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February 19 - February 21, 2022
3 One-third of women suffer from a pelvic floor disorder, which includes prolapse and urinary and fecal incontinence.
prolapse may affect over half of all women and that some degree of prolapse is extremely common in older women.)
“We should have routine physical therapy for the pelvic floor starting at six weeks post
birth. There is no reason why we can’t do this.”
Women with diastasis recti can be taught how to engage their transverse abdominals and pelvic floor, which is crucial to recovery. Women are often told to do Kegel exercises before and after birth, but that is just one repetitive motion. A single motion cannot solve a range of issues affecting a variety of muscles.
After the incision has healed, a therapist can mobilize and massage both the internal and external scar tissue.
The more scar tissue is moved, the softer it becomes, and the less havoc it can wreak on your bladder, bowels, sex life, and lower back.
This is everyday life for new French mothers, whose government views physical therapy as a long-term investment in their health.
sends a message to new mothers that their postpartum injuries are not imagined or trivial—that they, and their bodies, are deserving of care and attention.
The more I allowed myself to stay still, the more I realized how important it was for me to care for myself, my body, the one that increasingly seemed to exist only for other people’s survival and happiness.
Through extensive dissection and, later, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), O’Connell defined the true size and shape of the clitoris, which has ten times more tissue than any anatomy textbook or picture at the doctor’s office shows.
It holds eight thousand nerve endings—twice the amount of the penis.
I want my daughter always to know that her parts are hers
alone.
own. I don’t want the workings of her body to ever be a mystery to her, something that she doesn’t understand or looks to others for it to feel complete.
Emerging science reveals that most likely all of us have at least a few cells from our mothers—and, astonishingly, other people including maternal grandmothers, and possibly older siblings—in our bodies.
microchimeric cells are able to survive for so long because they are stem or stem-related cells, capable of dividing indefinitely and developing into a wide range of specialized cells, including beating heart muscle or rapidly firing neurons.
Our children are, quite literally, frequent and widespread residents of our brains.
“hormones, hormones, hormones.” (Hormones, in fairness, do play a complex role in the body, acting as chemical messengers that affect cognitive function, the cardiovascular system, and various other systems. They are responsible for more than just our reproductive health.)
together, they found that women with the autoimmune disease scleroderma—a debilitating chronic illness in which a person’s skin and connective tissue harden and tighten—had higher levels of fetal microchimerism than healthy women.
Microchimeric cells have also been found throughout women’s bodies in healthy organs such as the breasts, heart, thyroid, lungs, liver, and, as mentioned previously, the brain.
cells. Fetal cells have been found in breast tissue and breast milk, hinting that they could have a hand in increasing their own food supply.
Pregnancy is known to have a long-term effect of reducing the risk of breast cancer.
early results from her studies suggest that maternal microchimerism—cells from the mother present in fetal umbilical cord blood—are effective against the development of acute leukemia.5
Nelson’s study was eventually published in another journal, but the letter—which she still has—is emblematic of the ongoing struggle for legitimacy when it comes to the study of female reproductive health.
studying microchimerism has “potentially important implications for our understanding of health and disease pathology, including lactation science, thyroid diseases, autoimmune diseases, cancer and even maternal emotional and psychological health postpartum.”
80 percent of new mothers report a range of mood changes, and that as many as one in seven mothers will experience postpartum depression and/or anxiety.
To be a mother is to be on intimate, daily terms with conflict, sadness, joy, anger—all the big emotions, all of them urgent, right there under the skin ready to jump out.
Your organs have shifted, your muscles have torn, there are extra folds and layers to your skin and soul.
Pregnancy brings about the birth of not one but two new beings. Mother is not a fixed identity; we are dynamic and grow along with our young.
