“What do you do for work?” is a question that I have learned to either escape or answer vaguely and then brace for reactions. And that’s because the honest answer is, “I do physical therapy for vaginas and rectums to help to women pee, poop, and have sex.” This is not the kosher answer for most dinner parties and cocktail hours.
But last month I went to a different kind of party. One where this answer wasn’t only welcomed, but it brought up a lot of questions from fellow attendees. It was a Mother’s Day iced tea party at my son’s daycare. Ten mamas sat with their toddlers at a shin-height dining table, sipping iced tea from tiny cups and taking pictures with their precious babies.
Once I mentioned that I was a “physical therapist of the bladder, bowel, and vagina” to the mama sitting next to me, she told me about the difficulties she had been having with a leaky bladder since having her baby. Another mama said that her abdominal muscles have been so weak since giving birth that she still looks pregnant. Another one talked about pain in her pelvis and the fact that things “just don’t feel right down there anymore.”
After eight out of ten women talked about their symptoms, everyone started to wonder why so many women had pelvic floor problems in one room. “What a coincidence!” the mom next to me exclaimed.
“Not really,” I explained. It was heartbreaking but not surprising. Heartbreaking because these women had been in the medical system, seen their obstetricians, and spoken to family and friends, only to be told that this was inevitable. They were convinced that a broken body was the “price of motherhood.”
But it wasn’t surprising. Research shows that 60% of women who have given birth once and 80% of women who have given birth twice report some degree of pelvic floor dysfunction. Very few of these women receive proper care, even when complaining about their symptoms. It is one more way we fail our mothers in the United States.
We spent half an hour discussing bladders, bowels, and pelvic floors. I pulled up some pictures on my phone, and before I knew it, everyone was crouched over the kid-sized dining table and listening to me talking about the ever-mystical pelvic floor.
“But how did you get into this field of pelvic floor therapy?” a mama asked gingerly. She really wanted to ask, “Why in the world would you talk about pee and poop all day and do physical therapy for private parts instead of treating arthritis of the knee?!”
“I didn’t choose pelvic floor therapy; it chose me,” I replied. After suffering from pelvic and vaginal pain for three years and not finding any answers, I stumbled upon pelvic floor therapy during one of my professional seminars as a physical therapist.
Pelvic floor therapy quite literally changed my life. Both physically and professionally. My pain improved, and my urinary leakage resolved completely within a few short weeks. I decided to do this work because it was so impactful for me and because so few women have access to this care.
If it took me, a physical therapist, more than three years to discover a specialty in my profession that dealt with the pelvis. Can you imagine how long it takes an average person to get to a pelvic floor therapist?
Peeing your pants, gritting through painful sex, and feeling “not right” down there aren’t things any woman should live with. Yet, 80% of women who come to me seeking help for prolapse and urinary or sexual problems have been searching for answers for years.
Pelvic health is not only understudied but also considered taboo and too often dismissed as something “not real” in our society.
