faking it

"Have you been doing your Kegels?" Those of you who know what this odd phrase refers to are dismissed for the day. You may run along and play; tune in tomorrow for another regular edition of FP. For the rest of you, let me explain. Kegel exercises are where you work out the muscles of your pelvic floor. Still lost? Then let’s just get to the point – They are the muscles you use, for example, to start or stop going wee-wee. Any of you Tantric types may be familiar with other uses for commanding control over such muscle groups. Ladies, you have three levels of these pelvic muscles.

Kegel exercises (so the great discoverer Mr. or Ms. Kegel really wanted their name on this one, huh?) are meant to strengthen those muscles for giving birth. After birth, the exercises are used to again strengthen whatever the hell is left of them.

Current literature on the topic suggests to expectant mothers that they do several sets of Kegels per day while performing other common chores or parts of their daily routine. Do X number of Kegels while driving to work, they tell you, while watching TV, while showering. Am I the only one out of touch with my pelvic floor? Should I worry that doing vaginal crunches virtually never occurs to me while taking in an episode of "Arrested Development?"

Then there are formal group Kegels. This is when prenatal exercise classes incorporate the Kegel regimen into the workout. Big-bellied women sitting cross-legged on the floor, to the naked eye, doing nothing, while an instructor directs her invisible chorus "…And lift, lift, lift, release. Lift, lift, lift, release. Again…"

Frankly, I just don't have this down. It's not that I can't find my little muscles or that I don't want more than anything to have strong muscles where I need them, or to rebuild them after Baby in order to continue to enjoy things like sex or bladder control. But the problem is these prenatal classes are filled with false beginners. In the world of language teaching, a "false beginner" is a learner who is taking the zero-level course, and clearly has many holes in his or her basic knowledge, but has had some exposure to the language before. They know bits and pieces and generally intimidate the ones who really do need to be taught from "hello, my name is."

In the prenatal classes someone brings up Kegels and everyone begins to nod. They've heard about this and other things, like when to buy nursing bras and how to avoid swollen fingers from friends and family who clearly talk about these things in more detail than my friends and family do. It was further than I was willing to step out when I first started this grueling process of seeing myself as a pregnant woman, to go "Huh?!?" I was left to find out about these pelvic do-hickies on the street, with incomplete information from questionable sources, and that's just not right.

It's mostly the three level thing, the speed at which we should perform these little pelvic tricks, and something about a "figure eight" that always comes up that throw me the most these days. And sometimes, I admit, in class, I'm not really doing them. Maybe I'm trying, or maybe I'm doing single lifts for everyone else's three-tiered approach. For better or worse you can fake a Kegel. Cuz, well, who's gonna know?

I still need to read up on my Kegels. Someday soon maybe I'll get it. Maybe I'll start to do them regularly while shampooing my hair, like a good mommy-to-be. Perhaps, while meditating on my nether region, a fairy in a bubble might appear in the shower to tell me I've always had the power within myself to get home, uh, I mean, to Kegel. Click, click, click. Lift, lift, lift.