Urinary incontinence

The volume of urine passed each time by a normal adult will vary from around 250 – 400mls or about 2 cups. Most people with normal bladder habits can hold on for 3-4 hours between toilet trips. Most younger adults can go through the night without voiding (passing urine / peeing)
Bladder retraining is for people who suffer from an urgent need to pass small amounts of urine more frequently than normal and may experience leakage with urgency.
The aim is to improve bladder control and increase the amount of urinary the bladder can comfortably hold without urgency / frequency or leakage of urine. We help to retrain the way you respond to the urgent desire to pass, and teach you how to suppress the urge until it is convenient to pass.
We may request a bladder diary to record the your fluid intake and your urine output. We will request you to document the bladder sensation you feel when you need to go to the bathroom, and any episodes of urinary leakage.

One of the first things we do in our assessments is look at how your posture is faring. Why? Our bodies and posture go through huge transformation throughout pregnancy and childbirth. All of your muscles and ligaments, which have softened and stretched to accommodate your bub, usually take some months post delivery to recover. Tummy muscles can also separate and the connective tissue through the midline can become stretched, causing diastasis rectus abdominus.

When the pelvis is tilted forward or back (think ‘butt tucking’ or ‘butt sticking out’ J-Lo style!) then the alignment with our spine, pelvis and rib-cage is compromised. This can throw everything out of whack, causing pain, breathing problems.

All of this lengthening and weakening of our abdominal muscles can affect the control of our pelvic floor, spine and pelvis and depending on the level of trauma during birth, there can be varying degrees of perineal (pelvic floor) pain. This weakening or pain can happen whether you had a vaginal or C-section, both affects posture.

A pessary is a flexible silicone device that goes inside the vagina and can help improve the anatomical position of the pelvic organs, and relieve prolapse symptoms such as vaginal bulge, heaviness or difficulty emptying the bladder or bowel. They can be worn all the time, or you can choose to wear them just when you need them, like in impact sport. Pessaries can also be used to improve urinary incontinence, as a rehabilitation tool for feedback of downward pressure into the pelvis during exercise and to facilitate pelvic floor strengthening.

No two vaginas are shaped the same, so there are a number of different pessary design options that may be of benefit, depending on your anatomy and type of prolapse.  All of our clients are taught how to insert, remove and self manage their pessary during a fitting. We work in collaboration with doctors to make sure that a pessary is safe and able to be used for each client.