Postpartum is an incredibly complicated stage for women: in addition to all the challenges we face on an emotional level, there are also the enormous physical changes that occur during this period. And I’m not just talking about the aesthetic level (which is also significant): it is estimated that more than 60% of women who have given birth suffer from diastasis recti, a condition that causes the abdomen to remain distended and can lead to urine leakage, pain during sexual intercourse, constipation, indigestion, or abdominal pain. Something similar happens with injuries to the pelvic floor, which are experienced by between 20 and 50% of women and result in urinary or fecal incontinence, prolapse of the pelvic organs, or sexual dysfunction. Fortunately, we are now aware of the importance of a good check-up after the postpartum period to detect any of these problems and find a solution while there is still time.
Last October, I had my second daughter. While I recovered quickly from the first birth, this time I felt weak, and a check-up with a specialized physiotherapist confirmed it: I had a 2-centimeter diastasis in my abdomen and a very weak pelvic floor; luckily, nothing pathological. Therefore, it would be enough to do specific exercises to gradually correct this situation. And here, technology has helped me a lot, always under the supervision of this specialist.
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Let’s start with the pelvic floor. To tone it, I use up to three different devices. During the first weeks of recovery, I used the Elvie pelvic floor trainer: a device that is inserted into the vagina and records the contractions that are performed with it. The interesting thing is that it combines with an app 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, maximum contraction, the ‘elevator’, resistance… It’s a product that I’ve used for years at different stages and the training with it was already becoming monotonous. Plus, I had a doubt: am I doing it right 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. Otherwise, its operation is very similar, although it doesn’t need to be charged – its battery lasts for approximately 5 years, according to the manufacturer – and the exercises it proposes look like those of a console and it changes them as you advance in level.
After a few weeks, the situation was much better. Even so, it wasn’t (and isn’t) all done, so I decided to follow my physiotherapist’s advice and try a pelvic floor exerciser like the one from Intimina; a model that does away with the gamified part (it doesn’t even connect to the mobile) but incorporates vibration into the equation: in this case, each time it vibrates you have to contract the pelvic floor: that vibration causes the muscles in the area to activate involuntarily which, combined with the voluntary contraction, makes the treatment more complete. In fact, it is very curious that, even, the use of vibrators – yes, the same ones used as a sex toy – is recommended for therapeutic purposes: continuous vibration relaxes the musculature and perineum, which favors the normalization of tone and produces a decrease in 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 specialist on Instagram who also highlighted its usefulness in the case of scars due to episiotomies or tears.
Electrical currents And what about the abdomen? In this case, everything has gone substantially slower and I still need much more work. It’s not easy, since during pregnancy hormones are secreted that favor the ligaments and joints becoming more mobile – something essential for childbirth; a situation that extends while breastfeeding and means that the muscles are hyperlax. So toning them is much more laborious. That’s why, in addition to the exercises recommended 2 to 4 times a week (hypopressives, pilates…), I have been using an electrostimulator with an EMS function – the one used to tone muscles – daily; the Beurer EM-49. By strategically placing its four electrodes in the area of the transverse muscle, it has helped me to recover the strength of this area a little faster. And is that, among its multiple preconfigured programs, it has one for the shaping of the abdominal muscles that I used during the first days, to then move on to another focused on its tensioning. And at a more aesthetic level, in recent weeks I have been using a device that uses microcurrents combined with massages to tone, firm and eliminate cellulite. It is the Foreo Bear 2 Body, which links to an app to choose the indicated treatment 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 get the best results.
