Those of you who have been around a while will know that I experience chronic pain. I've lived with it for most of my adult life, but during my pregnancy it took on new dimensions. I was told it would get better after the baby was born.
Over the past five and a half years, I've slowly been accepting that I will always have some level of pain. I'm learning to get curious about what the pain is trying to communicate; what it's telling me I need more or less of; when it's telling me to slow down and rest. And sometimes I don't pay attention and find myself crumpled in a heap as a result.
But before I started to accept the pain, I tried to solve it. I had a 'Mummy MOT' (barf, why do they call it this), around six-week postpartum. The physio told me I had a good range of motion so it was fine (I guess pain is fine!!). A few months later the GP told me he couldn't refer to the women's health physio because I was more than three months postpartum and sent me off with a box of Naproxen. He referred me to a NHS MSK physio who mansplained gate control theory of pain to me before realising he was out of his depth and passed me to a female colleague who had done a rotation in women's health. She came up with a new theory every time I saw her.
This is where things get weird. A friend recommended a specialist clinic in west London. Like west west London where the trains don't even go because they don't want the detritus showing up there. The appointments went like most generic WH physio appointments go. A wee check of the pelvic floor, some prodding and pressing of the pelvis and hips. All pretty standard.
But then she told me to order a dog ball from Amazon to massage my perineum. The follow-up email contained a link to a video where a white yoga lady talked you through opening up your vagina like a flower.
It wasn't until months later that it occurred to me how batshit this all was; I had been pretty desperate at this point.
I went back for a follow up and was basically told I needed to go workout. Right.
This is when I found Clara, a pyshiotherapist who offers clinical pilates (if you need a physio in Hackney, she's the one). She has training in pre and postnatal support and slowly helped me build mobility and strengthen through some mat and some reformer pilates. This helped a lot but at a certain point (and an MRI and some steroid injections later), she nudged me to start lifting weights.
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