Your pelvic floor muscles often become weaker during pregnancy and childbirth, so some women wet their pants when they sneeze, cough or exercise. There are exercises that you can do to strengthen these muscles and help prevent your wetting your pants.
Pelvic floor muscle exercises
You can do these exercises lying down, sitting or standing. With practice they can be done anywhere and at any time – even while you’re watching TV or feeding your baby.
- Squeeze and draw in your back passage as if you’re stopping a fart.
- Squeeze and tighten your vagina like you’re holding a tampon and your bladder as if you’re stopping yourself weeing.
- Hold the squeeze for a few seconds – at first you may only be able to hold the squeeze for 1–2 seconds until your muscles get stronger. Later, try to count to 10.
- Relax and then repeat about 5–10 times.
- Keep breathing normally while you do these exercises. Make sure that you don’t pull in your stomach or squeeze your bottom when you squeeze – you will be using the wrong muscles if you do this.
Try to do this set of exercises 4–6 times a day. Stronger pelvic muscles can make sex better too!
Avoid doing these exercises while you are actually having a wee. They may stop you emptying your bladder completely, which can lead to an infection. Sitting on the toilet can be a good reminder to do your exercises though. Just make sure that you do them after you have finished weeing.
