IT’S RUINED MY LIFE IN SO MANY WAYS

‘IF SOMEONE had told me about pelvic floor exercises during my pregnancies it would have saved me an awful lot of pain,’ says mother-of-two Maxine Cooper.

As she says bluntly: ‘Incontinence has ruined my life.’

When Maxine (left), who lives near Chester, had her children, now aged 27 and 31, the labour was uncomplicated and the babies were only around 6lb. But crucially, she says no one told her to exercise her pelvic floor.

Then ten years ago, Maxine, 55, an officer in the youth justice system, started to leak when she coughed or laughed. ‘When it first started I’d just feel a little trickle when I coughed or sneezed; I couldn’t run and would worry about laughing when I was out. But at that stage I could cope. However, within 12 months it was so bad it would happen when I was just walking and in the cold I would get sudden urges to go.

‘It makes you feel different about yourself — I felt old beyond my time and so embarrassed.’ After she eventually saw her GP a year later, she was referred for physiotherapy but this didn’t help. In 2010 she was offered a procedure to support the bladder using plastic mesh.

As Good Health has highlighted, some women have experienced crippling side-effects as a result of this procedure. Maxine was one. ‘Straight after I had it done I started bleeding and experiencing the most dreadful pain.’

‘To be fair it did stop my incontinence but now it’s been removed I’m back to the way I was — I cough and wet myself. I can’t be intimate with my partner as I’m too embarrassed. I’ve been through all this because no one told me to do my pelvic floor exercises.’