Episode 198 Dr. Betty DeLass with Reborn Pelvic Health & Wellness

“Being pregnant in general is the biggest musculoskeletal change of your entire life.”

Having a baby changes your life in the best ways. It also takes a huge toll on your body.

Pelvic Floor Physical Therapist, Dr. Betty DeLass, tells us how her treatments help women resolve issues like leaking, prolapse, movement restriction, adhesions, endometriosis, fertility, hemorrhoids, pelvic pain, and so much more. She helps clients not only get back to their previous activity level but also far surpass it!

Run to your local pelvic floor PT or take advantage of Dr. Betty’s out-of-state options to get the personalized care YOU need. It may take time, but we promise that you don’t have to feel the way you’re feeling forever. 

Additional links

Reborn Pelvic Health & Wellness Website

Pelvic Rehab Practitioner Directory

Pelvic Guru - Pelvic Health Resource

How to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for Parents

Full transcript

Note: All transcripts are edited to correct grammar, false starts, and filler words. 

Meagan: Hello, this is Meagan with The VBAC Link and we have a wonderful episode for you today. We have a great friend. Her name is Betty. She is actually local here to Salt Lake City, Utah and she is a pelvic floor specialist. Seriously, you guys. It’s going to be a good one. Just hearing her speak, I feel like she’s reading from a book. There’s so much education in her mind. I feel like she is just reciting this book because she uses all of the right words and just makes sense. 

I can’t wait for you guys to hear more about the pelvic floor and all of the things that go into prepping for a VBAC, how we can help things after a VBAC, and even we are going to talk a little bit about infertility. 

Review of the Week

Meagan: Of course, we have a Review of the Week, so I’m going to read that, and then we are going to jump right in. This review is from jmclane04 and it’s on Apple Podcasts. The review title is, “I got my VBAC.” It says, “I am four days out from my VBAC. I told my husband today it was the greatest accomplishment of my life thus far. Thank you, Julie and Meagan, and all of the wonderful women of strength who shared their stories. I cried so many times on my daily walks while listening to this podcast including the day before my TOLAC started. It was truly inspiring and one of my main resources in preparing for a VBAC. I will continue to listen to every new episode.”

Well, jmclane04, I hope that you are listening to this wonderful review of yours. Thank you so much for leaving that. If you haven’t left a review and have a moment, please press “pause”, and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or Google Play. You can head over to Google and type in “The VBAC Link” and leave us a review there or you simply send us an email on Instagram, Facebook, or our personal email at info@thevbaclink.com. 

Dr. Betty DeLass with Reborn Health & Wellness

Meagan: Okay, Betty. Oh my gosh. Seriously, I love you so much. 

Betty: I love you too, Meagan. 

Meagan: Oh my gosh, seriously though. Actually, I have been one of Betty’s patients. She is amazing. She does pelvic work, in my opinion, in a very unique way. I just feel like you do things a little differently and I love that. I love that you do internal. I love that you do dry needling. I love that you’re talking about balancing the pelvis and all of those amazing things. 

So, let’s get into this. I think one of the very first questions I have for you is, what does pelvic floor therapy mean? What does it even mean when you say “pelvic floor therapy”?

Definition of pelvic floor therapy

Betty: Yeah, I think most people right out of the gates think, “Oh, you do your Kegels.” I just want to myth-bust that right out of the gate. It’s way, way, not Kegels and way, way more comprehensive and holistic than that. My definition might be a little bit different than some people's, but this is my definition of pelvic floor therapy. 

We are physical therapists, then we are orthopedic therapists, then we are pelvic floor therapists. We are kind of the nerdiest nerds of nerds and just couldn’t stop learning, so we dove down the rabbit hole of pelvic floor therapy, and then we were like, “Oh, here is the missing piece, the pelvis. It’s kind of important.” 

So that’s kind of what it encompasses in a nutshell. We do an evaluation. We do a full body movement analysis on you. We look at you from head to toe. We will have you bend all different directions, squat, balance, lunge, run, whatever you are coming in for, and then we will dive into each area specifically. We will look at your rib cage, your spine, your breathing patterns, your abdomen, and how your organs move. We’ll check out scar tissue, your hips, your pelvis, SI joints, pubic bone, tailbone, all the way down to your feet, and then we switch gears and do an internal exam as well. 

We are looking through the lens of a PT. We are not a midwife or an OB, but it is a pelvic internal exam similar to that. We are looking at a range of motion, strength, coordination, trigger points, prolapse, pressure management, and all sorts of things like that, and then piecing all of those things together to figure out why you are leaking. Why are you having pain during sex? Why are you having tailbone pain? Why do you have low back pain? Why do you have SPD or pubic symphysis dysfunction or all sorts of hosts of things like that regarding the pelvic floor and why you are coming in because a lot of times, it’s a combination of things inside the pelvis and outside of the pelvis. 

We want to make sure we are addressing and getting to the root cause of why you are having symptoms because honestly, ten people could walk in with the same complaint of, “I pee my pants when I sneeze,” and it could be for ten different reasons. We want to make sure we are addressing the reason why you have the issue you are having. 

Meagan: That is interesting because many of us think, “Oh, I pee when I sneeze.” And then they’re like, “Oh, it’s because I pushed for five hours.” It’s maybe not. I think that is fascinating. I want to go a little bit into C-sections specifically and how maybe a C-section parent could utilize pelvic floor therapy because I think sometimes, even for me, back in the day before I had my vaginal birth, I always thought that my pelvic floor wasn’t touched and wasn’t damaged. Nothing bad happened to my pelvic floor because I was cut open, right? 

Betty: Sure, sure. 

Meagan: But I feel like the more I have learned, the more I’ve realized that I really needed, really needed you back in the day when I was preparing for both my VBACs and really, for my first one because I feel like, over time, I’ve had more issues stem because I didn’t get care earlier on. 

Betty: Yeah. I think a really common misconception, too, is, “Oh, I had a C-section. My pelvic floor was spared,” and really, that’s not the case. You still grow a human being on top of your pelvic floor. Your pelvic floor still changed. Your weight shifted and all that stuff like that. Being pregnant in general is the biggest musculoskeletal change of your entire life more than having surgery or anything like a knee surgery or a shoulder surgery, and then you put on top of being pregnant and then having a C-section. It’s like, “Oh man. Those people really need some pelvic floor rehab because they also had a major abdominal surgery too.”

And so it’s just important to think about if you were to have just a simple knee surgery, you would do rehab for months to get back to activities, but we don’t do anything for pregnancy and postpartum as a standard of care. That’s really what I’m about is changing that narrative and empowering other people to speak up for themselves and seek out that care because it’s really necessary. We could avoid a lot of the other surgeries or low back pain or other issues and get people back to being active and wanting to do the things they want to do. 

Literally, the world changes one vagina at a time. That’s really important to know. If you’ve had a C-section, you most definitely need pelvic floor rehab just because it’s not solely pelvic floor dependent. We are working on the abdomen, the C-section scar, any restrictions or adhesions that have happened, turning your core back on, mom butt, and all that stuff. So it’s all included in pelvic floor rehab. We’re making sure that the whole system works. Also, we’re bringing down the rib cage after being expanded from baby, so there’s just so much that can be done. 

Especially getting that mobility back in the C-section scar. They cut through seven layers of fascia and that’s really important to know because if we don’t mobilize that, low back pain is super, super common post-C-section, so we want to make sure the mobility happens in the front side of the abdomen so that you don’t tork and pull through your low back as much as you do because it’s restricted from the C-section scar. So,