If you’re nervous going into pregnancy with an existing prolapse or worried you might CREATE a prolapse throughout your pregnancy, then this blog is for you! My intent with this blog post is to help ease your fears, equip you with some helpful information about preventing prolapse and provide you with practical exercises to help with prolapse and heaviness symptoms during pregnancy.

When it comes to your birth experience…what do you envision? Or have you thought about it much? I had many thoughts running through my mind about my birth experience the first go around and the birth setting was definitely one of them. Let it be known, you can have a POSITIVE birth experience in a variety of settings! The biggest thing is being educated about your setting and the policies they have in place so you know your options and can create a birth plan that fits your desires!

When I got pregnant with my first daughter, Mia, I immediately thought about what birth could look like. I knew all along I wanted to try for an unmedicated birth, but I won’t lie, there was a tiny part of me that wasn’t 100% sure I could do it. Not out of fear, but just out of a place having never done this before! And that is completely normal with anything new, but especially birth. (But let’s remember…birth is nothing to fear!! It is a celebration and a marathon of hard work that we absolutely were made to do!!)

If making your pregnancy, labor, birth AND postpartum (early and later) experience easier on yourself is a priority for you, then strength training should absolutely be part of your game plan! In this blog post, I will cover all the various ways that strength training during pregnancy can help make your life easier down the road.

Perineal tearing is one of those things we all hear horror stories about, right? But instead of stressing about if it will or won’t happen to you, let’s focus instead on what we CAN control. This blog post is going to do exactly that. If you’re looking for specific things to focus on and ways to help prevent the risk of perineal tearing during childbirth, this blog post is for you. This blog is going to be research-backed and explain what the evidence suggests as far as effectiveness for various tips and techniques to help reduce your risk for perineal tearing.

This blog post is going to get RIGHT to the good stuff! If you’ve been wondering HOW you’re supposed to push your baby out, then this blog is for you. You may have heard the common cue before, “push like you’re pooping”, which is great, but only if you know how to push while pooping! I’m going to go through exactly what this means, how to practice it and also provide you with a FREE resource to help you prep for when the time comes!

Learning HOW to breathe during labor can be an extremely valuable tool to utilize both when riding the waves of contractions and when ready to push. There are several different techniques and ways to utilize the breath through labor and birth, but this blog post is going to focus on two specific breathing techniques in particular to allow the body to relax through contractions and have productive pushes.

If you’re anything like me, then you understand how important sleep is and how frustrating it can be to struggle with getting good rest, especially when pregnant. If you find yourself waking up in the morning (or middle of the night) with those irritating pregnancy aches and pains that just seem to get worse AFTER sleeping or you find yourself waking up for what feels like absolutely no reason at all, then you’re in the right place! In this blog post, I’m going to discuss the ideal sleeping position(s), how to utilize pregnancy pillows, and some helpful tips for pregnancy insomnia. Sometimes just a few tweaks and positional adjustments is all it takes to turn a night of tossing and turning into a more restful night of sleep!

With my background in pelvic health and experience working with pregnant and postpartum women, along with being currently pregnant with my second child, I wanted to share with you ALL the things I’m choosing to do and focus on during my third trimester. Keep in mind, pregnancy choices are very individual and may need to be discussed with your healthcare provider first, but if you’re interested in what my third trimester looks like, read through for not just the physical side of it, but the mental, emotional, spiritual and everything in between…this blog post covers it all!

If you’ve ever felt that zinger going down the back of your leg or experienced that “nervy ache” during pregnancy, then it’s likely that you’re familiar with sciatica! While you may have experienced the symptoms, you may be wondering what exactly it even is and why it happens - especially during pregnancy. In this blog post, I will address what sciatica is, what symptoms to be on the lookout for, why it can be more symptomatic during pregnancy and some tips and tricks for combatting that irritating (and sometimes debilitating) nerve pain. Make sure to read ALL the way to the bottom for a some postpartum relief hope and tools to combat if it does continue on past pregnancy.

The deep core is an important grouping of muscles for anyone’s foundational strength, but it is especially important for someone going through pregnancy. There are many reasons for this, including supporting the increased weight of the baby itself, stabilizing and improving balance and function throughout the pregnancy, tolerating the demands of the labor and birth experience and reducing the amount of stress and strain to other areas of the body that may be affected by the pregnancy. In this blog post we are going to discuss the anatomy of the deep core, how it and other surrounding muscles are impacted by pregnancy, and the importance of maintaining deep core strength throughout the pregnancy. Make sure to read all the way through for my TOP 3 deep core pregnancy exercises as well as the importance of making modifications throughout your pregnancy and some key compensations to be aware of while working on strengthening the deep core.

The first trimester can be a bit brutal when it comes to incorporating movement, or…well, EVERYTHING really! It is infamous for “morning sickness”, which, let’s be real, is often an “all-day-sickness”. And if that doesn’t get you, then the insurmountable fatigue that often comes along with that first trimester likely will. We know that movement is important throughout pregnancy, for both mom AND baby, but how do we incorporate movement into our daily routine when our energy tank is at an all-time low and we may hurl at any moment?? Really not a good combination, but…that’s exactly what I plan to help you with in this blog post! This blog post is going to focus on tips and tricks to help you combat fatigue and nausea that can rear their ugly heads during that first trimester of pregnancy as well as understand the WHY behind all of these unpleasant symptoms.

Exercising during pregnancy can be a confusing topic, and one that leads to MANY questions. Many women feel concerned about exercising during pregnancy due to the risk of injury, not just of themselves, but of their baby as well! This can be a legit fear for some soon to be mama’s, but I’m here to help reduce the confusion and give you some research-based information to help point you in the right direction for exercising while pregnant! In this blog post, I am going to cover what the typical recommendation is, what the benefits to exercise is during pregnancy, what type of exercise you should be doing, things to look out for with modifying or stopping certain exercises while pregnant, and specific instances where you should NOT be exercising or ensure you have the permission from your physician first.

I can’t even begin to explain the amount of women post-birth who have mentioned that it would’ve been nice to know and be a little more prepared for the things that could potentially happen during the birth experience. They felt that it would’ve reduced the amount of shock and just general feeling of being left in the dark about these things that they had never even known were potential, or even worse, likely to happen during the birth experience! I feel that it is part of my responsibility as a healthcare provider to educate and empower women, so this blog post is dedicated to do just that. Tearing is a very real possibility during the birth experience; however, in this blog post I’m going to share three tips that are research backed ways to help prevent tearing during birth.

Have you ever considered that there may be different ways to push during labor? And not only that, but that there are also four different stages of labor? If this is your first pregnancy, you may not have had a lot of discussion and detail in regards to labor, contractions and the act of pushing. This blog post is going to review the four stages of labor as well as discuss two different types of pushing and the potential positives and negatives of each.

Did you even know that you had options?? If you choose a hospital setting for your birth experience you will have some choice flexibility. This blog post is going to compare the differences between receiving an epidural versus a low dose epidural, as well as an unmedicated birth experience. After reading this blog, you will understand what each one means and the pro’s and con’s of each option!

You may NEVER think about your pelvic floor…until something goes wrong with it. This is where pelvic floor physical therapy comes into play. I would like to say that it would be ideal if everyone had pelvic floor physical therapy preventatively…but that might be asking for too much at this time. More typically, pelvic floor PT is utilized when the pelvic floor starts to act up and it no longer is doing its job as effectively as you might like. This blog post is going to dive into all things pelvic floor physical therapy and give you some insight into what it is and why you may need it!

One of the pieces of that may be lacking in the type of birthing experience you want, is just simply knowing what your options even are. If your birthing position options are never really discussed with you by your medical providers, how would you know what to try when the time comes and then be able to advocate for yourself, if needed?? So, let’s talk about it! This blog post will help to bring awareness to your birthing position options (epidural or no epidural) and provide examples of what that can look like for you!

Fertility can be a really tough and emotionally-charged conversation. I’ve walked through my own fertility struggles and I’ve had the honor of walking through similar struggles with a lot of other women.

I didn’t set out to specialize in pelvic floor much less fertility wellness when I became a physical therapist. But as I was going through my own journey with fertility, I did what a lot of women do and started to research like crazy. My education and professional training told me that there were things I could do for and with my body that just might help increase success, but I didn’t know specifics yet.

Then, I found Mercier Therapy. For me, Mercier Therapy made so much sense! When I discovered it, I was immediately captured by how well researched it was, the positive statistics attached to it, and the fact that it was completely natural.

As a woman, having your period has never been that appealing. It’s really more of a hassle and nuisance rather than deemed as something beautiful. I mean, who wants to deal with pads, cups, or tampons EVERY. SINGLE. MONTH.

But what if I told you that your cycle is actually a pretty damn cool thing. Trust me, I used to not think such crazy thoughts…but the more you learn about the ins and outs of a menstrual cycle, the more you see how amazing it is that our bodies do this and what it is trying to tell you when something isn’t quite “right”.

Not having a cycle all together can lead to more serious issues such as osteoporosis and even cancer. I will dive deeper into this subject but for now we will get to the point of exercise.