We may end up in a society where we have weakened the Oxytocin system. That might mean
that people become less interactive, less friendly and more stressed’
Kerstin Uvnäs Moberg, MD & Professor in Physiology, Author of, ‘The Oxytocin Factor’
Pretty convincing reasons why natural birth is not just important for the Mother, but for society as a whole.
Quotes taken from the ‘One World Birth’ trailer. Click here to check out their website
