Wow, Brandon, your workout regimen does sound intense. You’ve been getting up at 4:30 every morning to run? You had a minor calf injury but you’ve been able to power through it? Yes, now it makes sense why I haven’t seen you as much around the dog park.
What have I been up to lately? Well, I’ve been doing a lot of Kegels. One second while I… annnnd… exhale. I’m actually doing Kegels right now. I just finished a set of one hundred while you were demonstrating your hamstring stretches.
What are Kegels? I’m so glad you asked. Kegels are a pelvic-floor exercise anyone can do to treat incontinence. Also, pregnant women like me do Kegels so that after we give birth, our internal organs won’t suddenly fall into our underpants.
Are you OK? You didn’t know that was a thing that could happen? No need to look so upset. It’s much less common than regular old pants-peeing. Oh, you also didn’t know that mothers all around you are urinating every time they sneeze or drive over a pothole? Well, don’t worry. It’s only the very unlucky ones whose rectums or bladders also leak out.
Yes, your nipple-chafing situation sounds uncomfortable too. You’ve been putting Band-Aids over them? But it smarts when you rip them off, mm-hm, sure.
You want to know how to do Kegels? No? I’ll explain it anyway. You just have to locate your pelvic floor muscles, then clench them tightly. Pretend you’re squeezing a tampon or holding in a fart. But make sure you squeeze the right thing — if you do Kegels wrong, you’ll just be exercising your lower butt muscles or inner thighs. No, nothing’s wrong with that — if you want to waste your precious last childless months on crotch-adjacent muscles instead of making sure your insides stay inside.
Well, no, not your precious last childless months. Yes, you already mentioned that after this race is over you’ve signed up for a full marathon in Switzerland.
Listen. Naturally, I believe that seeing my organs tumble out of me like an unlatched Mr. Potato Head is a small price to pay for the privilege of becoming a mother. It’s just that I’ve also heard my deflated stomach-sack will frighten small children for the rest of my life. And that I’ll never sleep or have sex again. So I would really like to have just this one thing, you know? Which is my uterus and other organs staying where I absolutely cannot see them.
Also the healthy baby, of course. Two things.
Want to try a Kegel? No, please. It’s important to me that you try it. First, imagine you just got up in the morning and you’re taking a super-powerful pee. Now…STOP! STOP PEEING! Brandon, I hear you telling me about your leg press record at the gym, but this will be easier if you quit talking for a second. SQUEEZE HARDER! YOUR URETHRA IS MADE OF STEEL! Actually, can you tell Cinnamon to quit barking at me? He seems to think I’m threatening you.
I’ve gradually worked up to a thousand reps per day. Are you wondering how I fit them all in? You weren’t? The great thing about Kegels is you can do them anywhere. Like standing in line at Buy Buy Baby. Or sitting in meetings where you reassure your boss about how little maternity leave you’re planning to take. Or lying on the sofa and listening to your husband debate which of his fantasy football leagues to drop after the baby is born. See, Rob’s making sacrifices too.
I’m aiming for ten thousand reps a day in the third trimester. I’ll have to cut my sleep down to one or two hours, but that’s fine. I also may need a catheter because it’s honestly getting pretty hard to make the pee come out. What? Yes, you can unclench now, sorry.
I have no idea whether you did it right. No one can tell you if you’re doing your Kegels correctly — isn’t that fun? You just have to wait a few months and see whether your body is inside-out.
Anyway, I need to take Roofus home and ice my perineum. Good luck with your race!
