Necessary: Talking About Pelvic Floor Health with Dr. Betty DeLass, DPT
In this episode, Sara interviews pelvic floor PT Betty DeLass. Betty discusses the importance of normalizing pelvic health through talking about it! She also makes an exciting announcement about how she's working to improve the perinatal experience for *everyone*! TRANSCRIPT: Welcome to episode number 77 of the Birth Words podcast. Today, I am thrilled to introduce you to Dr. Betty DeLass, a pelvic floor physical therapist who has so much good stuff to say. Intro: Welcome to Birth Words. Words are powerful. What are you doing with yours? In this podcast, birth doula and applied linguistics scholar Sara Pixton invites you to be intentional, reflective and empowering with your language as we come together to honor those who give birth. The work of birth words is to elevate the language surrounding pregnancy, birth and the postpartum period. Nothing in this podcast should be taken as medical advice. Sara: Dr. Betty DeLass is a concierge physical therapist in the Salt Lake City, Utah area. She comes to your house for each session. Her passion is to serve, educate and empower all of her patients to live life to the fullest. She is super passionate about everyone's journey along pelvic health and wellness. She treats women of all ages. She specializes in pelvic floor treatment of bowel, bladder, sexual and abdominal dysfunction, including incontinence, constipation, diastasis recti, preconception, pregnancy, postpartum pelvic organ prolapse, frequent urination, pelvic pain, painful intercourse or sexual activity, urinary urgency, urinary retention, and perineal tears. She uses a combination of an orthopedic physical therapy skill set with her pelvic health skill set to individualize your care. She provides local one-on-one concierge mobile pelvic floor PT, remote consultations, and out-of-town programs. You can find her on Instagram @drbettydelassdpt and on Facebook at Reborn Pelvic Health and Wellness. Her website is www.rebornphw.com. Welcome, Betty, to the Birth Words podcast. I'm just so thrilled that I get to talk with you about pelvic floor health tonight. I'm going to jump into some questions. And the very first one is, “Why do people, why do so many people, suffer needlessly with pelvic health issues?” Betty: All right, well, thanks, Sara, for having me on here. And I'm just as excited too, so I guess we'll just dive right into those questions. And so I think there's a variety of reasons why people suffer needlessly. I think the biggest thing is just awareness that there is pelvic floor therapy and other therapies that can help with all different sorts of things regarding birth and the pelvic floor. So, I often classify this into five phases of pelvic floor health and wellness. And so, there's five different stages of pelvic floor awareness that you can be in. So one would be people who are like, “what is the pelvic floor? I don't even know what you're talking about.” They have no clue. So it's more of that awareness part. Second group of people would be, “I've heard of it, I know what the pelvic floor is. You do kegels, right?” And so that's kind of another class of people. And then the third class would be, “I've been, I've been dealing with some stuff down there, I've Googled some things. I don't know why these kegels aren't working. Maybe I need some help in this area. No one's really addressing this leaking. I still have pain with intercourse, I've got some nagging, low back pain. And sometimes, you know, I just don't think this is normal, maybe there's something I should do.” And they've heard maybe from a friend or a neighbor, or a parent or something, “oh, you should maybe look into some pelvic PT.” So that's another classification of people. And then after that, there's the people who have done pelvic PT, and they're like, “oh, my gosh, this has changed my life.” And they just want everyone else to know about that. And then the fifth category of people that I would cla
