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mariavida

About mariavida

https://carriepagliano.com

Posts by :

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August 17 2026

Six Exercises Physical Therapists Wish Everyone Would do to Age Well

mariavida Media

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February 5 2025

Ask the Doulas Podcast: Returning to Activity in the Postpartum Phase

mariavida Media, Podcast

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March 27 2023

The Best Maternity Support Belts and Bands for Growing Bellies

mariavida Highlights, Media

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June 14 2022

Pregnancy Core Exercises (Expert Tips & 6 Key Moves)

mariavida Highlights, Media

@carriepagliano on Instagram

carriepagliano

🏋️‍♀️🏃‍♀️Pregnancy/Postpartum/Perimenopause
🎧 Active Mom Podcast
💪Be active w/prolapse, leakage & DRA
🔥Myth-buster
🖥In-person/virtual appts

It's not a joke...Nobody has ACTUALLY measured the

It's not a joke...Nobody has ACTUALLY measured the thing we've all been coaching from.

Intra-abdominal pressure...the thing postpartum moms have been taught to fear as the #1 adversary for a healing pelvic floor, especially with running, lifting and staying active.

Not once. 52 studies, going back to 1978.

And the mix up underneath it is a big one. Intra-abdominal pressure is not the same thing as load on your pelvic floor. We've been treating them like they're the same, and then handing out rules based on it.

I can't tell you how many times women walk into my office confessing they know they're not supposed to do an activity again because there's "too much pressure" on their pelvic floor, with the only bright side being I get to be Oprah and give that activity back to them.

(YOU get to run again! YOU get to lift your kid again! YOU get to go to the gym again!)

When @binevesting's team went back through the research, they found those sensors were picking up gravity and the weight of your organs right along with pressure.

Different sensor, different body position, different number.

And the part that should have stopped us a long time ago? Most of those studies had fewer than 20 people in them.

IN MY CLINICAL EXPERIENCE: the number almost never changes what we do. What changes things is what your symptoms do when we load you, and how you bounce back after. It's the person in front of me that matters.

Symptoms are information. Not a verdict.

🤔 Who was the first person who told you an activity was too much pressure?👇

—————

#activemompodcast #mythbustermonday #runstrongagain #pelvicfloor

Is pressure the problem for your pelvic floor? Ar

Is pressure the problem for your pelvic floor?

Are we even measuring what we think we're measuring?

Intra-abdominal pressure has been measured since 1978. We talk about it A LOT in PFPT and with our patients in the context of pelvic floor issues.

We still can't say it tells us what's loading the pelvic floor.

That's where this week's episode starts. @binevesting went back through decades of research on intra-abdominal pressure during exercise.

52 studies. Sensors in the vagina, the rectum, the stomach, the bladder. And not ONE of them measured pressure directly inside the abdomen.

So what were those sensors picking up? Gravity. Organ weight. Impact.

All of it mixed together and labeled "IAP." Which matters, because those numbers are exactly what gets used to tell women not to jump, not to lift, not to run.

We also got into:

🔹 Why the scary jumping numbers may say more about impact than about pressure

🔹 Coughing vs running, and why a big spike for a second is different from a smaller load repeated for 38 minutes

🔹 Her team's ultrasound study of 85 runners, where urethral support shifted after a run in the women who leak AND the women who don't

🔹 Why passive support (not just strength) may be the missing piece for some runners

🔹 Pessaries for active women, how fit is trial and error, and why bigger is not better Here's what I keep telling my patients.

Symptoms are information. They are not a verdict on what your body is allowed to do. And we are finally getting research that backs that up.

🤔 What's the one question about intra-abdominal pressure or leaking and running you still can't get a straight answer to? 👇

#activemompodcast #runstrongagain #pelvicfloor #runningmom

I used to think afternoon/evening increase in leak

I used to think afternoon/evening increase in leakage was an endurance issue.

You're too tired. It's something we can build on.

It sounded viable.

Except for 13 years later, FOR ME, it wasn't getting better, it was getting worse. The explanation wasn't holding up. It wasn't making the sense I thought it was.

As a musculoskeletal "expert," it was ingrained in us that the muscles are the ones to blame.

What if they're not?

Here's some thoughts about WHY some women may have more leakage symptoms in the afternoon/evening inspired by my own recent journey and PF in running research from @mfm_lab

🧊Does this sound like you? What have you been told? What have you tried?

🧊If your a PFPT, how do you navigate that patient that only has symptoms in the afternoon and what are your thoughts on this theory?

Share👇

#showmeyourpessary #runstrongagain #pelvicfloor #motherrunners

As my 13-year-old would say, #taylorswift Patient

As my 13-year-old would say, #taylorswift Patient Zero is an EARWORM. 🎧

Somewhere around listen number 11, it hit me. This song IS perimenopause.

You get drawn in. Welcomed. Told you're special, that finally someone GETS you. Everyone around you is obsessed too.

And then slowly... you realize not everything is quite as it seemed.

So here's postpartum runner patient zero gone peri. A few years in. Still running. Still in it. Here to save you a little heartbreak.

Because I got swept up too. Then my patients started asking me what to eat, when to eat, how much protein, what kind of exercise, what about the vest?!?

And I didn't have a clean answer, because the internet had turned it into a full-time job. (One I did not apply for.)

So consider this your Patient Zero welcome package to peri. 🎁 Two #activemompodcast episodes with some LEGIT mythbusting:

🔹 Ep 178 with @drlaurencs1
🔹 Ep 204 with @doclyssfitness

And quite honestly? The answers are kind of boring.
🔸Eat for the activity you're actually doing.
🔸Move in a way you'll keep doing.
🔸Make it challenging over time.
🔸Bring the symptoms that actually bug you to a real provider including a pelvic floor physio.

Not sexy. But it works, and you don't need a supplement cabinet to pull it off.

That's the beauty of perimenopause. We have less F's to give. 😉

This is education, not medical advice. Your body deserves an individual answer from your own provider or pelvic floor PT.

🤔 What's one piece of peri advice that made things feel MORE complicated for you?

👇 DM me "ZERO" for the episode links.

#activemompodcast #RunStrongAgain #perimenopause #pelvicfloorpt

There was a time many of us thought that a pessary

There was a time many of us thought that a pessary meant failure.

That you didn't stick to the plan. Didn't do enough. Weren't enough.

That it was for our grandmothers' generation, the one that didn't have what we know now about pelvic health.

We were wrong on all of it.

Pessaries aren't just devices for a demographic, and they're not a consolation prize or something you should have to earn either.

It's support for tissue that needs support.

A 34 year old 6 months postpartum and a 68 year old can need the exact same thing for completely different reasons.

So much of the time, the women who benefit most are often the ones who assume it isn't for them.

And to be clear: when possible, it makes life a lot easier when a custom pessary is fitted by a qualified provider. There's a TON of direct to consumer options out there, but what seems like a simple marketing promise can turn into a nightmare DIY project.

🤔 What did you picture when you first heard the word pessary? Be honest.

If you've got one that changed things for you, I want to see it. #showmeyourpessary

#activemompodcast #RunStrongAgain #pelvicfloorhealth

At 50, I didn't think I'd be apologizing to every

At 50, I didn't think I'd be apologizing to every woman I told her afternoon leakage was just endurance and end-of-day fatigue.

But I'm sorry. That's NOT what I think is true anymore. I know because I've been living it.

At the start of 2026 I promised myself I'd figure out why I was leaking more. 40 years of running. 26 as a pelvic floor PT. Years of noticing my own symptoms.

I couldn't run in the afternoons or evenings without leaking. I was even feeling vulnerable on evening walks.

Then I signed up for an overnight relay. Running in the dark, on tired legs, at exactly the time my body was letting me down. And I'm that person who can't accept not having the answer. (It's out there. I just have to find it.)

So I pulled together research conversations with colleagues, my training, and my symptoms, and looked at an old problem with a new lens.

In March, leakage caught me off guard at mile 10 of a half marathon.

6 months later? A totally LEAK FREE half. On tired legs from the relay. A little under-trained after being sick this summer.

My 50th birthday gift to myself. 🏁

Now I think about every woman whose question I DIDN'T have an answer for.

Did she skip the race?
Did she stop running?
Did she miss the thing?

Pre-kids PT me guilted moms about their HEP and said carry the baby on the other hip. (You can't. Official mom rule.) I made mistakes. I corrected them as I learned.

I don't FEEL 50. But after everything this body has been through, I am INCREDIBLY thankful.

Next up: Maastricht for @icsoffice (plus a few sightseeing runs 🏃‍♀️), then Rochester, MN for a @pelvicpainorg panel on the blur of postpartum into perimenopause.

At 50, I'm still learning. And I get to reach back to the women we advised back in the day and offer a Cliff Notes catch-up. (IYKYK)

Here's to the rest of 50. I have no idea what it brings, and that's pretty great.

👇 You've done all the "right things" and you're still leaking, feeling pressure, or pelvic pain. What's the advice you were given that never actually helped?

#RunStrongAgain #50AndRunning #PelvicHealth #Perimenopause
📷@swimbikerunphoto

I'm sharing it for one reason. I don't want you

I'm sharing it for one reason.

I don't want you skipping the trip with the type 2 fun moms because you couldn't figure this out

I usually don't like processing out loud. Gen X. We don't roll that way.

So let me be clear about what those reels did NOT show you.

26 years in pelvic health. 3 and a half years fitting pessaries. And this was still frustrating AF when I thought it was gonna be easy.

Emotional, honestly. Nowhere close to insta-perfect.

What got me through it: my own knowledge, a brain trust of colleagues I could text when I was mad, and some recent research on what happens to the pelvic floor when we run.

A gradual lightbulb moment, with intentional trial and error, with people who knew what I was trying to figure out.
.
Whole story, this week's episode.

🤔 What have you said no to because your body felt like too much to solve?

#activemompodcast #RunStrongAgain #pessary #pelvicfloorhealth

She got her hopes up when she bough the pelvic sup

She got her hopes up when she bough the pelvic support device from the facebook ad. Then it fell out at the start of her run.

That's the part the ads for the over these devices never show you.

She tested it right when she leaked, and it still didn't work (even though the ad PROMISED to help leaks with running).

That stings, especially when those ads follow you around all day promising success. (Thanks targeted FB ads)

Literally EVERY day a woman messages me about something she was told to try for leakage or prolapse that didn't work for her. And almost every time, the real question underneath is: what's wrong with ME that it didn't work?

NOTHING is wrong with you.

I've been on the other side of this too.

A few weeks ago I ran 3 legs of the Blue Ridge Relay, including a 5 mile downhill in the dark, with reports of bears in the area and even some gravel stretches.

Figuring out what support I needed to get there without leaking took a lot of trial and error, and a lot of unlearning.

Here's what I want you to take away. A device not working for you IS NOT a verdict on your body or your rehab.

You don't have to earn a pessary. And using one doesn't put you on a one-way train to surgery. And just because one doesn't work doesn't mean you're broken.

It's a clue about what to try next and the WHY behind your symptoms. The right option IS out there for you.

Full story, all 6 myths, and the research are on my Substack. DM "Myth" for the 🔗

🧊What's one thing you were told about pessaries that you're trying to figure out right now with YOUR symptoms of leakage or prolapse in postpartum or perimenopause?

#RunStrongAgain #showmeyourpessary #pessary #pelvicfloorhealth

13 moms, two vans, 208 miles, 2 states, one very l

13 moms, two vans, 208 miles, 2 states, one very long weekend — and I'd say yes again to @blueridgerelay without reading the fine print.

Who's the mom you'd follow into a van at 3 AM with no questions asked?

TAG HER. 👇

#RunStrongAgain #thisis50 #MomsWhoRun #TypeTwoFun

Oh honey, that's just what happens. Gosh, I've he

Oh honey, that's just what happens.

Gosh, I've heard that one so many times. From patients' well meaning moms. Their friends. Their providers, not gonna lie. And it's almost always said kindly, which is exactly why it sticks.

But being told something kindly doesn't make it true.

It's not just postpartum either. My own experiences navigating leakage since diving into perimenopause...it's just what happens?!?

(Keep in mind I had 2 C-sections and ZERO vaginal deliveries so riddle me that?)

And quite honestly? The research doesn't back up the "it's a mom thing" story.

Athletes who've never been pregnant leak too. And pelvic floor training is first-line treatment. FIRST line. Not the thing you try after you've given up on everything else.

And if that's not working, if you haven't noticed, I've hopped on the pessary bandwagon myself, because sometimes it's PASSIVE support that's the issue and all the kegels in the world weren't going to help the WHY behind my symptoms.

In my clinical experience, way more women come see me initially for pelvic floor issues OTHER than leakage. They just quietly put a pantiliner in, cross their fingers and hope it goes away.

Most women I see have been living with it for years before anyone asks them a single question about it. They were told this was the mom tax, kegels didn't work and they thought that was it.

We know A LOT more now and we've got more options.

Regardless if you haven't had kids, you're navigating postpartum in any form or you're like me in peri...there's a lot we can talk about, figure out the WHY behind your symptoms and choose the right HOW that gets you closer to not worrying about Poise pads, wet pants and leaking every time you jump up to cheer on your kids, lift a barbell or head out for a run.

🏃‍♀️‍➡️Where did you first hear that leaking was just part of being a mom? What are the things you've tried and did it help? Share 👇

···

Wondering if your body's ready for the miles you want? Grab my free 10-step return to run readiness screen. Link in bio.

#motherrunner #mythbustermonday #runstrongagain #pelvicfloorpt

My first @dchalfmarathon was VIBES. It wasn't pa

My first @dchalfmarathon was VIBES.

It wasn't part of a summer training plan.

I may have actually signed up for the race so I could get tickets for a certain podcast recording...IYKYK.

I kept it on the calendar anyway, even knowing it landed the weekend after @blueridgerelay . My last 1/2 was @runrocknroll in DC in March, an AM race just like this, and I remember my pelvic floor waved the white flag at mile 10 which was not OK.

So this felt like the perfect next test for the cube pessary.

It was hot and humid so I'd hydrated...A LOT. Bathroom options the first few miles were rough. The ones on Hains Point were locked. (As usual dudes just peed in the woods, girls were SOL)

I finally found open bathrooms at the WWII Memorial with no line, and I realized I'd been running for 50 min on a full bladder with zero worries. Don't get me wrong, that 2 min pit stop was a load off my mind. But 50 min with a full bladder, no issues? That's new.

The sky opened up and it poured for a good 20 minutes. Everyone was smiling. It was hot and we needed it.

Rock Creek barely felt like rolling hills after last weekend's Leg 31, 1,405 feet of climbing in one unbroken 6.7 mile uphill.

It felt so good to trust my body with a little support for a 2nd weekend in a row.

I don't want to be the pessary lady...BUT I do want women to talk about their pessary the same way they talk about their fueling, their hydration and their shoes.

It's gear. It can help you do the thing you love.

We need to normalize pessaries the way we normalize glitter, star barrettes and matching run kits.

Why? Of the 5,014 women in this race, 2,644 were in their twenties and 1,606 in their thirties. Only 689 of us were 40 and up.

For the next gen of women, running is their community, their vibe, their identity. We owe them a better understanding of their pelvic floor, how to prevent issues, and real options if they ever need them so they can keep running.

What's the one activity you'd love to get back to without thinking about your pelvic floor?

#runstrongagain #paglianorunning #pessary #showmeyourpessary

208 miles. 13 moms. 2 vans. Zero real sleep. My t

208 miles. 13 moms. 2 vans. Zero real sleep.

My three legs: 2.2 easy miles near West Jefferson. 5.9 miles down a mountain in the dark with a headlamp.

Then 6.7 miles and 1,405 feet UP, at 7 AM, on legs that had already voted no. That one's officially called a Mountain Goat leg.

Accurate.

When I said yes to a relay with my first mom friend, I did not think it would end with me admitting to new onset leakage in perimenopause, sharing my pessary journey publicly, and processing my own stuff in real time — which, for the record, I hate doing.

But that's what it took. Everything I had as a runner AND as a PFPT. So many conversations.

Real time spent understanding pelvic floor morphology with researchers I'm now lucky to call friends.

It took my entire personal and professional village to get to that start line.

Frustrating at times? Yes. Learned a heck of a lot? Also yes.

Type 2 adventure, new friends, memories I'll keep, and some boundaries that genuinely needed pushing.

➡️If this series helped you even a little, drop a comment 👇 so I'm not trapped in a post-vulnerability hangover. 🙃

(DC Half is tomorrow. Total party pace in the back — and yes, my cube pessary is coming with me, because I'm gonna be out there a while.)

#pessary #RunStrongAgain #MomsWhoRun #PelvicHealth

I get asked to teach pelvic health at universities

I get asked to teach pelvic health at universities, and I always try to teach them the history. They HATE it. They yawn. (Not kidding)

They want the protocol. Just tell me what to do. Give me the thing I do on Monday.

And I get it. I was them.

I do it anyway, because every single thing we were taught had a reason behind it. Some of those reasons were good ones. A lot of them were logistics, or habit, or somebody's best guess that hardened into a rule nobody questioned again. And if you don't know which one you're holding, you can't tell whether it's current or just old.

Back then we had minimal research. That's not the case anymore.

That matters because this stuff doesn't disappear. It swings.

Bri Battles and I connected in the early 2010's on opposite ends of the field.

I was taught to go gentle. Be careful, dial it back, protect her. She was on the barbell side being told to go harder, train through it, prove you're not fragile. Two of us, same women, completely opposite instructions.

Neither one worked.

And depending on who you follow and where in the world you practice, you might still be carrying one of those narratives right now with no idea what decade it came from.

So we went back through the last 10, 15, 20 years of it. Where the advice came from, who it actually served, what we'd both do differently now. (We barely scratched the surface. No joke.)

We're also both watching the whole thing start over in a different decade of women's lives in perimenopause. Same energy. Same Wild West. Same everybody and their mother literally selling something.

The pendulum only stops swinging if enough of us know why it swung in the first place. That's the whole reason to look back. Not nostalgia. So we don't do it again.

What's a rule you were handed that you've since found out isn't what you thought it was? I want to hear it 👇

···

#activemompodcast #runstrongagain #postpartumathlete #pelvicfloorpt

I spent last weekend in a van. Blue Ridge Relay.

I spent last weekend in a van.

Blue Ridge Relay. Two hundred miles, a dozen runners, not nearly enough sleep, and a whole lot of hours sitting in the dark waiting for your next leg.

You know what we talked about?

Not pace. Not the mountain legs. Not the fact that somebody had to run at three in the morning.

Perimenopause. Sprinkled throughout the ENTIRE weekend.

What are you taking. What did your doctor actually say. Have you tried the thing. Did it do anything. Is anybody else completely wrecked by 2am wake-ups and you can't get back to sleep?

Then the van stops, somebody climbs out to run, and we pick the conversation right back up when they get in (after rocking out on our Turtlebox, a few hand tacos and baked potatoes in the middle of the night)

It isn't just the van. It's every walk with a friend. Every week in the clinic. On the sidelines of softball practice, field hockey games, and then again walking the parking lot during summer swim practice.

Nobody has a straight answer. Every single one of us is trying anyway.

Last week I asked what you expected from a weighted vest. A few hundred of you told me. Some of it I saw coming. Some of it I really didn't.

Here's to not repeating the mistakes of how we navigated postpartum, perimenopause edition.

🦺What's the one peri thing you're still confused about in peri???
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.
.
And if you want the original post, the one where I actually went through the studies, DM me the word VEST and I'll send it to you.

#runstrongagain #paglianorunning #perimenopause #genx

Nobody has ever finished a postpartum year and cal

Nobody has ever finished a postpartum year and called it restful.

That's the word the whole recovery model got built on. Rest now, exercise later, we'll revisit running when you're cleared. As though the months in between were empty.

They were not empty. You were feeding, lifting, carrying and not sleeping, at a load nobody wrote a program for.

My first pregnancy, I could barely get out of the house. I was swollen like a sausage after my 1st C-section, counting pain pills, eventually getting out of the house and wondering what to do when I took my son to the grocery store and he started to cry?

My 2nd, I was at Target 3 days after my C-section grabbing supplies, upset with someone who told me how handsome my son was (my daughter was wearing one of her big brother's green and brown onesies and I immediately went to the baby section and picked out a pink NB outfit for her. SHE was beautiful!)

On last week's rewind, Dr. Margie Davenport talks through how much of this window has simply never been studied, and what her lab is doing about it. That gap is real. It's also finally closing.

Our conversation was from 2024- Full speed ahead, there's now a guideline covering physical activity, sedentary behaviour and sleep across the full first year postpartum (Davenport and colleagues, 2025), which is the opposite of a stretch you're meant to sit out. (Don't miss Ep 252 for the update)

In my clinical experience, the moms who have the hardest time getting back are rarely the ones who did too much. They're the ones who did nothing for months because that was the instruction, and then went straight back to what they used to do.

Symptoms are information, not a verdict. This is education, not your care plan. 🔹

If you could stop waiting for a date on the calendar, what would you go do first? 🤔

.
.
You don't need clearance. You need somebody to actually look. Pelvic floor assessment in the clinic if you're near Arlington, telehealth or a virtual consult if you're anywhere else. Link in bio. 👇

#activemompodcast #runstrongagain #postpartumrecovery #pelvicfloorphysicaltherapy

"You'll have to stop climbing now." Said in a lot

"You'll have to stop climbing now."

Said in a lot of exam rooms, for a lot of years, by a lot of us. Backed by essentially nothing other than fear & not understanding the sport.

Here's what the guideline actually said: avoid activities with a high chance of falling. Reasonable on its face. Climbing got swept in, and the sweeping was done by people who had never watched anyone climb.

Because the reframe is this. Nobody was ever choosing between climbing and not climbing. A climber makes a hundred small calls a session.

Which discipline. Which angle. Which grade. Whether she tops out or climbs down. Every one of those changes the risk, and every one of those is still available in pregnancy.

Here's the data thanks to @climbingithjoy taking her question to actual research with @drmargiedavenport: 692 climbers, roughly 64,000 hours of climbing during pregnancy, 155 memorable falls, two adverse events, both pregnancies ending in a live birth (Davenport et al., 2026). More than half of those women were never given a single recommendation about their sport by a practitioner.

In my clinical experience, the ones I worry about are not the women still doing their sport with modifications they chose on purpose.

It's the ones that stop movement out of fear. It pulls them away from their sport, their community, fitness and their own identities.

Climbers know how to climb. They know the risks. Those of us who don't climb need to listen up and learn something.

Climbers, what was the first thing you modified? And did anyone tell you to, or did you work it out on your own? 👇

#mythbustermonday #climbingmom #pregnantclimber #pelvicfloorpt

Look at what's happened in women's soccer in the l

Look at what's happened in women's soccer in the last few years.

The contracts changed first.

In 2022, @NWSL players bargained for parental leave and salary protection during pregnancy. In 2024 they expanded it. Base salary guaranteed through maternity leave. Protection for players whose contracts expire while they're out.

So pregnancy stopped being a career-ender on paper.

But the medicine hadn't caught up.

When three @HoustonDash players got pregnant during the 2024 season, their head PT said neither the league nor @FIFA had a protocol. She built their return-to-play plans herself. From scratch.

You have the right to keep your job. And nobody can tell your medical team how to get you back on the field.

That's the gap that closed this year.

FIFA published two decision aids in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.
⚽Stay in Play, for playing during pregnancy.
⚽Stepping into Play, for getting back after childbirth.

Not opinion pieces.

When to progress. What to screen for. Who to call — physio, physician, psychologist, lactation consultant. An actual pathway instead of "you're pregnant or you're cleared, good luck."🍀

That wasn't a small gap.

There are now nearly 30 active NWSL players who've come back after having a baby. Most in league history.

You don't need a pro contract for this to be about you.

The mom in Tuesday night rec league. The one training for her first half.

This is how it works. Evidence gets built at the elite level, then it filters down. It becomes what your PT reaches for. It becomes what you know to ask for.

It becomes the reason "that's just how it is after kids" gets harder to say every year.

We are nowhere near done.

But we went from nobody writing it down, to it being written down, and published.

That's not nothing.

What's one thing you wish someone had walked you through in pregnancy or postpartum? Drop it 👇

#womenssoccer #postpartumfitness #returntosport #pelvicfloorphysicaltherapy

@climbingwithjoy has been told more than once that

@climbingwithjoy has been told more than once that she could not climb while pregnant.

She climbed anyway.

She is not reckless. She is a climbing coach who now has two published papers on this exact question, out of @drmargiedavenport's lab.

And the bigger one surveyed 692 climbers across roughly 64,000 hours of climbing during pregnancy.

More than half of them were never given a single recommendation about climbing by a practitioner. Fewer than 40% were offered any rehab postpartum.

We did not tell them no. We said nothing. And nothing is not neutral.

My profession played a role in building this, and I'll own that. We're doing our best to climb out from underneath it. (Pun intended)

But right now I have clients asking for help because they heard about Joy, or heard other climbers like @BethRodden on this show.

Not because anyone on their care team knew what to say about the wall.

I have never climbed. I still am not going to shut that conversation down. If I don't know something, I'm going to ask her.

In my clinical experience, the person who scares me is not the one still doing her sport with modifications she chose on purpose.

It's the one who quit everything, got no plan, and came back at four months with no idea what her body can hold.

Joy is back on the show breaking down both papers. Out now.

🧗‍♂️Did you tell your provider what your sport actually was? Or did you skip it because you already knew the answer? 👇

#activemompodcast #climbingmom #pregnantclimber #postpartumathlete #pelvicfloorpt

Do you have a gut reaction when someone mentions p

Do you have a gut reaction when someone mentions pelvic floor surgery?

That split second before you think about it. The tiny thought that fires off before you've decided anything.

MESH.
That's the easy way out.
She must not have worked hard enough.
I would never.

I'm not asking to catch you. I'm asking because I've had one too in the past, and because that reaction is doing more work in these decisions than anybody wants to admit.

Here's what I keep seeing. Women who have done every single thing asked of them.

Estrogen, pessaries, real PT with a real program, testing, procedures. Years of it. Still leaking. Still bulging. And the second surgery comes up, the door shuts before the sentence is finished. Not weighed and declined. Just shut.

Women tell me surgery isn't an option because they can't go weeks without picking up their kid, and they're right, that one is real.

Then they tell me the rest. That mesh will ruin them, because of a lawsuit ad they saw on TV in 2012. That surgery means never running again, because someone's aunt had a hysterectomy at 62 and that was the end of her tennis. That it'll fail in ten years anyway, because a stranger on Reddit said so.

I tell my patients I'm not sending anybody to an operating room. I've never done that. (We DO talk about options and sometimes we land on a surgical consult referral which I absolutely do...and I work with some AMAZING surgeons.)

We do talk about sometimes, surgery, can absolutely be the best option...for them as an individual and worthy of a conversation.

What I want is for you to notice the reaction first. Sit with where it came from. Ask what those people actually knew about a woman your age doing what you want to do.

Then decide. A no you arrived at yourself is a good answer.

What's your gut reaction to the thought of having pelvic surgery? Share👇

#runstrongagain #paglianorunning #prolapse #pelvicfloorsurgery

Success??? See how my morning run with a cube pess

Success??? See how my morning run with a cube pessary went...

#7 in my Pessary trial series

And the real challenge...

Night run with the cube, since in my relay I have a 9pm leg.

Sharing my cube trial process so you don't feel alone.

Share your Pessary questions 👇

#pessary #PelvicFloorPT #running #perimenopause

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Arlington, VA 22207
Tel: 571.336.6950
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