After a Traumatic Vaginal Birth, I Live with Bladder Leakage

I’m small in stature. But you wouldn’t guess that I’m a petite woman if you went only by my sneeze, the sound of which resembles the war cry of a goose. And observers don’t get to hear just one sneeze. They’re met with at least a few — one after the other. A proper gaggle.

My mom has the same loud sneeze, and as a kid, I’d make fun of it — not so much the chandelier-rattling sound that went with her achoos, but the side effects of her sneezing.

Every time my mom had a sneezing fit, she peed herself. It wasn’t a secret.

“Oh, god, I peed!” she’d scream, then gallop to the bathroom, laughing. The same would happen when a coughing fit befell her. “I peed!!!”

She never seemed to be embarrassed, but I was embarrassed for her.

Now, at 41, I can relate to what my mother has been going through.

When I sneeze or cough, I often pee a little. Sometimes more than a little, if I already “have to go.”

Bladder leakage is a fairly new issue for me. It started after I gave birth to my son, Timothy, in 2022. It was my first time carrying a pregnancy full-term. And my first time having a creature with a head in the 100th percentile vacuumed out of my birth canal, after said head got stuck.

After having Timothy, it took a couple days for me to pee on my own. For the first day, I had a catheter. The second day, I walked to the bathroom by myself and sat on the toilet for what felt like a million minutes, unable to feel anything south of my belly button. It was important, a nurse said, that I pee on my own, without the catheter. When I finally achieved this, my nurse clapped for me. I cheered along, even though I really couldn’t feel the urine coming out, and surely couldn’t turn the stream off and on like I’d been able to before.

When I was released from the hospital after the standard 48 hours, I was sent home with a stockpile of hospital-issue mesh underwear and pads seemingly designed for elephants.

I thought the pads were just there to capture the discharge that would spill out in the first few postpartum days, but it turned out they were catching urine, too, as many a too-late, too-soiled trip to the bathroom revealed.

“A little urinary incontinence after a vaginal birth is normal,” my OB-GYN told me in an email, after I pinged her about two weeks later. I’d emailed her asking about whether the bladder leakage was to be expected.

I told my friend, Sophie, a yoga teacher who does a lot of great work with pregnant and postpartum women about the bladder leakage.

She told me I probably had a pelvic floor injury and she told me to go to a pelvic floor therapist “sooner than later” to address the problem.

Instead of consulting with a pelvic floor therapist as she advised, I did nothing.

Looking back, I think I was really just too tired to believe that anything was wrong or unusual. What’s more, I didn’t feel like “me.” I felt like an alien had taken host in my body. I was a total mess, and I just didn’t want things to be messier than they already were by bringing some certified expert into the mix to be like, “What a mess!”

This was nearly two years ago. The bladder leakage has lessened from what it was right after giving birth, but it’s not gone away. Not at all. What has gone away, however, is my shock about it. I’ve gotten used to peeing a bit when I sneeze, cough or even, sometimes, laugh.

Though I never leak to the extent that I saturate myself completely, I do dribble, and this is enough to motivate me to bring a spare pair of underwear in my bag when I go out. If I leak, I usually just throw out the soiled pair and change into the fresh ones.

It’s not an ideal solution (it’s bad for both the planet and my wallet), but I have yet to come up with something better. Unlike my mother, I don’t find peeing myself particularly humorous. It’s embarrassing, especially when I’m out in public.

And I still wonder, “Is this normal?”

I’ve talked with other moms who’ve had vaginal births, and they all say they can relate. They usually pee a little when they sneeze, cough or laugh a lot, too. Additionally, I recently learned that up to 1 in 2 women experience urinary incontinence.

Does the fact that bladder leakage is so common among women make it “normal”? Is there anything I can do to make this stop? I’ve tried Kegels, per the advice of Sophie and many mom blogs, but I have no clue if I’m doing them correctly and they have yet to make any difference that I can feel.

I’ve reached a breaking point: I need to know if bladder leakage is just a way of life for women like me. Right now, I’m looking for a pelvic floor therapist, and, honestly, wishing I’d done so sooner.

In the meantime, I’m going to explore products like pads or disposable underwear to make urinary incontinence less of a hassle. Throwing panties out in restaurant bathrooms isn’t a good long-term solution — nor is feeling bad about myself all the time

*Names have been changed for privacy.

Resources

National Association for Continence

Poise Incontinence Pads

This educational resource was sponsored by Poise, a brand of Kimberly Clark.

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