“Being pregnant and having a baby or babies grow within your abdomen puts a lot of pressure down into the pelvis and therefore onto the pelvic floor.
“The muscles can weaken during that time and symptoms can start to occur.”
Clare also explains that there’s a bit of a misconception about the pelvic floor’s role during birth.
“In birth itself, if you’re talking vaginal birth, then the muscles don’t do much – they’re not pushing the baby out, that’s your womb.
“But they need to get out of the way. They need to release.
“We often hear a lot around pelvic floor health, ‘you need to be stronger’, but actually the conversation is broader.
“Like any muscle, it needs to be flexible and move, as well as being strong.
“And for birth, we need that flexibility so it can let the baby come out into the world.”
Clare explains why some women have pelvic floor difficulties after birth: “If you imagine stretching your hamstring loads or tearing your hamstring – we need some rehab and some time to recover before we put it through day-to-day tasks like running or jumping or things like that.”
You can read more about the symptoms and signs of a weak pelvic floor later in the article.
