The Va-Journal
Science-Based | Female-Focused
Written and researched by Laura Haley PT, DPT
Pregnancy + Postpartum
Pregnancy is beautiful. How vagical is it that us women can create a human inside of our bodies!? It is however really common to have pain during pregnancy. During pregnancy our body is emitting tons of hormones for ligament, tendinous, and muscle laxity. When this happens our joints are really unstable. When our joints are unstable, things are shifting out of place and can be really uncomfortable.
Dyspareunia
Dyspareunia is the fancy word for pain with sexual intercourse. Most often this occurs in women, although it can still happen with men. Typically this pain occurs with vaginal penetration. The Vagician can help with all types of pain with intercourse, but for simplicity and commonality we will focus on pain with vaginal penetration.
Pelvic Pain
After any sort of trauma to this area, the pelvic floor muscles (PFM) typically want to protect you, so they will tighten up and go into a spastic state. This can lead to consistent pain that doesn’t have much of a rhyme or reason as to when or why it is occuring. Pelvic floor therapists can help retrain the muscles to lengthen, relax, and decrease the spasms.
Endometriosis
Endometriosis is defined as the occurrence of tissue that normally lines the uterus starts to grow outside of the uterus. This can lead to some abdominal and pelvic discomfort and pain. Similar to IC/bladder pain and chronic pelvic pain, there can be a central nervous system disruption leading to a centralization of pain.
Interstitial Cystis: AKA “IC”
Pregnancy is beautiful. How vagical is it that us women can create a human inside of our bodies!? It is however really common to have pain during pregnancy. During pregnancy our body is emitting tons of hormones for ligament, tendinous, and muscle laxity. When this happens our joints are really unstable. When our joints are unstable, things are shifting out of place and can be really uncomfortable.
5 Steps to A Stronger Pelvic Floor
Imagine you are sitting at the dinner table with your favorite celebrity and your tampon starts to slip out. So you subtly try to kind of suck the tampon back into your vagina.