Our 8^th episode of Parenting Talk Series is on Women’s Health and what women need to know during and post pregnancy.

Pregnancy is a huge change for a women’s body and not only do we need time to recover from the trauma of childbirth but we also need proper knowledge of what happens to our body and how to properly heal it. Therefore, I have asked Maritza Lue who is a physiotherapist specialized in women’s health from ProHealth Sports and Spinal to give us some knowledge that everyone who is going through or have gone through pregnancy should know.

As always, Little Monkey is here to provide information to help make parenting easier. This is so parents can make informed decision – whether that decision is on where to take their kids to play on the weekend by using our child-friendly directory to our project – “Parenting Talk Series” – 30 minutes recorded interview with subject experts on all things parenting uploaded to our blog for the convenience of parents to watch whenever they like.

If you would like to contact Maritza or know more about her background and team, please see the full contact details below. Also, get 20% OFF on your first session with Maritza if you mentioned Little Monkey Hong Kong sent you!

Here is a recap of what we spoke about and the visual aids.

• Maritza Lue was born in Venezuela and came to Hong Kong in her teens. With 20+ years of experience as a physiotherapist, Maritza is also trained in acupuncture, and certified in Clinical Pilates and Naturopathy helping women who have pregnancy related issues.

• We first started off explaining about Women’s Health highlighting issues in relation to pregnancy such as back pain, incontinence, neck pain, abdominal separation, and other issues. We then focus more on abdominal separation, what that is, what we should do, and why it is important to take care of it now versus later.

• Maritza tells us that she decided to focus on Women’s Health because it is so important to help women deal with these pains and get back to full health. She then explained to us what is incontinence and abdominal separation.

• We went into what happens to a woman’s body during pregnancy, what happens to her body after she gives birth and what it means to begetting back to normal. During pregnancy, a woman’s back would arch forward with ribs and pelvic expanding. So, a lot of shifting weight and the way we walk is affected.

• Right after birth, the organs need time to slowly get back in place and of course moms need to rest to heal up their body. In addition, the abdominal separation which is the muscle of our core needs to be trained back to normal and that’s why a Women’s Health physiotherapist is important to help determine the Diastasis Recti (see picture below) and what program will work. Also, after birth, the pelvic floor muscle also needs to be strengthened again if the delivery was a natural birth.

• A woman’s body can get back to normal Diastasis Recti (see picture) depending on the severity of the abdominal separation and how diligent the women is in working during the session with your physiotherapist and home exercise.

• During this time, we also show the different types of Diastasis Recti and Maritza explains that she uses fingers and ultrasound to see how severe is the abdominal separation and what to look for.

• All women who have gone through pregnancy should see a physiotherapist focused on Women’s Health after pregnancy to get their core muscle back to shape and to make sure that their abdominal separation is back to normal. A regular physiotherapist does not really know how to help.

• Any pain a woman feels during or after pregnancy should be assessed and looked at instead of just ignoring it.

• During a subsequent pregnancy, if your core is strong the belly can maintain its shape and have less severe abdominal separation while the baby is still growing healthily.

• We spoke about how the main message women are still getting today is to just endure this pain from taking Panadol during pregnancy to just dealing with pelvic floor dysfunction which leads to long term health issues such as medication, surgery, or using a diaper in our old age from incontinent leakage.

• We took a look at how Maritza helps with the machine, Pilates Reformer, and how even during pregnancy a woman can exercise on it safely to strengthen her core muscle which will help ease the pain and build a stronger core during labour.

• Not only does she help with incontinence and abdominal separation, there are other issues that a woman faces which will have long term effects such as
  • Stress and urge incontinence
  • Pregnancy related pubic symphysis pain, Sacro Iliac joint pain, pelvic pain, hip pain
  • Pregnancy related back pain and neck pain
  • Diastasis rectus (abdominal separation)
  • C-section incision pain
  • Mastitis/Breast pain

We hope this has been useful to those who have given birth and good knowledge to know that it is so important to get our core back to normal so to prevent long term pains and issues like incontinence. Thank you to Maritza to dedicating her life in helping women to lessen our pain and sharing your expertise on our interview.

And as always, we really hope these 30 minutes Parenting Help video interview is useful to you parents watching. Please stay tune for our next interview and in the meantime, check our Scarlett’s post about a local’s point of view (written in Chinese and translated to English)!

Below are the visuals we used during the interview for your information.