What are pelvic floor muscles

Your pelvic floor muscles are muscles that form a sling between your legs from your pubic bone to the base of your spine. They are there to hold in place your bladder, uterus and bowels.  They are important in the control of emptying your bladder and bowels.
Pregnancy and childbirth can weaken these muscles which can lead to stress incontinence (leaking urine whilst coughing, sneezing, jumping, or laughing).  It can also lead to decreased sensation during sex. One third of all new mums suffer from stress incontinence.

What can I do to help?

There are exercises you can do to help prevent this from happening and will help if you are already experiencing difficulties in this area.
If you are pregnant start doing these exercises as soon as you discover you are pregnant as the pelvic floor can become weakened from as early as 12 weeks. 
Firstly find your pelvic muscles by imagining that you are trying to stop yourself from passing wind and trying to stop yourself in mid flow of urine.  It should feel like you are squeezing and lifting.  If you can feel this, then you have located the muscles and are ready to do the exercises.  If you’ve recently had a baby you may feel like not a lots happening, but this is because the muscles are so weak, but persevere and try and do the exercises to start strengthening them.  When doing the exercise, only the pelvic floor muscle should be working so just make sure that you’re not:

• Holding your breath,
• Tightening your buttocks, stomach or thigh muscles
• Squeezing your legs together.

To strengthen your pelvic floor muscles, sit comfortably and squeeze the muscles 10-15 times in a row.
When you get used to doing pelvic floor exercises, you can try holding each squeeze for a few seconds. Every week, you can add more squeezes, but be careful not to overdo it, and always have a rest in between sets of squeezes.
After a few months, you should start to notice the results. Your incontinence should improve, as well as the sensitivity you experience during sex. You should carry on doing the exercises, even when you notice them starting to work and really you need to carry on doing them forever. 

Fast and slow contractions

You need to train your pelvic floor muscles through repetition, in the same way as you would train a muscle group at the gym.

Slow contractions

Slow contractions help to increase the strength of your pelvic floor. They help your muscles to hold in the urine.

• Lift your pelvic floor muscles to a count of ten.
• Hold the muscles tight for 10 seconds.
• You may find at first that you can only hold the contraction for one or two seconds, so concentrate on lifting your muscles and holding the contraction for as long as you can.
• Gradually increase the time until you reach 10 seconds.
• Relax your muscles and rest for 10 seconds.
• Repeat the contractions up to 10 times.

Fast contractions

Fast contractions help your pelvic floor to cope with pressure, for example when you sneeze, cough or laugh. This works the muscles that quickly shut off the flow of urine.

• Lift your pelvic floor muscles quickly.
• Hold the contraction for one second.
• Relax the muscles and rest for one second.
• Repeat the contractions 10 times.

Try to these exercises as often as possible.  Several times a day is ideal.  They can be done any where anytime.  If you get in the routine of doing them at set times eg when sat at traffic lights, when washing up or feeding the baby, you will soon be doing plenty each day without even thinking about it.