Pregnancy Signs & Symptoms, Week by Week Pregnancy Guide

If you opt for vaginal childbirth, you can expect to see some changes in the vagina after birth. It is possible that it will be wider, sore or dry for some time. When the birth process starts, the baby travels through the birth canal and exits through the vagina. This is why the vagina needs to stretch to let the little one through.

Information about vagina and birth

It is possible for the perineum (the skin between the anus and the vagina) to stretch or to be cut for the baby to fit through the vagina. This is known as an episiotomy. After birth it is common for women to feel like their vaginas are stretched and drier than normally and they could experience pain during sex.

Wide vagina

When it comes to birth and vagina, the specialists say that it could feel and look softer, looser and more open. It is also common for it to feel swollen or bruised. This is something normal and these sensations should disappear a few days after you give birth.

In the majority of the cases when asking about vagina and childbirth women have to prepare for the fact that their vagina won’t get its pre-birth shape back. However this shouldn’t be a problem. In order to make things better you should have pelvic floor exercises or Kegel exercises.

These exercises are important when it comes to childbirth and vagina because they tone the pelvic floor muscles and the vaginal muscles. This way you won’t be affected by incontinence and your vagina will feel firmer after childbirth. The sad truth is that it is common for women to be affected by incontinence after childbirth.

Pelvic floor exercises for post birth vagina

You can perform these exercises while standing or sitting. All you have to do is to draw upwards your vagina and to close up while drawing in and squeezing in your anus. You should do all these movements very fast, contracting the muscles and then releasing them.

If you are thinking about the post childbirth vagina you could also perform the exercise slowly, holding the contraction of the muscles for longer periods of time (but no more than 10 seconds) and then relax the muscles. Have 5-6 sets of the exercises and each set should have 10 reps.

When performing these exercises for vagina after giving birth you could imagine that you are stopping yourself from urinating, stopping bowel movements or that you are stopping a tampon. You could perform the exercises while doing other things like shopping or standing in line.

Dryness in the vagina after labor

It is just normal for the vagina to feel dry. This happens because the estrogen levels of the body are low after childbirth. The mothers who are breastfeeding can experience higher levels of dryness than those who aren’t nursing.

Now you know what you can expect when it comes to vagina after childbirth. You also know what to do to tone the muscles of the vagina to make your life easier.