Speaking my mind
It affects one in three women after childbirth, yet a silence of shame means urinary incontinence is rarely discussed. Here, Georgie Lane-Godfrey explains the toll leaking for years on end can take on your mind
On my first day at Women’s Health, I wet myself. And not in the ‘fun’ way either (although they are a hilarious bunch). No, I mean that my bladder gave way while I was making tea. Reader, there’s nothing quite like disappearing from your desk for 40 minutes while you try to rinse and dry out your knickers to really impress your new boss.
I suffer with post-partum incontinence, a condition resulting from the birth of my daughter in 2021. The birth wasn’t traumatic, but it was fast and caused my pelvic floor muscles to weaken and my bladder to prolapse, partially descending into my vagina. My case is mild, but it’s left me dealing with urinary incontinence on a daily basis. It came as a shock – no one warned me of this risk before the birth. If I’d known what I’d be living with now, I’d have insisted on a caesarean.
Incontinence isn’t a mental health condition, but it’s the bedfellow of many well-known symptoms. The constant paranoia that you stink of piss, for example. The anxiety that you’re going to get ‘caught out’ when you leave the house. The depressing thought that you might well have to live like this forever – feelings I deal with every day, woven together in my own miserable personal tapestry.
But its impact on my day-to-day life isn’t just limited to always being armed with a spare pair of knickers and an excessive amount of pads. It’s the insidious effect it has on your body image. Due to the stress it puts on your pelvic floor, any weighted or high-intensity exercise is out. Even yoga can cause leakage if you lift your legs too enthusiastically. The most rigorous activity I’ve been able to do since my daughter’s birth is a brisk walk; a reality that’s made it harder to shift my baby weight, and my confidence has plummeted. Looking in the mirror often leaves me feeling disgusted.
I know this doesn’t adhere to the popular feminist narrative. That one of ‘self-compassion’ and ‘kindness’; the one that tells you to celebrate your body for what it has achieved (read: bringing a baby into the world) rather than berating it for how it looks. But it’s incredibly patronising to hear this, not to mention frustrating – how I feel about my body isn’t simply about aesthetics. On a fundamental level, I feel as though my body has let me down. Yes, it gave me my amazing daughter, but it broke in the process, and I have to live with the consequences of that malfunctioning every day. Is it any wonder I don’t feel the love?
While I know that plenty of women ar
