How to Check Your Pelvic Floor After Birth (And Why It Matters)
It's normal to wonder if your pelvic floor is OK after giving birth. Whether you've had a baby vaginally or via c-section, your pelvic floor has been through a lot, and you may experience symptoms like leaking, pressure, or discomfort.
It’s natural to question if these pelvic floor symptoms are a part of postpartum life or if they can be improved. Spoiler alert: these symptoms can be improved!
Understanding how to check your pelvic floor is the first step in your postpartum recovery, and we're here to walk you through it.
Why Testing Your Pelvic Floor Muscles is Important for Postpartum Recovery
Your pelvic floor is made up of muscles and ligaments at the base of your pelvis. These muscles support your bladder, uterus, and bowels and play a key role in stabilizing your core.
Childbirth places tremendous strain on this area. After delivery, many women experience pelvic floor dysfunction symptoms like:
Leaking urine when sneezing, laughing, or exercising
A heavy or dragging feeling in the pelvis
Difficulty connecting to the core or “feeling” the pelvic floor
These pelvic floor symptoms are common after birth—but not something you have to live with forever.
How Can I Check My Pelvic Floor at Home?
We created a step-by-step Pelvic Floor Self-Check to help you assess how well your pelvic floor is functioning—and start to reconnect through breath.
Here’s a quick overview:
Step 1: Get into Position
Find a comfortable, quiet place where you can focus.
Position yourself by either bending forward at the waist or coming onto all fours, whichever feels more natural for you.
Step 2: Locate the Sitz Bone
Take one hand and wrap it around your “sit bone” (the bony part at the base of your pelvis).
Place your fingertips pointing towards your head, so they’re lightly resting against the muscles around your pelvic floor.
Step 3: Take a Deep Breath
Inhale deeply, focusing on breathing into your bra line and ribcage expansion. Continue breathing down toward your pelvic floor.
Step 4: Observe the Movement
As you breathe, notice how the pelvic floor responds.
Ideally, you’ll feel the tissue gently pushing your fingertips outward as the pelvic floor relaxes and lengthens with each INHALATION.
This outward movement is a good sign of flexibility and connection in your pelvic floor.
As you EXHALE, you should feel a lift of the tissue back up toward your head and the fleshy tissue lifts off your fingertips.
If not, it might suggest tension or lack of connection on that side.
Over time, this breath-to-muscle connection helps promote better function, reduces tension, and lays the foundation for healing.
How to Find Your Pelvic Floor Muscles if You Don’t Feel Movement
If your pelvic floor isn’t responding to your breath, don’t panic. This is more common than you think. If you don’t feel anything, this can indicate tightness, asymmetry, or simply that your nervous system is in a constant state of stress (hello, motherhood!).
Try practicing relaxed, diaphragmatic breathing daily. This will help your brain and body re-establish the connection and promote tissue relaxation and healing.
How to Find Pelvic Floor Imbalances
It’s also helpful to understand that pelvic floor imbalances aren’t always symmetrical. You might have one side (left or right) that feels tight, while the other side is weak. Some women even experience differences between the front and back of the pelvic floor. In these cases, the front often feels underactive or weak, and the back holds more tension. These patterns are common and often linked to how your body adapted during pregnancy, labor, or recovery. Identifying these imbalances is key to choosing the right exercises and making progress in your healing.
How Do You Know If Your Pelvic Floor is Strong?
Pelvic floor dysfunction isn’t just about strength, your pelvic floor could be tight or weak. This is where it gets tricky.
Many people assume that if you’re leaking, your pelvic floor must be weak. But in reality, a tight pelvic floor can also be weak. When muscles are chronically tense or shortened, they lose their ability to function properly—including contracting and relaxing as needed.
Others may have a pelvic floor that is just underactive or lacking connection after childbirth (this is weakness). The truth is you can have tightness, weakness, or both. And knowing what’s really going on will help guide your recovery.
When to See a Pelvic Floor PT After Birth
Need more help checking your pelvic floor? Visiting a pelvic physical therapist can also help you learn how to find your pelvic floor and check for tightness, weakness, and other imbalances. You can see a pelvic floor PT 6 weeks after you give birth.
You should also see a PT after birth if you’re dealing with pelvic floor dysfunction symptoms, like leaking or pain. Remember, while issues like incontinence are common, they are not normal. You do not have to live with these discomforts and can take hold of your pelvic floor health.
Start Your Postpartum Recovery with Gentle Pelvic Floor Exercises
Postpartum recovery can feel overwhelming, especially when you don’t know where to start. That’s why we created our Expecting and Empowered Postpartum Pelvic Floor Check-Up Guide. It walks you through this process step-by-step, so you can start healing with confidence.
Our free guide includes postpartum pelvic floor exercises like:
90/90 breathing with feet on the wall
Side-lying rib expansion breathing
Supported squats with back body breath
These movements are designed to help you release tension, build awareness, and gradually return to a stronger core.
💌 Want the guide delivered straight to your inbox? Drop your email below, and we’ll send it your way. You’ll get our complete pelvic floor self-check, breathwork exercises, and recovery tips—all designed by experts to help you feel strong, supported, and empowered in your body again.
JOIN THE EXPECTING AND EMPOWERED APP
Help your pelvic floor recover after birth with the E+E fitness app. Our Postpartum Strength Programs are tailored for vaginal or C-section delivery and start with helping your pelvic floor after childbirth. Right after birth, start with restorative breath and pelvic floor work for strength and balance. Then, you’ll gradually progress to strength training at 6 weeks postpartum. Already started your postpartum journey? We recommend starting the program up after birth up until 33 weeks postpartum.
SOURCES
Grimes WR, et al. (2023). Pelvic Floor Dysfunction. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK559246/