Your Pregnancy: Week 23 for Mom
By: ePregnancy
Do you feel like you belong on the "Itchy & Scratchy Show" this week? Your skin is now stretched tight over that burgeoning belly of yours, leaving you feeling like you are covered in bark instead of dermis. We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again -- pregnancy is a dynamite time to play the spa card. You know, the one that grants you a free pass to purchase ultra-luxe creams and potions? Take advantage, and score some relief for your prickly pear of a belly.
This is also an excellent time to start practicing your kegels (trust us, you do NOT want to have to visit MacNamara/Troy for a vaginal rejuvenation somewhere down the road). These exercises are true multi-tasking gems -- they’ll help prevent incontinence as well as toning your pelvic muscles, making post-partum sex feel pre-partum again.
Sexpert Dr. Trina Read's Kegel Basics
Locate your PC muscle:
1. Sit over a toilet and, with your legs apart, start a flow of urine
2. Halfway through, stop the flow
3. Concentrate on what muscle you used to stop the flow -- that is your PC muscle.
It is important to do this trial exercise because it’s easy to mistake your stomach, buttocks or thigh muscle for your PC muscle. Once your PC is located, there are three simple exercises you can do:
The Squeeze and Release Exercise
Contract your PC muscle for three seconds, then let it rest for three seconds. If holding for three seconds is too much at first, then start with one or two seconds instead. Do this exercise ten times per day.
The Flutter Exercise
This exercise is about squeezing and releasing the PC muscle as quickly as possible. Rapidly squeeze and release ten times, then take a short rest. Doing this to upbeat music helps keep you on track. Do three sets of ten per day.
The Advanced Kegel Exercise
Once you get good at Kegels, it’s time to take it up a notch. Pull up the entire pelvic area as though trying to suck up water into the genitals. Then push out or bear down as if trying to push the imaginary water out. This exercise will use a number of stomach muscle as well as the PC muscle. Do this ten times per day. It’s pretty normal at first for your PC muscle to tire out easily. However, if you find some soreness in your thigh, stomach or buttocks muscle you need to go back to the start and properly locate your PC muscle once again.
The wonderful thing about Kegels is you can exercise them anywhere without anyone having the slightest idea what you are doing. Just make sure to smile big! It will confuse the heck out of whoever may be watching you. It can be your own little naughty secret.