Feb 5, 20203 min read

A PT's prenatal to postpartum story

Updated: Feb 20, 2020

In the Beginning

For as long as I could remember, I was an athlete.

Sports got me through my many years of schooling and years to follow. In high school, my basketball coach introduced me to the career of sports physical therapy and, just like that, my lifelong journey began. Traveling the world with a professional sports team and using physical therapy to keep the players in the game. It seemed like a dream... Well, life is a series of choices, so I didn't quite make it outside of the tristate area. Traveling the world with the Olympic team was more romance and the true passion was physical therapy. I continued to develop my passion while doing all types of sports along the way.

About that life thing

While in the early years as a physical therapist, in 2012, my life changed forever. I got married and we got pregnant..... I wanted the most natural birth experience possible, so I decided to have my first child at the Brooklyn Birthing Center. What an experience..... Then at a one week postpartum, we moved to Connecticut. Hard to believe that that was planned!!! What was not included in this plan, was everything else... being a mom, connecting with my new born and the many new things that my body could and couldn't do. This kicked off my quest to learn and educate all on postpartum recovery.

Practice! It's not a Game.

What is the silence all about.....

After experiencing it, it is amazing how little is spoken about the days following childbirth. I myself felt like an alien. I didn't know my own body. The parts that I did know only partially followed directions! Oh and my 6 week postpartum check-up..... I felt like I was being punked. All these things that were still out of sorts inside and it took longer to schedule the appointment than to have it. As an athletic mamma who was eager to get back to playing Capoeira (Afro-Brazilian Martial Art), I felt like getting back to training was solely based on my ability to pretend that I was back to normal. My perception was that all Moms bounce right back after being cleared at their 6 week check-up; I've since heard countless moms confess that it was hard to get back to recreational activities/sport. The apparent lack of information in returning to sports had me creating a path that had been traveled by so many others before. I didn't know bouncing back from pregnancy couldn't occur without the proper rehabilitation time. What I did learn later of course, is that there is a community of peers (Physical Therapist) who specialize in pre and postpartum care. By my second child, which was was born via C-section, a whole host of new issues came up and I was still only prepared to manage some of them. I had an even harder time physically "bouncing back" with my second. I put on my physical therapy hat and went to work a little differently. There were many more changes in my body that I wasn't aware of until I finally saw a Pelvic Floor Physical Therapist. It was there that I was blown away and left scratching my head and wondering why this hadn't been a larger topic in my school curriculum.

Long story short, pelvic health physical therapy became a fundamental part of my practice. Realizing the education gap between prenatal and postpartum recovery, I felt the need to bring better healing, education and empowerment to mom's during this pre-postpartum journey.

“Great achievement is usually born of great sacrifice, and is never the result of selfishness.” Napoleon Hill

It takes a village plus a pelvic floor physical therapist to raise a concern.

If you are pregnant and/or postpartum, I would recommend seeking a professional to understand the changes in your body. Support through the postpartum recovery process is a necessity, so consider adding a pelvic floor physical therapist to your birth plan.