The postpartum period is a very complicated stage for women: to all the challenges that we have to face on an emotional level, we must add the enormous physical changes that occur during this period. And I’m not just talking about the aesthetic level (that too): it is estimated that more than 60% of women who have given birth suffer from abdominal diastasis, a pathology that causes the belly to become bulging and can cause urine loss, pain when holding sexual intercourse, constipation, poor digestion or abdominal pain. Something similar happens with injuries in the pelvic floorwhich is experienced by between 20 and 50% of women and which causes urinary or fecal incontinence, pelvic organ prolapse or sexual dysfunction. Fortunately, we are now aware of the importance of a good check-up after the quarantine period to detect any of these problems in order to find a solution while we still have time.
Last October I had my second daughter. While I recovered quickly from the first birth, this time I felt without muscle strength, and a check-up with a specialized physiotherapist confirmed it: I had a diastasis of about 2 centimeters in the abdomen and the pelvic floor was very weak; Luckily, nothing pathological. Therefore, it would be enough to perform specific exercises to gradually correct this situation. And here technology has helped me a lot, always under the supervision of this specialist.
Playing to tone the pelvic floor
Let’s start with the pelvic floor. To tone it I use up to three different devices. During the first weeks of recovery I turned to the pelvic floor trainer Elvie: a device that is inserted into the vagina and records the contractions that occur with it. The interesting thing is that it is combined with an application that turns this exercise into a game: if you contract, you make the ball go up and, if you relax, it goes down. Based on these movements, the maximum contraction, the ‘lift’, the resistance are worked on… It is a product that I have used for years in different stages and training with it was already monotonous for me. In addition, a doubt arose in my mind: am I doing it well with so little muscle tone? So I decided to try another device of this type, Perifit Care+ which, unlike the previous one, does tell you if the contraction is correct. For the rest, its operation is very similar, although you do not have to charge it – its battery lasts approximately 5 years, according to the manufacturer – and the exercises it proposes look like those of a console and changes them as you advance in level.
After a few weeks, the situation was much better. Still, it wasn’t (and isn’t) all done, so I decided to follow my physical therapist’s advice and try a pelvic floor exerciser like the one from Intimina; a model that dispenses with the gamified part (it does not even connect to the mobile) but incorporates vibration into the equation: in this case, every time it vibrates you have to contract the pelvic floor: this vibration causes the muscles of the pelvic floor to be activated involuntarily. area which, added to the voluntary contraction, makes the treatment more complete. In fact, it is very curious that the use of vibrators—yes, the same ones used as sex toys—is even recommended for therapeutic purposes: a continuous vibration relaxes the muscles and perineum, which favors the normalization of tone and produces a decreased pain; while a discontinuous one produces contraction of the pelvic floor, helping to improve its tone. This was explained just a few weeks ago by a physiotherapist specializing in Instagram which also highlighted its usefulness in case of scars due to episiotomies or tears.
Electric flow
And what about the abdomen? In this case, everything has gone substantially slower and I still need a lot more work. It is not easy, since during pregnancy hormones are secreted that help ligaments and joints become more mobile – something essential for childbirth; a situation that lasts as long as breastfeeding lasts and causes the muscles to be hypermobile. So toning them is a lot more work.
Therefore, in addition to the recommended exercises between 2 and 4 times a week (hypopressive, Pilates…), I have been using an electrostimulator with EMS function daily – which is used to tone the muscles; he Beurer EM-49. By strategically placing its four electrodes in the transverse muscle area, it has helped me to regain strength in this area somewhat more quickly. And among its many pre-configured programs, it has one for shaping the abdominal muscles that I used during the first few days, and then moved on to another focused on tightening them. On a more aesthetic level, in recent weeks I have been helped by using a device that uses microcurrents combined with massages to tone, firm and eliminate cellulite. It is the Foreo Bear 2 Bodywhich is linked to an app to choose the treatment indicated in each case (it has one for the upper layer of the skin and another that penetrates the muscles) and guides you step by step to do it correctly and achieve the best results.
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