Below Your Belt: How to be Queen of your Pelvic Region

By Missy Lavender, Jan Dolby and Jenifer Donatelli Ihm

When was the last time anyone talked to you about going to the bathroom? Probably not since you were potty trained! Did you know there are exercises that improve sports performance as they improve pelvic health? And, have you or your daughter every wanted to curl into a ball and stay home from school or work while you have your period?<

• Language: English
• Publisher: Womens Health Foundation
• Release date: Nov 20, 2015
• ISBN: 9780996535816

Missy Lavender

Missy Lavender is the founder of Women's Health Foundation, a not-for-profit organization championing pelvic health and wellness for women of all ages by sponsoring research, creating community, developing educational initiatives, and promoting innovative programs for women suffering from incontinence and other related health conditions. Ms. Lavender's passion for helping women stems from her personal experience as a post-partum patient. Through researching treatment options, she became aware of the pervasiveness of female incontinence as well as the limited number of treatments available. Armed with the guidance of medical and fitness experts and her own research, Ms. Lavender created and implemented a personal healing strategy that became the basis for a new community-based fitness and educational program for women called Total Control™. The foundation's work with women led to the development of curriculum aimed at tween, teen, and younger girls, to foster discussion and generational change in thinking about women's pelvic health. Missy holds a BA in Speech Communication from Miami University and an MBA from the J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University. She lives in Chicago with her teenage son and daughter and their two canine monsters.

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE:

It’s About Time!

RIGHT THIS VERY MINUTE

You might be wondering, Queen of my what?! or Why does my pelvis even matter? While you may have guessed that having periods and having babies are a part of pelvic health, and you would be correct, did you know that using the bathroom or performing well in sports is also about pelvic health? Your whole pelvic region — everything below your belt — is where the big stuff in life happens!

Let’s look at it this way:

YOU HAVE BEEN PEEING OR POOPING

from the moment you were born and using the bathroom by yourself since you were about three years old. Peeing and pooping are about bladder and bowel health, which are both part of pelvic health.

IF YOU HAVEN’T GOTTEN YOUR PERIOD YET

you are likely just about to start. The purpose of menstruation, dealing with cramps or PMS, and what to do in sports while you have your period, are all part of pelvic health.

Learn about your pelvic region now, and you will rock & rule your pelvic health through life!

WHETHER BALLET OR SOCCER

you know how important it is to be strong and fit. Well, if you don’t know about the special muscles of your pelvis, you will miss out on a wonderful secret to winning!

WHY IS THIS CHAPTER CALLED IT’S ABOUT TIME?

Because until now, there hasn’t been ANY book about pelvic health for girls! There have been books about periods all right, but no books that talk about the big pelvic picture.

The Past

Speaking of periods, let’s go back in time way before you were born: Have you ever wondered how they did it? Before we had the comfort of private indoor bathrooms, pads that stay in place – pads with wings! Or more than one pair of underwear. Even running water from a faucet. How did they do it?

They had each other – girls helping girls, mothers helping daughters, sisters helping sisters, aunties helping nieces, grandmothers helping granddaughters – you get the picture. Each one of these wise women learned from the woman who came before her, and so on and so on. Well, take that chain of girls and women all the way back to centuries and decades ago…

Rags, reeds, leaves, metal, cotton, wool, and nothing! Which one of these things do you think women used when they had their periods? Can you believe all of them have been used to keep things clean during that time of the month?

Even in the 1970s, which wasn’t that long ago, women didn’t have the teeny pads and tampons you find in stores now. Can you say belts and snaps? That’s true! Whether you were a hippie or a doctor, you would wear a special belt to fit under your underwear with snaps in the front and the back to connect a pad to it. Awkward to say the least and about a thousand times better than what came before that!

Let’s take a walk through history and discover the funky ways people thought about pelvic health:

CONSTIPATION IN THE 1600s

In 1609, an English surgeon, John Woodall, made a new instrument to treat constipation. It looked like a 12-inch-long spatula and was called the Spatula Mundani, which kind of sounds like a pasta dish! The spoon end of the spatula was used to remove hard poops from inside the body while the other end was used to mix medicine and apply ointments. Ew.

BATHROOMS IN THE 1700s

Privacy was a bit of an issue, and we all know when you don’t have privacy it makes it kind of hard to do your business. Running water in every house just wasn’t available. So, imagine your whole family taking a trip to the public outhouse where there were enough toilet seats for everyone! If you wanted some privacy, you had to rent a cloak and a bucket so you could cover yourself while going to the bathroom in the bucket… on the street. Seriously!

PERIODS IN THE 1800s

In the late 1890s, an English woman named Selina Cooper devoted herself to helping women she saw on the farm where she worked. Other women who worked on the farm did not use any sort of sanitary protection when they menstruated. Instead, the women let their period blood flow! Each month, their coats and dresses had blood stains, and the farm floors were covered in straw to collect the blood. Selina introduced them to the first pads which were similar to rolled up towels placed in women’s underwear.