To Pee…Or Not To Pee?

It’s been an hour since your morning coffee kicked in and your gigantic to-do list looms. You’re looking at 2 hours of shuttling kids around along with all the basics of preparing for the week. Really, you don’t have to pee before you leave. But you pee anyway. Just in case.

That’s what we call it in the pelvic health world: just in case peeing. It’s a habit that seems like a good idea at the time. What if you get the urge to go and you’re in the check out line? What if you get stuck in traffic? What if you wet your pants in public? Plus, most of us have been trained to just in case pee since childhood. It’s the sensible thing to do, right?

There are a few types of incontinence, but the two I see the most are urge incontinence and stress incontinence. Stress incontinence is the one we’ve all heard about where you leak when you cough, sneeze, jump, or laugh. Urge incontinence is a bit different. Urge is a brain issue.

When you pee, just in case, you begin to train your brain to send the urge signal to your bladder inappropriately, before it’s actually full. After a few years of this, you’re knocking your family over in your rush to get to bathroom, and you don’t quite make it. The need to pee hits hard and fast and is sometimes triggered by the sound of water or unlocking your front door. As time goes by, frequency is the issue. You have to go every hour. You’re constantly on the lookout for the nearest bathroom and you find yourself arranging your road trips around rest stops.

Sound familiar? So, what now? Urinary incontinence is never normal, but it is incredibly common. You should be urinating every 3-4 hours or so, around 6-7 pees in a day. Once in the middle of the night is fine, but we don’t want any more than that.

First step is to understand the norms, the next step is to ignore inappropriate urges. You went an hour ago so you don’t need to pee. Ignore it by staying calm, cross your legs, breathe and kegel (yes guys…you can kegel too). Sit down and distract yourself. The panic to get to the bathroom increases that brain signal to go; so, if you still need to pee, calmly walk to the bathroom, pausing to cross your legs or kegel if you need to.

If you pee every hour, set a timer for every 1.5 hours and stick to it. Once it’s easy to wait to pee, extend it to every 2 hours and so on. And don’t be afraid of your local pelvic PT. We’ll work within your comfort level and get you some exercises to help you out.

You really don’t have to live a life arranged around your bathroom. Pee to live, don’t live to pee.