Women's Health

Pre and Postnatal Assessments

Are you preparing for childbirth? If so you want to make sure everything is taken care of. This includes your health. At PhysioCentral our qualified physiotherapists can assess you before and after childbirth and give you exercise programs to keep you in and get you back in the best possible shape. Being prepared can prevent things such as back and neck pain, it can keep you fit and active well into your pregnancy and it can help make childbirth easier as you are stronger in your core and pelvic muscles. This also helps you recover faster after the birth. We can assess postnatal conditions such as rectus diastasis (stomach muscle gap) with real-time ultrasound, and design a program suitable for different levels of recovery.

Pre and Postnatal Pilates

Our prenatal Pilates programs are individually designed by a physiotherapist to prepare your body for the birth of your child. The exercises are designed to work on your core stability and pelvic control to help keep you pain free before and speed recovery after childbirth.

Postnatal programs are designed using real-time ultrasound and help you return to full activity and regain your shape with safe supervised exercises. We use reformers, trap tables, mat work, a Gyrotonic machine and other Pilates equipment in both PhysioCentral and The Pilates Practice to get the best results for you, before and after.

Rectus Diastasis Checks

Rectus Diastasis is a gap in the rectus abdomens muscle of the stomach. This can occur after or during pregnancy. It occurs because the line alba that joins the stomach muscles together stretches. It is more common in women having their second child, women with higher birth weight babies and older mums. If you have a rectus diastasis or you are worried about it we can assess the size of the gap with real time ultrasound, prescribe exercises and give advice about how to treat it. Pilates or Clinical Pilates is an excellent way to improve core control and the muscles of the abdomen. At PhysioCentral and The Pilates Practice we have all the equipment needed to get you back to full activity.

Pelvic Floor Strength. (Men and Women)

At PhysioCentral, we use real-time ultrasound imaging on a full bladder base to educate our clients on their quality of pelvic floor muscle contraction. This assessment technique has been well documented by Dr Ruth Jones of Women’s Health Physiotherapy fame. Education of pelvic floor muscles with such advanced imaging and techniques allows our clients to focus on the quality of their muscle contraction to check whether they are bearing down, or there is over active bladder muscle contraction, or suboptimal endurance as opposed to the traditional technique of “squeeze and lift”.

With the real-time ultrasound we can see overactive bladder syndrome, suboptimal pelvic floor contraction or superficial abdominal muscles dominating over the pelvic floor muscles, (commonly seen in highly athletic postnatal clients, where the deep systems are not stable enough to sustain pressure).
We also communicate closely with Ob&G , midwives and medical specialists to make sure our clients have a multidisciplinary approach to their problem.

Our physiotherapists have studied with Diane Lee, one of the world’s leaders in Women’s Health and dedicated research scientist of the thorax, pelvic girdle and abdominal wall.