Return to Running Postpartum: A success story

When can I go back to running postpartum?  It is one of the first questions we as pelvic floor physical therapists get asked. As such was the case with my patient Shannon.  She came in pretty early postpartum, but had some rough pelvic girdle pain while pregnant.  Her goal was to get back to running and lifting weights-  and to be clear, this is a pretty common goal in our practice! 

‘I had my baby and I want to get back to being the pre-baby me.’  You got it girl! It was a tall order, but I was willing to do the work, and so was Shannon!   Well over the last 15 months of working together we had some highs and some lows.  If you have kids, you know; if you don’t, you will learn, it is NOT easy raising an infant human.  There are lots of sleepless nights, lots of runny noses for baby and mom, and transitions of going back to work or not, moving, natural disasters ( **Derecho, Hurricanes, . .  .this is Houston) etc.   

We began seeing each other once a week doing lots of manual work and muscle re-education to train muscles to work at the correct time and in the right sequence.  I like to say we are putting the cogs back together and teaching them how to sync up.  

Once there, we transitioned to every other week, every third week, once a month and so on where we progressed exercises from mini squats, to squats to lunges, to lunges with rear foot lifted.  Then we took a break for Summer 2024 because guess what?!  Shannon got busy! She was also doing pretty darn well.  So we (TOGETHER) decided that Shannon was going to take the summer to really own her rehab she was going to be my young young grasshopper and continue her strength training at home, focusing on form and breath control and know that if something popped up; she could give me a call.

Y’all, guess what my girl did?!  This mama ran a 5k successfully, with no pain, and owned it!  Was she proud of herself? YES!  

Was it a PR? NO!  

Do we care? NO.  

Will Shannon run a 10k next? Maybe.  

Does she have the confidence to continue her exercise routine and take control of her health for herself, her child, and family? YES!  

So let’s all stand up and applause for Shannon! GET IT GIRL!