Episode #45: Where Rhonda and Dayna are at in their postpartum symptom and fitness journey
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In this episode, Rhonda and Dayna chat about where they each are in their postpartum journey in terms of exercise and symptoms. Feeling down in the thick of your postpartum journey? We hope that you can use this as reassurance that things can and will get better!
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SHOW NOTES:
(0:49) - Episode intro
(2:18) - Rhonda relays her fitness and symptom journey up to where she is now - 3.5 years postpartum
(12:07) - Dayna responds to some points that Rhonda brought up (and what to do when you are told you have a prolapse)
(17:23) - On the resiliency of the human body
(19:14) - Dayna relays her fitness and symptom journey up to where she is now - 4 years postpartum
(29:25) - The hardest part of the postpartum return to exercise journey
(30:27) - Returning to exercise post sickness
(31:36) - What we hope sharing our stories does for you - and the episode wrap up!
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Episode #45: Where Rhonda and Dayna are at in their postpartum symptom and fitness journey
We're excited to have you join us for this episode of Pelvic Health and Fitness. I'm Dayna Morellato, Mom, Orthopedic and Pelvic Health Physiotherapist. And I'm Rhonda Chamberlain, Mom, Orthopedic Physiotherapist and Pre Postnatal Fitness Coach. On this show, we have open and honest conversations about all phases of motherhood, including fertility, pregnancy, birth, postpartum, menopause, and everything in between.
We also provide helpful education and information on fitness, the pelvic floor, and many aspects of women's health, including physical, mental, and emotional wellness. Please remember as you listen to this podcast that this is not meant to treat or diagnose any medical conditions. Please contact your medical provider if you have specific questions or concerns.
Thanks so much for joining us. Grab a cup of coffee. Or wine. And enjoy!
Hey everyone and welcome back to the pelvic health and fitness podcast. Rhonda and Dayna here, and we are going to chat today a little bit about where both of us are at in our postpartum journey in terms of exercise and symptoms. Um, yeah, so we'll each kind of take a turn going over where we're at in that regard and, uh, just sort of as a reassurance Potentially that if you're in the thick of, um, newborn phase symptoms and not maybe doing what you want to be doing in your fitness world, that it does get better.
And I understand that might be triggering to hear. I feel like when people said like, it gets better, it gets better when you're in the thick of it. It's hard to hear that, but it does get better. Um, and yeah, we'll kind of chat about that sort of like a live to tell kind of thing. Absolutely. It does get better.
And sometimes it can get a little worse again, and then it gets better. Right. I think as human beings, we're sort of products are certainly responding to our environment and everything that's going on around it. And so I think it's important to know that, yes, this is not your forever, especially if you're in that first year postpartum.
Um, and we're now I'm, I'm four and six years postpartum and you're three and five. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, time really does fly. It's wild. So I'll start out, um, kind of going over. So where I started out and we sort of chatted about this on the podcast already, but my background is CrossFit. So I worked at a CrossFit gym, um, competed in CrossFit local competitions leading up to having my kiddos.
Um, postpartum after my first daughter, Sadie, I was able to get back to CrossFit competitions. I probably pushed it a little too soon, too much, but that again was a live to tell kind of story. Um, and then after Teagan. found myself kind of struggling to get back into that intensity as quickly. Um, I dealt with some prolapse symptoms.
So I had a grade two prolapse diagnosis. Um, I think it was around 10 weeks postpartum and, um, A lot of just trying to come to terms with that and a lot of working through my identity as an athlete and how that's shifting, um, after having kids. And then a lot of that too, was just recognizing that, My life and the time I had available was going to be very different with two kids.
The ability to get to a gym obviously was much harder. So essentially that is what led to me creating my Strong at Home membership because I started to recognize that if I want to move my body and I want Fitness to be part of my life as a mom to two kids, I have to make it work from home. And so, yeah, so again, so I sort of like went back to the very basics because I was having prolapse symptoms, um, and just rehabbed my body super slow.
And I just remember thinking, yeah, having so many moments of how and when am I ever going to get back to lifting heavy weights? Because that Ultimately was my love. And I think along the way I try to convince myself that like, I don't need that, which I, I don't necessarily need that, but I do really love it.
I, as soon as I found CrossFit, the weightlifting side of things was like, just so fun for me. Um, I love the competitiveness of it. I love trying to push myself and see what I can do. Um, so yeah, I remember kind of vividly around six months postpartum, Up until that point, I was only using dumbbells. I only use dumbbells up until recently, and I was using 10 pound dumbbells and around six months, my like 25 pound dumbbells, actually, I think I got fifteens and twenties in that time too, but my 25 pound dumbbells was the most I had kind of looking at them and be like, I wonder how it would feel to just do like some squats.
I did have some fear. So even working in the world that I do where I'm very conscious about not fear mongering with my clients and really empowering them to feel strong. I was nervous to try going heavier. And I think, yeah, I did a couple of workouts with the 25s. It felt good. In that time, I will say I had like fluctuating prolapse symptoms, mostly around my cycle, sometimes like ovulation sometimes or my period I'd get sort of that heaviness sensation again, for me, my, the thing that helped me the most when I had a resurgence of prolapse symptoms was working on pelvic floor relaxation.
So I think that is what I learned about myself and my body. And still to this day. If I have any, I don't necessarily have prolapse symptoms anymore, but I'll get just like uncomfortable feeling sort of in my lower tummy. Um, depending on where I'm at in my cycle and a lot of it is pelvic floor tension and like abdominal tension related.
And so whenever I had those symptoms creep up throughout that postpartum journey, if I went back to. My breathing went back to hip mobility and just really focused on that down training side of things that really improved my symptoms personally. I think that's a lot of people. Yeah. Yeah. And so, yeah, so I just kept doing my dumbbell workouts.
I basically followed my strong at home membership that it exists today and yeah, it wasn't until, so I remembered this. Summer. So Tegan had just turned three and I did actually, um, the movement maestro Chante Cofield. She is a physical therapist in the United States, had a webinar that I attended. Um, I forget the title of it, but basically it was something about anyways, one of the topics she discussed in that webinar was finding joy and like finding fun in your life.
And it was kind of like a light bulb moment. I was like, I do, I loved my, and I still love my home workouts, but I think I was still really missing, like having the community aspect, having a competitive edge to it. So yeah, I've talked it over with Jay and my husband and yeah, he's like, why don't you look into like joining CrossFit again?
I still nothing wrong with CrossFit, but I feel like I've just kind of, you know, Exited that part of my life and I don't have the same love and passion for CrossFit anymore. Um, but I kept thinking about weightlifting and even when I was doing CrossFit, I had always wanted to look into specifically like a weight, an Olympic weightlifting program and coach.
Um, cause yeah, in CrossFit you do weightlifting, but it's not like a specific program for that. And so, yeah, so then I started Googling things and as I'm Googling it, I'm like seeing videos of people weightlifting and like just getting so excited and oh my goodness, I think I need to do this. So I signed up and I started in August just once a week at a local Olympic weightlifting gym.
Shout out to Power Academy. Um, and it like from day one, I stepped into that gym and just did like some barbell stuff. And Oh my goodness. I was like, this is what I've been missing. And came home and told Jay, like, yes, like always so thankful for him. Cause he kind of nudges me sometimes cause yeah, I think as moms it's, it's tough, right?
Like we, yeah. We want to be home and we want to be with our kids. But Dayna and I, before recording just talked about how it's so important for our kids to see us exploring our other interests outside of mom life. And so, yeah, so I've been doing it since August. Now it's January. So just around six months and.
It's been amazing. My body's been feeling really good. Um, I've had little like tweaks with my knees kind of thing and just kind of getting used to the weight again, the heavier weights again, but I've been very kind of conservative with getting back into it. The weights that I'm lifting is nowhere close to the weights that I was lifting pre kiddos.
But I'm getting there and I'm like really proud of myself and it's been so fun to have that outside thing that's fun for me to do just once a week still. Um, I might enter into a competition potentially this spring. So yeah, it's been really good. So I would say overall, like symptom wise, prolapse symptoms are pretty good.
Pretty much non existent. Again, I'd say the only symptom I get sometimes is kind of like a tightness feeling in my lower tummy that as soon as I do my relaxation things, then I feel better. Um, I did have a reassessment back, uh, just before Christmas last year, um, with our friend, Laura, um, shout out Laura Holland.
And, uh, I, I no longer so I have a grade one prolapse now. So, um, not to say that that is always the norm that your prolapse will reverse, but it can. And I even chatted with Laura about that because I was diagnosed with grade two prolapse around 10 weeks postpartum. So her thought was like, that's still super, super early postpartum.
And I wasn't diagnosed. I wasn't reassessed after that because my symptoms were getting better. So it could have just been, that was my body after having two kids. And so, yeah, so it could have just been time. Could it just been tissue healing in that time, uh, reverse the prolapse to a grade one. And for anyone out there listening, like grade one, grade two are both like super normal findings to you.
Right. I think that is what we need to remind ourselves to that. Yes, and you can be asymptomatic or learn to manage your symptoms very, very well with grade one, grade two, grade three, probably even grade four prolapse, um, and still do the things you want to do. And so that is my message to everybody that if you're someone that loves weight lifting or.
Even if you see this as an example of getting back to whatever activity you love to do, you will get there. If that is your goal, it might be a long, slow, sometimes annoying, sometimes frustrating process. Um, seek help, seek out coaching. If that helps seek out guidance of a pelvic floor physio, just to help with reminders that your symptoms are going to come and go.
And that's normal. But, uh, yeah, I'm here to live to tell that I am lifting heavyweights. Uh, the other day I did a 54 kilogram squat clean, which, um, yeah, 50, uh, kilos is still like confusing for me. So I think it's like 118 pounds itch, um, which felt really good. It felt awesome. No symptoms. Um, so yeah, that is where I'm at in my fitness journey and symptom journey at.
Three and a half years postpartum. Awesome. I love so many things about that. I was jotting down a bunch. Um, One, we should do an episode on finding joy. Honestly, like, why is that such an epiphany for? Yeah, for sure. Um, I think I started thinking about this back in the summer, to be honest, being, you know, and maybe it might was even my husband too, being like, what do you do for yourself?
That's fun. And I think my answer was, I don't even know what I think is fun anymore, which is kind of sad. Um, I think totally normal too, again, cause it's. You know, motherhood is all consuming. Yeah. And in, you know, the structure that we live in with male female relationships, it is more for the mom, I would say, right?
Versus the dad. Yeah, for sure. So yeah, I think that's I mean, I think that's part of been maybe sort of some of what my exercise path has been postpartum, for sure. The other thing I just want to come back to that you said is that you had a grade two at 10 weeks. And then, um, our dear friend, Laura said it was grade one last year.
Um, that can happen. I, if you've been diagnosed with a, with a prolapse, please don't Google it. Like the, the Google hole there is deep and she dark. Um, So, you know, and, and the messaging that I have found out there is once a prolapse, there's always a prolapse. This is your life now. But what we do typically see is a little bit of a reduction there, particularly if it's earlier stages of postpartum, which I'm here to tell you doesn't mean before six weeks.
Like I, the six weeks is that's still so early. Like it might as well be 48 hours. Honestly. Um, I've had several clients in the last couple of months who we come back and see each other around the 12 or 13 week mark. And they're like, thank goodness. You told me at the six weeks that I might not feel more like myself.
Cause it wasn't until like yesterday that I started to see a glimpse of feeling normal. But yes, we do. We can see that not in every case, but we certainly can see a little bit of a half to a full reduction depending on some of the causes of what the prolapse is. And spoiler alert, some of us have prolapse before babies.
But I probably did. I think, you know, I talked about that probably on previous episodes with my gymnastics background and CrossFit background had a lot of, yeah, like high pressure, like gripping strategies that for sure. I probably did. Yeah, absolutely. So the other thing I love that you said was. Said is you don't necessarily get the pelvic floor symptoms, but you tend to get like a crampy type sensation in your, in your abdomen.
That's also so common. Doesn't mean it's prolapse, can mean it's one of your prolapse symptoms. Um, but it's often pelvic floor tension. People will start to worry something wrong with their uterus . Um, yeah. And that, that is like interesting to me. I feel like it's probably hard to research this, but I wonder if my prolapse symptoms all along weren't necessarily the feeling of the bulging or the feeling of the lowering.
It was just the feeling of the tension in my pelvic floor, because I was terrified for my organs to fall out. Right. Yeah. I sort of always give the analogy and I don't know if this lands for everybody, but for one, there's a lot of fear. So you feel this heaviness, you feel like maybe something sitting there.
And while that may be prolapsed, the fear comes, which if there's underlying tension, and then now we're stressed and anxious, we're going to have more attention. But it's sort of also like this idea of like poking into a tight muscle. Like if you're not really thinking about it, or you're going about your day and you're just You don't really notice it after a while, but if you like tighten up that muscle or a little bit more, you start your awareness to it all the time.
You're it's harder to forget about it. And that, you know, what are some of the ways we can do it? We can remove. Obviously that stimulus we can soften that muscle so the intensity isn't quite as bad or we can distract our brain and the distracting of the brain with prolapse I find to be the most tricky thing because people start to get and this happens I see it happen with frequency of the bladder and urgency as well.
It's very easy to start to get fixated on it. These are very much symptoms that are directly associated to our quality of life. Um, so I say all this just to hopefully bring some comfort that if you do have prolapse, or maybe you don't know if you have prolapse, but you have heaviness, it's going to be okay.
And there's like, um, there's lots we can do muscle support wise, as well as sort of brain retraining. And get you like your story shows back into heavy weightlifting. I had somebody say to me this week, you know, I'd love to weightlift, but my, my midwife told me I have a prolapse. And so based on what I've read, like weightlifting is just done for me.
And I was like, no, no, no, no. My heart. And it wasn't her midwife that told her that it was just sort of her. Her assessment of what she had read online. Yeah. Um, and I don't know what her sources were, anything like that, but I just thought, Oh gosh, no, we will get you back weightlifting. Our body is so resilient.
I think that's the thing. It's like, yeah. So say, you know, if I was 10 weeks postpartum and I went and did a 54 kilogram squat clean, that probably would not be ideal for my body. Right. But. Our body is so adaptable and so progressive overload slowly introducing heavier stimulus over time Our body is so strong and able to be resilient to adapt to that.
Yes, and also the last thing I'll say before I kind of talk about my own exercise stuff is as you get further away from postpartum, You're always postpartum, but as you get further away from those births, you have less load on you at baseline at three and five. You're not carrying and lifting your children nearly as much as you are with an infant and a two year old.
That's so true. So when we think about the pelvic floor, I always sort of give the analogy re recently I've been using it a lot of the pelvic floor is having a bank account. And we use up a lot of our funds in the early stages of being a mom just by getting by taking our kids to the grocery store and being up all night with not a lot of rest and hormones.
Don't get me started on hormones and all of that. And as you sort of get a little bit further from that, you can start to use some of your funds more readily towards. Exercise and because you're not using up so much of your resource with just parenting, they start to walk, they start to do some things.
So I think that's important for people listening for us where we are with our parenting. I'm not carrying around an infant all day long either anymore. That's so good. I love that. So for me, again, I think Very similar after my first Cara, um, my cat just jumped on the kitchen counter. We're just going to ignore that.
Um, I returned probably too early again. People often think that we're physio. So we, we know all the things, but I had just sort of started my pelvic health journey and hadn't really dove in. Dove. That was poor English right into the specifics of exercise postpartum. Um, and I felt good. I felt good at six weeks.
So I started adding a lot of exercise classes in. So at the time it wasn't really identifying myself as a runner per se would jog on the spot or maybe do like, um, a run or something. If it was part of the programming at my gym, I started with mom and classes. They're definitely, I remember doing jump squats.
I think my first day back. It felt good. I didn't have any symptoms that I recall anyways and truly return to exercise in that first year stroller boot camps and stuff like that without any issue. I really truly don't remember too much. And if I'm honest, I Feels good when people, I mean, I loved exercise, so it felt good intrinsically, but also you get a lot of praise for going back to your usual exercise program.
You're bouncing back. You're back. You're back at the gym. How do you do it? I was very lucky. I had, my mom was sort of semi retired or fully retired. I don't remember at the time. So I could drop her off for an hour when I went to the gym. So yeah, I mean, you get that sort of external validation, which. I liked the gym.
I was very much a gym goer. I've always, I've never been like, Uh, I don't identify myself as an athlete, even though I've been athletic. I've never done anything competitively. I've always sort of just dabbled and done things recreationally. I returned to soccer that summer. I think maybe I did leak once or twice, but if I'm honest, that happened to me prior to babies.
That's also another thing. If you're listening, it's okay. If you're leaking before babies, we can fix it. I hear, I heard this week a couple of times too. Oh, my, my sister's probably doomed because she leaks already. No, no, we can fix it. So truly in that first year, didn't really notice anything. Certainly had to start to readjust my expectation of how much energy and time I had for exercise.
But with a partner who is also very active and parents in town that were okay, they loved having her for an hour and a bit while we could still go to the gym together once a week, like it really didn't disrupt my life too, too much. Um, and then I returned to work. Uh, with an infant and had a lot of guilt.
I remember being like, where does exercise go? So that my big shift started to come there. And then when I was pregnant with my second, my son, I had no energy and was feeling lots of guilt about not working out as much as I did with Kara and. Feeling like there was an expectation, I don't know if it was perceived or if maybe that was sort of, but from people around me being like, oh, we don't see you at the gym as often.
And so I internalize that kind of stuff, which is another, that's another topic. Um, but my exercise level, intensity and frequency drastically reduced. Yeah. Now, knowing what I know, of course it did. As I say to people all the time, it's not the same the second, third, fifth time around because you have another small human.
Yep. You know when you're pregnant the first time and you come home from work and you can nap? Right. Can't do that the second time. So I was fatigued and that we've talked about that in previous episodes. I had a lot of just like, oh, fatigue. It felt like I was walking through quicksand all the time. So really had to do some thinking about how much I could actually manage.
Now I have two babies and I'm at the six week mark and I think I went to like a mom and baby class. And I just felt. Awful. Like I just, I remember my body felt like, I don't even like, just not me. Like it felt strange to move. I was really tired. Um, I was still pretty swollen overall. Um, again, just sort of differences.
I breastfed both my babies for about six months. Cara, It, my post, whatever weight that I was carrying fell off to the point where I actually probably lost almost, I think up to eight pounds more than I was before I got pregnant with her. I was skinny. Um, and Nolan, I held on to eight pounds more than my sort of You know, pre baby weight.
So, uh, you know, six weeks, it was more than that. So I, I, it hadn't fallen off, so I just felt different in my body. Um, and I hated it because everything felt harder squats and everything like that. So I definitely pushed myself. I think if I'm honest, there was a level of, I gotta, I want that. I want to feel like I did before babies and I ended up with prolapse symptoms.
Um, so I was sort of self assessing and treating and diagnosing as a pelvic physio. And, um, I was okay. I had done a lot of work sort of mentally and decreasing intensity and frequency of exercise. And now was sort of really fully in sort of the pregnancy postpartum exercise zone. And I was okay with decreasing it, but, um, I had a lot of trouble getting back to deep squats, anything impact.
I, in the spring, summer of that year, I started to run a little bit more for mental health reasons. For the first time I found what I used to hate about running was that it was boring. Yeah, and there was something about that just nothing else happening that was comforting to me after two kids in the busyness of it.
But I, I had, I really struggled with prolapse symptoms. It was about a grade two, but it was like all I could think about. I felt it with every movement. So this is why I saying earlier. I was fixated on it. I started to be like, why do I feel this every time I pick up my son? And, you know, I feel it now when I do things that I didn't feel it with before.
I must've ruined it by, and it's like, I have training in this. I, you know, I know. And so for me, it was just really, Meeting my body where it was being okay with some workouts, being able to be a little bit heavier and others not. And it's not always this beautiful linear process. So for that's, let's say the first six weeks until about a year ago, my son is four.
So let's say to three, it was very up and down in terms of frequency. If I was able to push myself, did I have symptoms? Did I just not have any energy? Um, appreciating how people go away from exercise completely. Cause it doesn't seem like there's any time or energy for it, completely understanding that for the first time in my life and about a year ago, I just started to find myself craving it a little bit more and I was okay with it.
Dropping the gym. COVID obviously fast forwarded this a little bit, but I had had my gym membership on hold even prior to COVID. Um, because I just wasn't able to make that time. And if I can't get to the gym, I can't work out effectively. Right. So that was a huge shift for me. I started working out at home, much like you said, and starting to just like find ways to do it and crave the movement and being okay with my workout that day being yoga.
Actually looking forward to yoga with Adrienne. If you don't know yoga with Adrienne, I think she's a gem. Um, I do, I run, I'm a fair season runner. So like, if it's cold out, I'm not going, but like, if it's over five and sunny, I go for my little three to four kilometer run. I'm okay with that distance. It used to be for me, it has to be five kilometers or it doesn't count.
What does that even mean? It's out there. And I have no prolapse symptoms when I run, when I lift, when I jump. Um, Sometimes it can come on and I always encourage people to not get really fixated on the exercise that you just did. Again, we're thinking about the bank account, which means what are our patterns for the last several days, weeks, months, right?
So, and then, Yeah, you know what? I have been really stressed. I had two kids home constantly sick in the fall and you know, I had some family struggles and, um, yeah, so that kind of stuff can bring on things for me too, but I'm just much better now because it is so infrequent. It doesn't seem as drastic. I can appreciate in that when it's coming on every other workout, it feels very frustrating.
Um, but yeah, Yeah, now I sort of work out. I don't really think about it. And if I do notice something, it typically tends to be right around my cycle or like the first couple of days of my cycle. I just don't jump or run anymore. I don't even think about it as being something that I did, but I guess that is something I just sort of worked out that didn't work for me.
Um, so yeah, it's a long winded way of saying, I also, now I'm at the stage where I feel like I have a level of exercise that feels. Like my new normal, I get sweaty three to four times a week. I'm okay if it's less, sometimes I am prolapse symptom free. Um, for the most part, love it. Yeah. So good. Yeah. You and I had similar kind of journeys.
I think that I always say this to my clients, the hardest part of the postpartum return to exercise journey is not necessarily the physical rehab. It's the mental rehab that we have to go through. Right. And shifting of the mindset. Set of what counts as exercise, which we talk about on the podcast all the time.
And that was for me really important. Cause I think, yeah, still to this day. So if I, for example, I'm coming off of being sick, I have a cold in the past. I would have jumped, dived right back into a super intense workout to make up for lost time, quote unquote. And yourself, it helps clear your nose or something.
Honestly. Yeah. I'm going to like, you know, work out this. It's cold out of my body and that's not a thing. So now I'm just so much better at, okay, because for me, exercise is in my life to feel good for the long haul. Right? So I want to feel strong. I want to have energy. I want to keep up with my kids for the longterm.
Nothing about my life is quick fix. And so, yeah, so if I'm getting back from a sickness, then I recognize, okay, what does my body need today? Probably not a super intense workout with burpees and running and, you know, I probably need some mobility. Um, maybe some exercises on the ground, maybe some air squats, you know, just, you know, I'm so much better at that and you know, patting myself on the back for those times because I don't take it for granted that my mindset has made a complete 180.
No, and I think also too, coming back to the idea of returning after sickness, especially postpartum, if you are somebody who gets symptoms semi regularly, Your pelvic floor is just run a marathon. After a cough and cold, after a GI bug, like that sneezing, pressure, blowing your nose, coughing, you are likely, very likely to have symptoms if you then add jumping and running right on top of there.
Maybe not, but if you are listening and you're like, oh gosh, like I did that and I, I'm hoping this brings you some, some peace because it's A cough and cold is no walk in the park for your pelvic floor. No, it's a workout in and of itself. So yeah, I think, you know, bottom line, both of our stories, hopefully again, serves as a reminder that the journey is never linear.
There's going to be ups and downs. Having symptoms is normal. That's our body's way of talking to us and reminding us. That there's multitude of reasons why symptoms might have come and gone, not, it's not just about the exercise. It's not, let's not play the self blame game that, you know, I must have caused this to happen.
That's just not true. So yes, you will get there. Again, it might be a slow, annoying, frustrating process at times, but you'll get back to the things that you love to do in time. Thanks for listening to today's podcast. We hope you enjoyed the conversation. If you liked what you heard, we would love if you could share this with a friend, leave us a review, or subscribe to anywhere that you listen to your podcasts.
Thanks for being here.
