Who peed on the sofa? Is not an unusual question in our house. The landlords of 4 nature-shy felines, I'm no stranger to scrubbing cushions, floors my bed to remove their stink.
I didn't expect the answer to that question to ever be me.
I tend to get relatively tunnel visioned when I'm working, and can forget to eat, drink, feed my family, etc, but my bladder usually takes priority even over the most urgent (lol) of poems.
So I was shocked the other week to find a sudden need to pee transformed into actual peeing within seconds.
It's finally happened, I told my partner. I was warned, the mothers warned me, my pelvic floor is no more!
He's used to more information about my lower half than he ever asked for, and I sometimes wonder if all those years ago when our flirting had a goal of, to use the contemporary phrase ‘getting into my pants’ he had any idea of the unbridled nonsexy intimacy coming down the road.
No longer could I hold it for long, or even short, drives. I woke several times a night. I eyed my child and partner enviously as they left the bathroom in the morning having released a full eight hours of piss in one go.
This is my life now, I thought, as I browsed ‘she wees’ online and considered how I might get by on walks on the beach with no bushes to duck into.
I figured maybe it was time to say goodbye to liquid. I’d suck on ice chips, forever a woman in labour. That, surely, would help.
I knew the capacity of my bladder. This was something I discovered driving to Dublin last year. For reasons I won’t go into (they’re boring) I had to stop before the toll booth, seized by a desperate need to pee.
Having spent many a pregnant day peeing into tiny cups and carrying them down hallways, I’ve got excellent aim and no shame, and with no roadside services, and I made a measured and at the time sensible decision to pee inside my car, into an empty coffee cup. I worked out which angle would mean I was only partially exposing my bum to the side of the motorway cars couldn’t see, and did my best balancing since a brief ambition to be a tightrope walker in 2001. It was only when the cup filled, and I had to empty it out of the car, then repeat the process three times, that I realised my most private of front seat angles had meant that I was actually flashing the security camera linked to the toll booth, which I then I had to drive through.
Alas, even becoming borderline dehydrated, I still produced several coffee cups worth of pee at almost no notice, shimmying away from a trampoline park playdate getting looks of sympathy from the woman with a newborn.
This is our lives, this is what we give for children!
I casually mentioned it to my mother.
What? You had a c-section. I don’t think that’s normal.
It’s…not?
No.
The knowledge only a mother can share with you, or any GP. I had a UTI. Antibiotics and I was back to a relatively, though still taken by shock after a Diet Coke, relationship with my bladder.
Why am I telling you this, dear unfortunate unsuspecting reader?
Because I was so quick to assume this was part of the package.
The female body is often the sacrificial lamb of medicine. I assumed my plumbing was merely catching up with the many horror stories I’ve heard from friends.
I waited several months for a gynae appointment a couple of years ago. I won’t go into the specifics (boring? Maybe. Gross? A bit) but the first doctor I saw agreed with my suspicion. Her boss/the main doctor/the Man came in, poked me like a chart, and disagreed.
If it comes back go to A&E.
Doctor A, the sound woman, looked at me with big sorry saucer eyes and mouthed ‘I’m sorry’.
It’s ok, I said to her after Doctor B, the Dick, had left the room.
At least I’m only visiting patriarchy medicine, you have to live here.
She laughed, thankfully.
So it’s not massively surprising that I could wet myself and assume that’s just part of being a lady.
How often do we take pain and accept it as a part of living in our bodies? How often do we let medical professionals brush off our experience, hoping to one day get someone who’ll listen to us?
Happily, I have not yet resorted to incontinence liners, but I will from now on be committing to more kegels, less caffeine, and listening to my mother.
It does make me wonder how much of our body's functions we accept as 'part of the package'! I marvel at how little I truly understand about my own body, and I wish I was less obsessed with blame - is it my fault? The fault of patriarchal society? Thanks for telling us about your piss - I'm listening!
Ha so relatable, I was just telling a friend this morning that even though I’m 20+ months postpartum I still pee when I sneeze and can’t keep tampons in. Pelvic floor health is so rarely talked about. Even though I was aware of exercises like kegels to prepare for labour I had no idea I would need to keep doing these exercises forever….