There are two times during your pregnancy you will have to deal with frequent urination. Early in your pregnancy, hormones send you to the ladies room constantly. It’s one of the early signs that cause you to ask yourself, could I be pregnant? It makes a comeback in late pregnancy when the weight of the baby presses down on your bladder, making it difficult to hold it for long. Ironically, sometimes this pressure also makes it difficult to let it out. Don’t feel bad if you relieve yourself, only to find yourself with a little “leak issue” a few moments later. There are things you can do to get around this problem.
You may be tempted to drink less. It sounds like good logic at first, but it’s a bad idea. Pregnancy takes up a lot of water. Your body is constantly making new amniotic fluid as well as providing extra blood supply to the baby. Getting dehydrated is not a good idea. Instead, do a few things to train your bladder.
First, make frequent trips to the bathroom at regular intervals. Then, slowly space out these trips, but keep them at regular intervals. Continue to space them out until they are at a more reasonable frequency. Don’t hold it too long, though, or you risk getting a urinary tract infection. Making several trips to the bathroom a day is bad enough; the last thing you want to deal with is pain on top of annoyance. In addition, urinary tract infections can lead to other complications in pregnancy.
Second, do lots of kegel exercises. Kegels will help you control your bladder, but more importantly, they will help prevent leakage problems after you have the baby. I learned this the hard way, and I discovered a whole new level of embarrassment in the hospital the day after my son was born, when I did not make it to the bathroom in time. Fortunately, I was wearing “protection.” Don’t make the same mistake I did. Do your kegels.
As for the “leak issue” near the end of pregnancy, you may have to do a little extra wiggling in the ladies room to make sure you completely empty your bladder. Try leaning forward, then back, squat and sit again. It sounds silly, but it does work!