5 Tips to Tackle Urinary Incontinence During Pregnancy And After Childbirth

According to studies, 40% of women experience bladder weakness as a result of pregnancy.

5 Tips to Tackle Urinary Incontinence During Pregnancy And After Childbirth - Pregnancy comes with a lot of changes to your body, one of which might be urinary incontinence or bladder weakness, where you experience an involuntary loss of urine.

For some, bladder weakness might be mild and infrequent, but in other pregnant women, it can be severe. And unfortunately, it can continue after pregnancy too.

Most women experience stress incontinence during pregnancy. Stress incontinence is the loss of urine caused by increased pressure on the bladder and the bladder sphincter does not function well enough to hold in urine.

Bladder weakness during pregnancy can also be caused by an overactive bladder. Women who have an overactive bladder need to urinate more than usual because their bladders have uncontrollable spasms. In addition, the muscles surrounding the urethra – the tube through which urine passes from the bladder – can be affected. These muscles are meant to prevent urine from leaving the body, but they may not be strong enough if the bladder has a strong contraction.

After pregnancy, incontinence problems might continue because childbirth weakens the pelvic floor muscles, which can cause an overactive bladder – which makes those pelvic floor exercises a vital part of ensuring you have a healthy pregnancy.

Here are a few tips to help you cope with incontinence pre and post-delivery:

1) Talk to your doctor 

If you have urinary incontinence during your pregnancy, or are experiencing it post-partum, then you should take action. Make an appointment and speak honestly with your doctor about it. Your doctor will be able to advise you best on what measures you can take to improve your condition, based on your individual symptoms. 

2) Pelvic floor exercises

Pelvic floor exercises are not only useful during pregnancy; they also help strengthen your pelvic muscles after delivery too.

If you had a C-Section, talk to your doctor to see how soon after the birth you can do these exercises.

If you are not sure how to do pelvic floor exercises correctly, follow our step-by-step guide.

3) Use the correct incontinence products 

If you are experiencing urinary leakage, wearing purpose-made products can help to give you peace of mind. TENA, makes a range of incontinence products to suit every bladder and body shape, from pantyliners to full protective underwear, so you never have to suffer the embarrassment of leaking urine in public.

You should not be trying to use other products such as sanitary towels to mop up any urine leakage. Sanitary towels are designed for absorbing blood, and are simply not equipped for urine leaks, and the accompanying odour that is often a problem. Purpose-made products, however, are designed to be discreet and odour free, so that you feel confident and fresh all day.

4) Urinate on schedule 

To manage any bladder weakness you’re experiencing during and after your pregnancy, it’s important to incorporate lifestyle changes like pelvic floor exercises. Urinating on a schedule can also help to prevent embarrassing accidents.

Use a chart or diary to record the times that you urinate and when you leak urine. This will give you an idea of your leakage patterns so that you can avoid leaking in the future by going to the bathroom at those times.

5) Watch what you eat and drink 

Your diet can affect your bladder control, as some foods are bladder irritants. These include alcohol, caffeine, dairy products, sugar, sweeteners, corn syrup, honey, citrus fruits, tomato-based foods and spicy foods.

Watch your fluid intake too - both drinking too much and drinking too little can make managing urinary incontinence difficult. Forget the eight glasses of water a day theory: rather monitor your fluid intake by keeping an eye on your urine. If it’s dark, you’re not drinking enough. If it’s colourless, you’re drinking too much. It should be a pale straw colour. 

For advice on bladder weakness products, please call us on 0860 673 377. Visit TENA for more information or to order a free sample. You can also buy TENA products online at Tena shop.

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Faecal incontinence affects 1 in 5 women

As many as one in five adult women may suffer from loss of bowel control, according to a new study from Australia.

Faecal incontinence affects 1 in 5 women - Bladder problems were also common in women who reported poor bowel control, known as faecal incontinence. Overall, the chance of being incontinent generally increased with age.

Estimates of how many people have incontinence vary greatly, possibly in part because people who have it might be embarrassed and reluctant to talk about the condition. Some evidence suggests that changes in the body due to aging or childbirth may increase a person's chance of having faecal incontinence.

The study

"What was important about this study is that we don't have a lot of information about this issue in healthy individuals living in the community," Dr Susan Davis, one of the study's authors from Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, told.

To try to fill in some of that missing information, Davis and her colleagues distributed questionnaires to 442 women between the ages of 26 and 82. Women answered a range of questions about their health and behavioural habits, including some related to symptoms of urinary and faecal incontinence.

A total of 91 women, or about 20 of every 100 women in the study, reported having "loose" faecal incontinence, involving leakage of liquid stool, at some point in the previous 3 months. Twenty of those, or 5 of every 100 women, also said that at some point in the last three months they had "well-formed" faecal incontinence.

The findings

Both kinds of faecal incontinence were generally more common in older women. For example, about 1 in 3 women ages 65 to 74 reported incontinence, compared to about 1 in 7 of those aged 45 to 54.

Women who suffered from loose faecal incontinence were more likely to also have leaking bladders, compared to women who didn't report any faecal incontinence. That's probably because the same kind of nerves and tissues that would affect both kinds of incontinence, Davis said. The link remained when researchers took into account the age and weight of women.

Whether or not a woman had given birth did not affect her chances of being incontinent.

Prior research

Previous research, in various types of people, have generally found lower rates of incontinence - between 2 and 17 of every 100 study participants, the authors report. Davis and her colleagues believe their method of measuring the prevalence of faecal incontinence through a questionnaire may be more accurate than face to face or telephone interviews, which may make women more embarrassed about telling researchers they are incontinent.

However, the findings, published in the journal Menopause, could also be an overestimate of how common faecal incontinence really is. Although the women were originally picked from the population at large, they all volunteered to be in a study about urinary incontinence, and it's possible that women agreed to participate because the topic applied to them. If urinary incontinence and faecal incontinence truly are related, this group of women might not be representative of the population at large.

Not talked about

Dr Emily Lukacz, who studies incontinence at the University of California, San Diego, said that although the estimate that 20 of every 100 women have faecal incontinence is on the high end, it's not outside of a realistic range. But faecal incontinence is not something many people talk about. "Unfortunately, I think a lot of the lack of awareness of this probably comes from embarrassment," Lukacz, who was not involved in the study, told.

The findings show that many women with faecal incontinence may be suffering unnecessarily, Davis said. Doctors could make a difference by asking their patients with urinary incontinence if they also have symptoms of faecal incontinence, she said. And women, even if they are embarrassed, shouldn't keep the condition to themselves. In some cases, it may take only a small lifestyle change - such as eating more fibre - to solve the problem, Davis said.

Lukacz agreed. "There are a lot of behavioural things and dietary things and exercises (that) improve faecal incontinence just as well as some of the surgical procedures," she said. The most important message for people with faecal incontinence, she added, is "that they don't have to live with it."


"It is important that if women are bothered by this they should speak to their doctor," Davis said, "because it could be something that's very simple to sort out.

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