138: [Personal Story] Pelvic Organ Prolapse – Erin

Once a casualty of prolapse, Erin is completely asymptomatic today. Having encountered this long before support groups and information was easily available, Erin was forced to learn how to help herself. After the birth of her fourth child, her body had surrendered.

Symptoms

In addition to incontinence, Erin explains the symptoms of prolapse as the feeling of a tampon falling out or sitting on a tennis ball. After being advised to live with her condition, Erin did some searching of her own.

Working Solutions

Her search led her to a biomechanist, marking the beginning of her recovery. One of the methods she discovered was the belly release. She notes the role of the ribcage and how important it is to select non-underwire bras to allow movement in the ribcage. Erin credits a book by Katy Bowman (available on Amazon).

Erin advocates walking and tackles the superficial elements of kegels, explaining how critical control is for this exercise. With unnecessary shame around pelvic floor prolapse, Erin encourages women to take look at recovery as very achievable.

Background

Erin Underwood is a functional movement therapist from Oregon that specializes in prenatal and postnatal health. She is passionate about education around pelvic floor and core strength and function.

She has studied biomechanics extensively and in addition to her in-depth yoga training has continued her education by certifying and training with the top minds in the country connected to pelvic floor and core wellness.

She currently is focusing on her local community by serving through workshops to the prenatal and postnatal community as well as local health care providers, providing them with the most up to date science broken down into practical and helpful tools.

Erin has four beautiful boys and, post deliveries has personally healed from a grade 2 uterine and grade 2 rectocele prolapses and a four-finger Diastasis Recti using all the t