kegels again

Body: 

After reading the info about Kegels and we had quite a few forum discussions about kegels, I decided to focus on WW posture and firebreathing plus some of the exercises from the WW book.
9 months down the track I still had a cystocele that was not going anywhere fast.
So I decided that I may as well include the dreaded Kegel so long as it was done properly- besides it could be good for my sex life.

Off to the physio I went.

Interesting. I have found that I can "draw/suck" the cystocele back in and up with a a strong sustained kegel - done while standing. If I spread my legs and squat a little, the cystocele is worse but I can still draw it back in with a strong kegel. Gradually, I seem to have less sagging. And it feels a bit empowering being able to put that bugger back into place.

I did firebreathing quite a bit. I realised that as soon as I bend over without any firebreathing even, the cystocele slides back inside.

Keeping up the WW posture consistently is sure taking me a while to master but I know it is the right thing to do.

You're getting it too Gardengirl! You must have learned to relax your belly while you suck in. This means that Kegels will give your bladder a shove forwards and support your cystocele while you are sucking in WW posture. Kegels won't fix the prolapse but they will give you some control over symptoms while you are sucking, eg getting to the toilet.

You will find that you can get less suck and less movement out of your pelvic floor muscles when in WW posture, but they will be tighter than when not in WW posture because they started off stretched tighter. Your pelvic floor will also be stronger as a result of all these long months of practising WW posture, stretching your pelvic floor tight and alternately tightening and loosening each half while you walk.

You have more power between those legs than you thought!!!

It is another tool in your box. ;-)

Louise

thanks Louise. Where did you learn all this stuff? I keep trying to remember stuff about anatomy but my brain says enough. Still keep trying tho.

Hope you are not near the bushfires. We had mega rain for months in Nth NSW but nothing to complain about compared to Qld. So it wrecked a lot of my summer garden but at least I still have a home. And my taro crop loves rain as does the ginger. Taro is a great food and ginger is an essential ingredient.

I have a new email address and my Beloved changed things on my computer so I have lost email addresses for people from WW in australia

Hi Gardengirl

Can you remember their usernames? The legal way to re-establish their contact details is for you to click on their usernames and send them an email. When they reply you will have their email address again. Email me if you need more info, or have forgotten their usernames. I may have them on my list of Australian Usernames and may be able to jog your memory with usernames. Unfortunately, I cannot just tell you their adddresses.

Thanks for your concern about the fires we are far enough away from these fires to not have to worry about them. Driving home from down south yesterday my eyes got very sore and red. I guess there is a lot of stuff in the atmosphere that should not be there. Apparently there was an angle grinder involved in the starting of one fire. People's blind stupidity amazes me sometimes.

The next big blaze is only a DYI handyman's next project away. The last big blaze near us was a man burning off when he should have had a fire permit, and not checking that all his fires had been put out properly. One day with really strong wind one of the fires flaired up again and burned out about 100 ha of hill country and a crop, and threatened several houses. Fires are so random. You never know what they are going to do next. It is really just a matter of preparing your property, making evacuation plans and praying like your life depends on it. We don't appreciate our home until somebody we know loses theirs in a fire or a flood.

Oh yeah, and don't get too attached to possessions. We have too much.

"And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field and how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you - you of little faith?" Matthew 6: 28-30

Sorry to hear about your garden after all the hard work that goes into it. I am jealous of your summer rainfall (shouldn't say that, should I!) and lack of frost. I would love to be able to grow ginger and taro.

Yes, all the anatomy stuff is complex. I have all the basics in my head, and have a model skeleton, a basic anatomy atlas and a more detailed atlas of skeletal muscles. But my main source of knowledge is the book Saving the Whole Woman, which I think every woman with POP needs to read thoroughly and inwardly digest. My copies of initially the first, and then the second, editions are very dog eared and well annotated. I still google quite a bit, looking for different views of the body, relationships between muscles and bones, diagrams of the pelvic floor, which I still don't have in 3D in my head. Of course I also learn a lot by reading the Forums and discussing things with other Members.

I do think a lot about how my body works. It is going to have to carry me around for a long time, so I need to consider its needs, and keep it functioning well. I really think that understanding what was happening in my body was the main factor in losing my fear and realising that this WW work is *so* logical, and the female pelvic region is so misunderstood. The fact that it is so difficult to represent the 3D pelvic floor graphically is, I think, one of the main reasons why the simplistic and inaccurate medical model is so widely used. The muscles, fascia and organs themselves are all interwoven with each other in very orderly and sophisticated ways, which means that the structures in there just need to be kept aligned, so that the damaged bits don't affect the whole so much. The human body has so much redundancy built in. I think it is designed to be able to operate at much less than 100% efficiency, even with quite serious damage because other parts can always take over the function of the damaged bit. I am in awe of the Creator!!!

Louise