Pregnant women complain of frequent urination and leaking urine. Learn the reasons for loss of bladder control and ways of enhancing control over incontinence to deal with this embarrassing situation.Frequent urination and leakage of urine is quite a common symptom during the eighth month of pregnancy. It is also known as loss of bladder control. The symptom can be infrequent and mild in some women, while some pregnant women might feel quite harassed by this symptom. But there is nothing to worry about these minor and infrequent urine leakages as there is a definite reason for this temporary incontinence. Mostly it is noticed that the symptom appears when you are laughing hard, coughing or even sneezing. Or it can also be like when you are feeling like visiting the loo, you end up wetting your underwear on the way itself. That is there is a loss of self-control on the bladder. Sometimes, emotional upheavals or reactions might also result in incontinence in pregnant women, and so it is also termed as stress incontinence in such cases. In this articleWhat Are the Causes?How Do You Deal With It?What Are the Causes? Here are a couple of common causes of frequent urination and urine leakage. Expansion of Uterus - What happens when you are pregnant? Your uterus expands as the baby inside grows in size. The bulging uterus exerts a fair amount of pressure on your bladder. There is something called the bladder sphincter, which is a valve situated at the lower end of the bladder and which precisely is the controller of the flow of urine. Increasing Pressure on Bladder - As the pressure of the uterus mounts, this valve along with the muscles of the pelvic floor gets affected by it. They fail to function as they are required to, resulting in frequent and temporary leakages of urine as you have lost control on your bladder. Further, when you happen to perform any pressure actions like, laughing, coughing or sneezing, there is still more additional pressure that overwhelms the bladder control even more. This is why the leakages occur after or during actions in most times. How Do You Deal With It? Let us have a look at tips for dealing with frequent urination and urine leakage during pregnancy. At the onset it is important to understand that it is not possible to wholly do away with this symptom at will. But there are surely ways in which you can work towards reducing the frequency and impact of the symptom. As your pregnancy progresses, you need to consciously adopt certain habits like voiding the bladder frequently and at regular intervals and performing certain bladder training exercises. Timed voiding is found to be of great help. This can be ascertained by noting the timing or frequency that you have normally felt like emptying your bladder. You will then know when you happen to accidentally leak urine. This way, you will get an idea of when you should visit the toilet, which is a time between your otherwise normal timing. The leakage pattern will help you to determine when you should visit the toilet in order to avoid another leakage. Bladder training is a practice of stretching the period when you actually empty your bladder in the toilet. You practice of holding on to it for a few more moments before peeing. For instance, if you are in the practice of visiting the toilet every one hour, you need to follow the pattern and then gradually extend the period by a few minutes everytime and stretch it to say, one hour fifteen minutes or one and a half hour. The intent here is to exercise maximum control over your bladder so that accidental leakages are effectively prevented. Even Kegel exercises, where you practice pulling in your vaginal muscles inside also help in enhancing control over incontinence.
Pregnant women complain of frequent urination and leaking urine. Learn the reasons for loss of bladder control and ways of enhancing control over incontinence to deal with this embarrassing situation.Frequent urination and leakage of urine is quite a common symptom during the eighth month of
pregnancy. It is also known as loss of bladder control. The symptom can be infrequent and mild in some women, while some pregnant women might feel quite harassed by this symptom. But there is nothing to worry about these minor and infrequent urine leakages as there is a definite reason for this temporary incontinence.
Mostly it is noticed that the symptom appears when you are laughing hard, coughing or even sneezing. Or it can also be like when you are feeling like visiting the loo, you end up wetting your underwear on the way itself. That is there is a loss of self-control on the bladder. Sometimes, emotional upheavals or reactions might also result in incontinence in pregnant women, and so it is also termed as stress incontinence in such cases.
What Are the Causes?
Here are a couple of common causes of frequent urination and urine leakage.
Expansion of Uterus - What happens when you are pregnant? Your uterus expands as the
baby inside grows in size. The bulging uterus exerts a fair amount of pressure on your bladder. There is something called the bladder sphincter, which is a valve situated at the lower end of the bladder and which precisely is the controller of the flow of urine.
Increasing Pressure on Bladder - As the pressure of the uterus mounts, this valve along with the muscles of the pelvic floor gets affected by it. They fail to function as they are required to, resulting in frequent and temporary leakages of urine as you have lost control on your bladder. Further, when you happen to perform any pressure actions like, laughing, coughing or sneezing, there is still more additional pressure that overwhelms the bladder control even more. This is why the leakages occur after or during actions in most times.
How Do You Deal With It?
Let us have a look at tips for dealing with frequent urination and urine leakage during pregnancy.
At the onset it is important to understand that it is not possible to wholly do away with this symptom at will. But there are surely ways in which you can work towards reducing the frequency and impact of the symptom. As your pregnancy progresses, you need to consciously adopt certain habits like voiding the bladder frequently and at regular intervals and performing certain bladder training exercises.
Timed voiding is found to be of great help. This can be ascertained by noting the timing or frequency that you have normally felt like emptying your bladder. You will then know when you happen to accidentally leak urine. This way, you will get an idea of when you should visit the toilet, which is a time between your otherwise normal timing. The leakage pattern will help you to determine when you should visit the toilet in order to avoid another leakage.
Bladder training is a practice of stretching the period when you actually empty your bladder in the toilet. You practice of holding on to it for a few more moments before peeing. For instance, if you are in the practice of visiting the toilet every one hour, you need to follow the pattern and then gradually extend the period by a few minutes everytime and stretch it to say, one hour fifteen minutes or one and a half hour. The intent here is to exercise maximum control over your bladder so that accidental leakages are effectively prevented.
Even Kegel exercises, where you practice pulling in your vaginal muscles inside also help in enhancing control over incontinence.
