Your pelvic floor is a hammock of muscles slung between your pubic bone and tailbone. It supports your bladder, bowel and womb, and it works quietly every time you laugh, lift or move.
Pregnancy and birth stretch and load these muscles — whether you delivered vaginally or by caesarean. Feeling weakness, heaviness or a little leaking afterwards is common, and it responds well to gentle, consistent training.
Before we move, just notice this area. There is nothing to do yet — awareness is the first step, and you have already taken it.
2 Your first gentle activation
4 min read
Sit, lie or stand — whichever is comfortable. Squeeze and draw in your bottom as if you are holding in wind, and squeeze around your vagina and bladder as if you are stopping the flow of urine. That lift is your pelvic floor engaging.
Keep breathing normally the whole time. The letting-go matters as much as the squeeze — these muscles need to relax as well as contract.
The NHS suggests building up to 10 repeats of each exercise, at least 3 times a day. Start with fewer if that is what you can feel. If you feel nothing yet, that is okay; connection often takes a week or two to build.
3 Breathing and your core
4 min read
Your pelvic floor and your breathing diaphragm work as a team. As you breathe in, your pelvic floor softens and drops; as you breathe out, it naturally lifts.
Place a hand on your ribs and take a slow breath into your sides. On the out-breath, let that gentle pelvic-floor lift happen with the exhale rather than forcing it.
Pairing breath with movement makes everything easier and protects your core from strain. We will build on this in the next module.
4 Connecting breath to movement
4 min read
Now we join the two. Breathe out and gently lift your pelvic floor just before you do anything effortful — standing from a chair, or lifting your baby.
This is the rhythm to keep: exhale and lift on the effort, inhale and release on the easy part. It becomes automatic with practice.
Do a few sit-to-stands from a chair using this pattern. Slow and controlled beats fast and forced.
5 Posture in the early weeks
4 min read
Hours of feeding and carrying pull most new parents into a rounded, collapsed posture, which leaves the pelvic floor and core working at a disadvantage.
Stack yourself gently: ribs over hips, a tall but soft spine, shoulders resting back. Support your arms with pillows when you feed so your body is not braced.
You do not need to hold yourself rigid — just check in a few times a day and grow a little taller.
6 Building gentle endurance
4 min read
Once quick squeezes feel connected, we build stamina. Lift your pelvic floor, hold for a count of 10 while breathing normally, then rest.
Repeat up to 10 times. Quality over quantity: stop the moment the lift fades, because tired muscles just recruit the wrong ones.
This is a long game rather than a quick fix. NHS guidance for pelvic floor muscle training is a minimum of 8 contractions, at least 3 times a day, kept up for at least 3 months — so consistency matters far more than intensity.
7 Protecting your core when lifting
4 min read
You lift your baby, the car seat and the pram dozens of times a day. Each one is a chance to protect your core rather than strain it.
Get close to the load, exhale and gently lift your pelvic floor as you rise, and keep the weight near your body. Avoid holding your breath and bearing down.
These small habits add up to a huge reduction in pressure on your healing tissues.
8 Coughs, sneezes and “the knack”
4 min read
“The knack” is a simple trick: just before you cough, sneeze or laugh, do a quick pelvic-floor lift. It braces the muscles against the sudden downward pressure.
Practise it a few times with a pretend cough so it becomes reflexive. Over time your body learns to do it on its own.
This one skill prevents a lot of the leaking that people assume they just have to live with.
9 Returning to walking
5 min read
Walking is one of the best early recoveries there is — gentle, upright and rhythmic. Start with short, flat strolls and let how you feel afterwards guide the next one.
Notice any heaviness or dragging in the pelvis during or after; that is a sign to shorten the walk and build more slowly.
Build minutes before pace or hills. Consistency, not intensity, is what rebuilds capacity.
10 When something doesn’t feel right
4 min read
Some symptoms deserve a professional, not just more exercises: a persistent bulge or heaviness in the vagina, leaking that is not improving, pain during sex, or any loss of bowel control.
None of these mean you have done anything wrong, and all of them are treatable. The NHS route is physiotherapy and pelvic floor muscle training, usually with a specialist women’s health physiotherapist.
Ask your GP for a referral, or check whether your area offers self-referral. You do not have to simply put up with it.
11 Progressing your routine
4 min read
When holds and quick lifts feel easy, add light challenge: engage your pelvic floor during a gentle squat, a bridge, or while standing on one leg.
The goal is a pelvic floor that responds automatically during real movement, not just when you are lying down thinking about it.
Keep breathing throughout. If your form or your breath breaks down, drop back a level — that is progress, not failure.
12 Your ongoing maintenance plan
5 min read
Pelvic floor fitness is like any other — it fades if you stop. The good news is that maintenance is small: a few sets of squeezes most days, woven into things you already do.
Link them to habits: at red lights, while the kettle boils, during a feed. That is enough to hold onto your gains.
You have built real strength here. A little upkeep keeps it for life.
Reading this alone?
mumbuddie puts you in a circle of people going through it at the same time as you.
