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Thursday, September 28, 2006

Your Post-Baby Vagina: Attack of the Sneeze-Pee

Earlier this week I was disturbed to find out during my mom and baby aerobics class that women seemed to feel that they must go through the rest of their lives living with the sneeze pee. I’m sure you know what I’m talking about; when you sneeze or laugh hard, you pee a little. Not enough to wet your pants, but enough to notice it. I picture the sneeze-pee to be a like a dementor from Harry Potter except perhaps wearing a top hat and carrying a cane because he has a weird sense of humor. He’s always there lurking in the corners, crouched in a quiet wait. Then when you least expect, probably when you’re laughing really hard at a movie while a good 20 minutes away from your home, you will feel his cold clammy hands as you realize you’ve just wet yourself, followed by cold clammy underwear.

This is not the first time I’ve been part of a sneeze-pee conversation. Despite the fact that women who’ve given birth will talk to their friends about how quickly they dilated, episitomies, tears and the fact that they pushed an 8 pound baby out of their vaginas, when it comes to the sneeze-pee they’re relatively quiet. Any talk about the sneeze-pee tends to be more general, like in my aerobics class: “this woman said she had to wear panty-liners when she does jumping jacks” (the class laughed understandingly). No one wanted to say “actually this happens to me. Can I do anything about it?” It seems that because they’re uncomfortable they would rather go through the rest of their lives having the sneeze-pees.

So what can you do about it besides doing a million keegals that you may or may not remember to do? A close friend of mine who’s in menopause told me that sneeze-pees are a common side effect of menopause as well as pregnancy. That’s right; you don’t have to give birth to suffer from them. Her ob/gyn recommend a vaginal bar. A vaginal bar weighs close to a pound and you do your keegels with it. Just like using a weight to do bicep curls builds up your bicep muscles, doing keegels with a vaginal bar builds up the muscles in your vagina. This can also make sex more pleasurable for you and your partner. True you could use the money you spend on a vaginal bar to buy at least a couple years worth of panty liners at a wholesale club. However, you’re still peeing in your pants. On the other hand, the vaginal bar is a good investment because if you do hit the sneeze-pees in menopause, you’ll already own one.

The vaginal bar comes with a set of instructions. Basically you do a ten minute “workout” for 2 weeks. Whenever you feel yourself getting close, for example if the sneeze-pee comes close but you were able to stop it, you know you need a tune up. In all honesty, I think part of the reason it works is because you’re dedicating time to doing keegals. I always told myself that at every red light I was going to do keegels until the light turned green. That worked for about two days. I just kept on forgetting. You can keep the vaginal bar on your nightstand as a visible reminder to do it for 2 weeks. I could also put a post-it note on my dashboard reminding myself to do keegels, but then everyone who walked by my car or was in my car (like the preschool director) would know that I sneeze-pee. I guess I could use a code word or phrase like “ant farm” or “pick up lemonade” but who writes post-its to themselves and sticks them on the dashboard?

I am putting a picture of one type of vaginal bar at the end of this post. It's taken from bettersex.com. This was the site recommend to me by my friend. They used to have a bigger selection. Not only will you get your vaginal bar in a very discreet package, you also get your choice of free “interesting” instructional video if you would like it. However, you could also look at other sites like amazon.com. So while you can buy that giant box of panty-liners, I would give serious thought to the vaginal bar.

A. Elliot’s Lesson Learned: Consider buying a vaginal bar to stop the sneeze-pees

Labels: Mom-Care

posted by Alex Elliot @ 9:18 PM 2 comments

2 Comments:

At 9/29/2006 5:27 AM, bethandrobert said…

In Europe women go through some kind of therapy (can't remember much about it right now) right after giving birth which helps the muscles get back into shape. So, over there the sneeze pee is not as much of an issue. I asked my OB/GYN about it before giving birth. She said that she had never heard of anything like that being offered in this country. So, my mom... who used this therapy because we happened to be living in Europe and is a big advocate, thought maybe she should be trained in it and bring it over here. That would be great! Apparently there is a magic window after giving birth. You have to use the therapy during that time in order to have no problems. Otherwise, you will have problems. My OB/GYN said it sounded like a good idea. She's done a number of reconstructive surgeries for women who are tired of peeing on themselves, and doesn't understand why in our country we only have reactive options rather than proactive. Maybe it has to do with the fact that women don't talk about it, so it isn't seen as a big problem?? Not sure...
At 10/03/2006 11:18 PM, Suzanne said…

Once I was talking to my mom about Kegals, and my bubby interrupted to tell us about all the different kugels you can eat: "There's raisin kugel, and potato kugel, and apple kugel, and..." (Say this is an eastern European meets Forrest Gump accent, and you get the picture.)

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Name:	Alex Elliot
Home:	MA, United States
About Me:	Professional Mom of two cats, a dog, an ant farm, and oh yeah...two boys: a 6 year old and a 3 year old. Also found in my house is my husband who is known on this blog as The Big Giraffe.
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For those of us who didn't get an instruction manual with our babies and for whom parenting hasn't always gone as planned. On a more serious note this blog is about supporting a woman's ability to make her own choices about parenting including the choice, for whatever reason, to bottle feed her babies formula.

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