BATON ROUGE — It is not a topic most like to talk about, but the discomfort and urinary leakage many experience after pregnancy due to a weakened pelvic floor is an important conversation to be having.

Four weeks after giving birth, Nicole Lukens started feeling pressure in her pelvic area.

"It just felt very heavy and so knowing my body, I knew something wasn't right,” Lukens said.

Lukens was diagnosed with a prolapsed bladder, the result of a weakened pelvic floor, causing discomfort and leakage. One option was surgery.

"I'm thinking that's just not gonna happen because surgery means I can't lift my baby afterwards. It's just not gonna happen, right,” Lukens said.

Instead, Lukens' doctor referred her to pelvic floor therapy aimed at alleviating symptoms by strengthening those muscles.
"This myth that once we've had kids or as we get older, we're just gonna start leaking and we'll just lose control of these muscles and it's just gone and it's sad and it's definitely not true,” Tessa Ladd, an occupational therapist at Orlando Health, said.

Ladd helped to teach Lukens new ways to breathe and move to support the pelvic floor.

"With consistency with education, with training, you really can regain control of these muscles and you really can start to learn how to coordinate them and use them so that you don't have pain or leaking or any risk for prolapse,” Ladd said.

Now, about nine months postpartum Lukens says her doctor is amazed at her progress.

"A lot of it was yoga moves and how I was breathing and stretching,” Lukens said. "I don't really have very many symptoms at all, but it is something I work on daily."