The Blog
Postpartum Exercise: 6 Things You Can Do in the First 6 Weeks
Congratulations on welcoming your baby! The first few weeks postpartum are a special time to bond with your newborn, focus on recovery, and watch your body start to heal. You might be thinking about getting back into exercise but have heard that you should avoid it for at least 6 weeks after a vaginal birth or 8 weeks after a C-section. So what exactly can you do to keep your body moving?
Leak when you Sneeze? — 5 common habits that are worsening your bladder control.
If you pee a little when you cough, sneeze or jump, you’re not alone. Research shows that about 1 in 5 adults over 20 experience some form of lower urinary tract symptoms (LUTS).
Can Pelvic Floor Physio Help Men?
*For the content presented below, the words “male” and “female” refer to the gender assigned at birth. The below mentioned conditions are relating to the presentation of a penis/testes/prostate.
Just like in females, the male pelvic floor is a group of muscles that stretch like a sling from the pubic bone (at the front), to the tailbone (at the back), and between the ischial tuberosity (sit bone) on each side.
Interstitial Cystitis/ Painful Bladder Syndrome
Interstitial Cystitis (IC) or Bladder Pain Syndrome (BPS) is a chronic pelvic health condition accompanied by symptoms of bladder fullness/pressure, urinary frequency and pain (2). Symptoms may range from mild to severe, may come-and-go or stay constant at times feel like a bladder infection (4).
IC has been widely misunderstood for many years and was thought to have no effective treatment. Until 2002, IC and BPS were considered an exclusive diagnosis to patients who showed typical cystoscopic findings, such as glomerulations or Hunner’s ulcer (2).
What is Encopresis?
If you are reading this, you most likely have or know a child that has recently been diagnosed with, or you suspect they have encopresis. Encopresis is the term given to the soiling of stool in clothing of a child who is above the potty-training age. Soiling, also known as fecal incontinence, is usually involuntary and happens when a child cannot hold their stool in time to make it to the bathroom.
Why does Encopresis happen?
Pregnancy Swelling
If you’re expecting and you notice that your ankles are the size of your knees, don’t be alarmed. Mild swelling or edema is a natural part of pregnancy and affects about 75% of expecting mothers!
Why am I swelling?
There are a few reasons why your body may holding onto fluid in your face, legs, ankles or hands. Firstly, you produce extra fluid during pregnancy. This fluid helps to nurture you and your baby and soften the body to allow expansion with the growing uterus.
How Becoming a Mother Transformed My Practice
There are many skills I need to acquire for my job: knowledge, manual skills and conversational skills to name a few. The most profound skill, however, is empathy. To be able to accurately assess, diagnose and treat my patients, I have to first put myself in their shoes. And of course, I have no problem doing this. From the series of questions I ask I am able to get a pretty good idea of how they are feeling. I say ‘pretty good’ because there was always one small factor holding me back from fully connecting with some of my patients; I was not a mother and I did not have a child.
My Chat with All Circles
I had the honour of chatting with All Circles, a Canadian-based company that creates beautiful and simple wooden play structures, to talk about how I use play-based therapy to provide treatment to my paediatric patients
How to Help Your “Accident Prone” Child - a guide to paediatric incontinence.
Approximately 90% of children achieve urinary continence by the age of 5, but what is it like for those 10% that are “accident-prone”? Day- or night-wetting for children is not only uncomfortable but can also limit participation in sports, sleepovers and other social activities; and although less than 1% of affected children continue to experience incontinence into adulthood, it is crucial to identify and treat the cause of it sooner rather than later.
Pregnancy-Related Pelvic Girdle Pain (PGP)
Pubic symphysis dysfunction is a term given to a group of symptoms that cause pain at the pubic bone. This pain often arises during pregnancy and is sometimes exacerbated with labour and delivery. Women often feel pain in their pubic bone and the surrounding groin muscles especially with activities such as stairs, walking, getting in and out of bed or getting in and out of a car.
Because part of my work is in a hospital setting, I get to see postpartum patients within hours or days of their delivery. Those that sustain a pubis symphysis rupture often have great difficulty getting out of bed and walking...two important and basic skills needed when caring for a newborn.
Positional Plagiocephaly (Baby “Flat Head”)
Baby Flat Head (Positional Plagiocephaly) What is it?
During the first few months of life, a newborn’s skull is soft and flexible. Positional plagiocephaly is a flattened spot on the skull that can occur if your baby looks to one side more than the other. The constant pressure on one side of the head can cause a flattened spot that worsens over time as the baby more easily rests on the flat spot. It is important to note that plagiocephaly has not been shown to affect brain development, but can alter the shape and look of your baby’s face and head.
What’s the Big Deal with Tummy Time?
Since the 1994 Back-to-Sleep campaign was initiated, the rate of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) has decreased by 50% (1). It is not surprising that since then we have also seen an increase in the prevalence of plagio- and brachiocephaly (flat head syndrome).