My second pregnancy was much like my first — morning sickness was a constant and unwelcome companion, my hair was shinier than it’s ever been, and I was bone-tired. By the time weird cravings kicked in at the four-month mark (strawberry-flavored milk and fresh oranges, please!), I felt like a pregnancy symptom veteran. I thought I’d experienced the full spectrum of things pregnancy had to offer.
But I was wrong! There was one pregnancy symptom I hadn’t yet encountered: urinary incontinence (UI).
One rainy Saturday I went to the grocery store to buy some pasta for dinner. Right there, next to the fettuccine and tomato sauce, the new pregnancy symptom introduced itself: I sneezed and peed right there in the store.
It wasn’t a huge volume of liquid—no trickle down my legs, just wet knickers (and flushed, embarrassed cheeks). I abandoned my shopping mission and fled the scene. I needed to change my underwear and process what just happened.
After a close inspection of my underwear when I got home, I concluded that, yes, I had indeed just peed myself in a grocery store. “That was awful and weird,” I thought. “I mustn’t have realized how badly I need to go.”
To my dismay, however, and like so many pregnant women do, I soon discovered it wasn’t a freak accident caused by an overly full bladder. It was my new normal. As my pregnancy progressed and my belly grew, sneezing and belly laughing became problematic (at best). Much to the disappointment of my eldest daughter, trampoline jumping was no longer an activity we could do together. I also found that picking her up felt high-risk at times.
I knew bodies changed significantly during pregnancy. I had experienced this directly the first time around — breasts and feet grow, veins (that you didn’t know you had) surface, your skin breaks out and changes color in particular places, even your vulva looks different. But UI? It just hadn’t been on my radar until this point. I could deal with the other symptoms, but I found something particularly unsettling about UI; it felt like a full loss of control.
Each time I experienced UI, I would be overwhelmed by the feeling that my body wasn’t my own. Irritated and frustrated, it was the first time I’d felt strong negative emotions toward my own body since I was a teenager. Such a negative headspace isn’t somewhere a 35-year-old expectant mother wants to revisit.
As I moved into my third trimester, I employed a simple and relatively common approach to UI management: complete denial. I didn’t discuss it with anyone and tried to convince myself it wasn’t an issue. Unfortunately, denial doesn’t work well when the thing you’re denying keeps showing up (or leaking out).
Frustration and irritation shifted into disconnection and restlessness. I felt disconnected from both myself and the people around me. The more I kept it to myself, the more difficult it became to share my concerns. My restlessness was underpinned by a low level of anxiety; I longed for my pre-pregnancy body (and my pre-pregnancy pelvic floor control).
At seven months pregnant, I signed up for a yoga pregnancy class. It was a beautiful class full of women in full bloom. We stretched, and we laughed. We sat in a circle and shared stories about bodies, birth, and babies. We uncovered parallel experiences and secret fears.
One night our facilitator opened our session with the question “What surprised you most about this pregnancy?” When it was my turn to speak, my experience of peeing myself in the grocery store rushed back. I hesitated momentarily, reliving the embarrassment.
As I shared my tale, my cheeks burned again, and I shed some silent tears. They weren’t so much about that first UI experience but were connected to everything that followed. The sense of loss of control, the frustration, and disconnection surfaced. Talking about it was uncomfortable and freeing at the same time.
As I sat with these women, I realized there was no judgment, just understanding and a slew of similar experiences. Over half of the women in the room had a UI story to share. In that circle, I discovered that UI isn’t something you need to hide or ignore. It’s a reality for many women. A frank conversation with the right people saw me change up my UI strategy (to something considerably more effective than total denial). It also saw the beginning of me unraveling the body issues that had emerged from my UI experience.
I wouldn’t describe my UI experience as negative or bad. I learned something about the female experience. I learned about bodies (their vulnerabilities and their reliance). I also came to value connection and conversation with other women in a different way; I don’t mean having conversations with our close friends but recognizing the collective female experience and having open conversations with women I encounter. I now do this readily.
Who knew peeing in a grocery store would have such a profound and positive impact?
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