if you're having painful sex
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So for this week's episode, it's very special because it's actually featuring my first ever guest, but it's also my friend and she has started this

She's a genius. She's created this app called Norma, which is an educational platform for sexual well-being, specifically if you're suffering from vaginismus, which is a term I didn't even really know until recent years. I'd never heard it in school, I don't think. And I know there's like, I heard, I was, sorry, this is a tangent story. I went out for Mother's Day lunch with my mom and her friend. And my mom's friend used to be a teacher. And she said she was talking to one of her friends online.

um who's like a bit nuts but anyway the friend was like did you hear in school in primary schools they're teaching the kids about pleasure now and how to pleasure themselves it's just fucking hilarious so i feel like anytime you talk about these issues obviously perverts are going to be like are going to jump to the conclusion or make the assumption that everything is about pleasure and sexualizing everything but these are actual health issues that need to be addressed and not something that we should just endure because it's

people are scared to talk about it in case you know it's probably to do with the catholic guilt and a lot of other deeply engraved conservative values that irish people have but anyway vaginismus is basically just your body's reaction to vaginal penetration that consists of tensing and tightening of your muscles in that area so if you've ever done kegel exercises or pelvic floor exercises women who've ever been pregnant will know what i'm talking about you know like the squeezing and release

My presumption is that I know I've never suffered vaginismus, but I know people very close to me that have. My presumption is that, you know, when you're tightening your pelvic floor, when you're doing Kegel exercises, my presumption is that it does that automatically when you try to insert anything. So like a finger, a tampon or a sex toy or trying to have sex with someone. So it can be really difficult if you are trying to be. I can imagine it can be very difficult if you are trying to be intimate with someone and probably really frustrating and even more frustrating if you're

everyone's reaction to it is oh why would you need to know anything about that sure what's the point in you knowing about that anyway or people being like oh sure what can I do you're just going to have to relax your vagina aren't you and

I'd say there's rarely anything to do with women's health or women's sexual health. Anyway, there's rarely anything on it. It's really good to have these sort of conversations and I'm really glad that Gráinne is taking the steps into providing that educational platform for people to be able to access information and help. You know, we need, you know, the girls out there need, the vagina owners need help with this sort of thing. But there are several possible causes of vaginismus and Gráinne was talking about that on the podcast further. She explains it better than I do, but vaginismus

it's not just down to like something traumatic, obviously something, if something traumatic happens to you, you can, it can result in vaginismus or other health issues, but it can be from a lot of physical or psychological issues such as childbirth, recurrent UTIs, endometriosis and yeast infections, which I wasn't expecting. So like if you have any sort of issues down there, it could affect your performance. Is that even the right word?

your relaxation uh tendencies i don't know but apparently it's the second most prevalent female sexual difficulty in ireland so we should be talking about it more the more information to be made accessible to people on how to help with this because i'm sure it's really distressing having this happen to you but anyway i really hope you enjoyed this podcast and do follow norma uh on instagram oh well i'll leave grania's things groins burn i'll leave her things in the description

If you want to go check it out for yourself. My, I suppose, introduction to guys as well would have been very much like they're over there. Like they weren't something that you knew. Like, you know, you weren't friends with them. And I think, yeah, it was...

I was very fortunate to have a very lovely partner at the time and they were like there also can be when sexual problems like this happen as well there's also the partner as well so like their mental health can be affected as well and then when you don't talk about these problems and you don't have any support or like for example I went to the doctor when I was in college because this is actually a relationship when I kind of towards the beginning of college and

I went into I probably went to about eight different appointments for GPs and I'm someone who goes in with like you know the notes on their phone who's like here are all of my problems right and I kind of I remember going in

and this is unfortunately really really common and I can't believe it still happens but when you go in and you say I'm having pain during sex and you're the one to actually address it I remember getting comments like have you tried relaxing and I'm like yeah yeah I have somebody asked me have you tried having a glass of wine and which is getting prescribed a glass of wine at the doctor is crazy you don't have to tell me that yeah

And I, yeah, I basically, I think at the last appointment, I had a male doctor and I was like, I demand you to, you know, actually examine me. And I think another nurse came in

And he was like, yes, I think this is what you have. Even though, to be honest with you, a woman can be actually quite phobic to being examined. Because it is obviously an internal exam or even an external exam. Just to see what's going on. That's very intimidating. And so you're able to actually kind of diagnose it from the symptoms that the woman can give you psychologically. And anyway, he referred me to a gynae.

I went there about six months later and basically she was like yeah you have this you have vaginismus and that like that was it like she just said you can here's um she said you can go online onto Amazon and actually get a pack of dilators I don't know if you know what they are oh yeah so yeah these like hard are they made out of rubber or porcelain or something yeah are they hard or are they squishy

they are actually really rigid they're like plastic and they're just they're graded by size they're basically like medicalized dildos right yeah and they were actually used to be prescribed to men i think you know years ago for like headaches right where would the men put them up there yeah yeah imagine like so yeah yeah um and so anyway these this is for like a lot of there might be a lot of use cases for this as well like so you have like you're

you want to basically try to retrain your muscle around it. So pelvic floor physiotherapist is somebody who would help you to use these things if you needed them as well. But imagine saying, oh yeah, go and get these offline online off Amazon. And then you actually get them and then you're like, well, I can't even insert a finger. So how am I actually. How would you put them in? Yeah.

A lot of that's got to do with your mind-body connection, right? So a lot of the time I think with things like this, like with vaginismus, your mind-body connection is a bit severed, let's just say, because you're not really in your body, you're up in your head. Yeah. And...

And yeah, so it's a lot about reconnecting that and actually using your breath to do that. And like a pelvic floor physiotherapist will really, really help you with that. So a lot of the time people think that pelvic floor physios are just for people who have had babies. But actually they're really good for a lot of different things and you need to kind of be looking after that.

of your body because it's a really busy area like lots of stuff goes on there and we kind of just ignore it a lot of the time you know we leak or whatever yeah no like you know we've got to pay attention to it your body is like asking you to do something you know so what would they do in the pelvic floor physiotherapist is it like the what you call that the

when you clench and release what are they called the pelvic floor the kegels yeah is that what you do or is it more psychological and therapy talk therapy based so um it's actually interesting you ask that because I was speaking with a pelvic floor physio about this recently and I wish that somebody had told me to go to it um so it was like I I I wish I'd you know at this point it was very much like uh helping you to relax your your pelvic floor muscles because

Everyone gets told to do these Kegel exercises, but actually, like, it really depends on how your pelvic floor is. That could make it worse. So I did those. I did them for a year. Yeah. And it made it worse because my pelvic floor was already like the Hulk. Like it was already really hypertonic. It was gorilla grip. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And I didn't need to do that. All I needed to do was actually control and really relax it. You know? To release. Yeah. And so I had gone...

recently to ask a pelvic floor physiotherapist like well how do they what does the pelvic floor look like at different stages of life even and she kind of did this kind of matrix for me and I found it really interesting because I was like this is like I've never known this before we should be taught this in school but like there's kind of maybe four presentations and it can be either

you know your pelvic floor is super weak and relaxed and that's often what happens after you give birth yeah um and so you might experience like um you know incontinence yeah so um and then also it can be in terms of vaginismus then it can be really strong and tense you know

you know and you don't want that you want to have it strong and relaxed if you get me and like that's the kind of area where if it's weak and tense that's also vaginismus you know you're kind of like it doesn't always have to be a strong pelvic floor it can also be one that's weak or kind of like you know like an open nerve you know like it's tensing up all the time so but yeah I definitely recommend if somebody has any problems around that area

where you're having problems either, you know, people who have IBS also have a lot of, can experience sexual difficulties as well. Oh, why is that? Because it's kind of, I think, got to do with a lot of the straining. You know, if you also need to take a lot of trips to the loo and it's, if you're tensing your pelvic floor a lot

unnecessarily or you know if you feel like you need to go to the loo quite often that can also interfere with your sexual functioning which I don't think a lot of people kind of link up with those two things so did you were you able to link back maybe where your issues or the development of vaginismus came from to you personally totally it really comes back to I actually we were talking about earlier but about somebody told me recently that

that all sex is group sex. Yeah. And I always come back to this because it's not, what you think about sex, right, is not just about what you've created over time or what you know it is. It's about what you learn from your parents and what you learn from, you know, all the people around you in your community. And I think that it came back to me of, it was a fear primarily of probably getting pregnant.

Oh really? Yeah. I think deeply and it wouldn't have been a conscious fear but it would have been like a fear of getting pregnant and also I think

you know there was a lot there's a lot of things especially you know in rural Ireland around you know um everybody knows everyone else right and if you are promiscuous you know you'll you can gain a reputation now this is going back as well but you know when you look at the history of Ireland like 1997 is when the last Magdalene laundry was shut down you know and the

what we did to women back then would we would have committed our own sisters our own you know females in the family if they got pregnant or even if they were just promiscuous and I think that that's definitely an intergenerational thing where I think I was I think I you absorb a lot of that as well and I do think it came back to you know that fear of of pregnancy and that or that fear of

doing something wrong you know so even though I was not religious by the way I'm not religious but I think it does come back to that that core you know fear of and I think like to put it into perspective as well right I see a lot of research that comes out of like the Middle East and a lot of these Middle Eastern countries like Iran and

even like Saudi Arabia and also like Turkey as well a lot of the research comes out of there and I actually have a hunch that a lot of women in Ireland and like you know how we view sex is actually quite similar to these countries even though maybe perhaps these countries are a lot more conservative but we still have kind of the hangover of the influence of the Catholic Church right and I think

that you know even though that's lifted a little bit in Ireland we're a lot more secular it still doesn't leave you know the society very quickly and yeah so I do have to say it probably does come back around those fears and when we think about it

like women didn't really have control over their bodies until we had the pill so even with that you know it was like even even though we I was probably on the pill and I knew I couldn't get pregnant it was probably this subconscious internal thing where it was just a protective you know it was kind of like a defense mechanism probably you know working in overdrive so what are what what are the steps now that you've taken towards like healing that part of you or is it something that you always live with

Or is it something that you can make go away completely or you have to do constant work for? I can only speak from my own personal experience, but I think the steps that I took really, and it was really unintentional because I went online, right? I went online to try and

after that eighth appointment and that gynecology appointment and then I really was just stuck with these dilators so like what do you do then and it's it's very intimidating and I actually remember calling my mother when I had when after all of that and I was like how am I ever going to get over this and like I really broke down to be like this is impossible you know to overcome and for many women it they're taught that this thing is chronic

and it's like it's not a chronic thing it can be very not I won't say easily solved but once you get the right tools information and I suppose the right mindset as well to be compassionate towards yourself do you know that

it is something that you can absolutely alleviate to 100% of course but I would say for me anyway like I still flinch when I put a tampon in do you know what I mean? yeah you know and I think a lot of people might anyway but there's my body has a memory of this as well and like I think when it comes to like being intimate with somebody

that's about always having somebody who is you feel safe with you know what I mean so that's like that's a prerequisite anyway but it's um I think to can it is to it does come back to that whole anxiety and that thinking and being connected to yourself in terms of I'm safe and uh and and

I think around all of these good things around you know you have your I know everyone rattles them off you know around breath work and meditation but that breath really helps it to be in your body you know and yeah so I can't say for myself like I would say it's like mostly alleviated in my body but you have to actually work and you have to engage your pelvic floor in the right way and

I think it's I think it is being kind to yourself because the women that I speak with that have vaginismus or have troubles around around this um for around insertion

Oh my God, I've never met a group of people who are so hard on themselves, like so self-critical. And I was one of them, you know, so I would hear a lot of women who would be, when I, you kind of helped me with a lot of research about two years ago where I had interviews with about, I'd say it was probably about 25 women who experienced this. So a lot of them might have also had endometriosis as well or vulvodynia. And these things can be kind of, they can coexist a lot of the time.

And I think we need to look into also like

it's not just painful sex there's there might be other reasons as to why this is happening you know um but again like these women they might be going through chronic pain conditions as well so it is about being really self-compassionate and being like well um like what can i what can i do for myself but i really know it's like women really want to be in the driver's seat you know yeah in terms of their health they don't want to you know

we've been stuck with no options for a very long time for things like this so I think yeah I think that it is you know kind of changing slowly but like that's what we want to do we want to provide people with the right information and tools to actually to overcome it and to live a really good quality life even if you have something like this you know so do you want to talk about then the structure of Norma and how it would work yeah yeah for sure so with Norma

I mean my background is looking into women who have who experience sexual pain and vaginismus but I began to zoom out a lot more and look I kept seeing that people had so many different experiences across you know postpartum and also like you know women around me who are going through menopause as well it's inevitable that our bodies are going to change and we're going to also experience you know intimate problems so

what I really wanted to do because I always wished that when I was going through vaginismus that I had access to a sex therapist and also as I said a pelvic floor physiotherapist and I actually had um

I was really interested in this but I couldn't afford you know as a student I couldn't afford a sex therapist and because you know mental health therapies are quite you know it's kind of like a privilege also to access them as well and it should not be and so what I wanted to do with Norma is

create this educational platform whereby people do get access to these intimate health experts but get in a live workshop program format so within it it will be um depends on what the actual workshop is but that there will be a sex therapist that delivers it or pelvic health physiotherapist if it's required as well and in like a really relaxing environment there's no like there's cameras off the mics are off but there is a chat um so people can feel comfortable to share quite a

to share their questions. And really what I want to do is, it's like we bring in as much evidence-based, you know, practices as we can as well. But a lot of it is talking, is the, you know, sex therapist speaking to their experience of dealing with women who have a lot of these types of problems. And also, you know,

bringing in those self-reflective tools um and and doing the kind of tasks within the workshop as well to actually create space for okay well how does like what does my paint cycle look like right yeah you know what's the first thing that triggered it and what's continuing it um and what are the thoughts not just like what are the physical things that are happening but what are the thoughts that are actually continuing so like I mentioned earlier around um

one thought that kept coming back to me was that who will ever want me or how will I even have children with vaginismus and that's a really that's a that's really taunting that type of language to use with yourself and your self talk is quite poor it can be quite poor

So from a sex therapy perspective, we have like accredited sex therapists because there can be also a lot of people out there who might be, you know, they could be educators, which is also a really good thing. But there can be people who call themselves sex coaches or sex experts. And it's...

you know it's not uh it's more about internally looking at um what you want you know and it's not like from intimacy as well um but also from a pelvic floor physiotherapist perspective um it's about you know what are the things that i can be doing for my pelvic floor that are really positive and what's like what's the road roadmap for my pelvic well-being you know what i mean um so that's what the kind of workshops look like we have ones around we'll bring bringing

bringing out one around just general sexual well-being and painful sex and vaginismus and ADHD also. You were saying this to me the last time. So what is it like? How does ADHD affect intimacy?

So it's really around how... Like people actually... First of all, before we get into it, a lot of the women that I speak with who have vaginismus or experienced vaginismus, a lot of them are actually neurodivergent as well. Okay. So it can... Now this is... I really would love if a researcher took this area because I see it so, so much that I think with ADHD, you become overstimulated and there's like...

or you can be that's one symptom of it yeah and a lot of the women I speak with they can be feeling that kind of cut off between their mind and their body you know and so with ADHD it we really see it kind of impacts relationships in terms of um

you know, it's not just in the bedroom, but also like on a day to day basis. And bear in mind, sorry, I didn't even say this as well, but sex therapy is like, doesn't matter if you're having sex or you're not. And doesn't matter if you're in a relationship or not. It's still really, really useful for people. And so, yeah,

we know that like with this, this ADHD and sex and relationships kind of workshop, it's just, we have like an amazing sex therapist who's also a clinical psychologist, Dr. Natasha Langan. And her like job on a day-to-day basis is actually to diagnose and help treat patients who have ADHD. And she's also a sex therapist. So she, we kind of saw this link between, between these things. Yeah. And what do you know, like you'll have

I think with any type of neurodevelopmental condition as well, and also like even if we look at the autism spectrum as well, how we actually relate to relationships as well might be slightly different. Sorry, could you go into, I know a lot of, obviously I've talked about my struggles with intimacy postpartum because I had such an invasive delivery of my baby out forceps and then an infection.

And I really felt like I was out. I couldn't control my body. Because you know when you're healing from something. You feel like.

I can't because you know if you feel sick you can have a ginger shot and have soup and blah blah with my vagina I literally just had to wait it out it felt like stabbing pains every time I tried to have sex and this is only up this is I'd say it took me a year to actually enjoy sex again or even feel like I had sort of a sex drive because I was breastfeeding and all of that so are you doing work as well to help with people who suffer with postpartum or struggle with postpartum intimacy issues

So I can tell you about a story of how I discovered this world around postpartum and the needs of people who are postpartum, right? Because a lot has happened to your body. It doesn't matter what the mode of delivery of the baby is, that intimacy is not the first thing we think of after you give birth, right? And so

I have a friend who actually came to me and I think that she was it was six months or seven months after she had her baby and she said Gráinne I think I have what you're talking about I think I have vaginosis or whatever it is and I was I was like let me just look into it a little bit and you know she was breastfeeding at this point as well and

I did a research, put my research hat on and bear in mind, I've done biology in school. I did biology as part, like, you know, there's a science part of my university degree. And I did not know that if a woman is breastfeeding, her hormones have changed to the point where she might be experiencing dryness, like in the vulvo vaginal area. Right. So I was like, what?

I thought I discovered something you know what I mean like novel here I was like this is crazy why doesn't anybody talk about this and I was really I felt like this is like this sounds dramatic but I did feel like a system kind of failed me you know because and then I also thought directly of like okay well maybe is that why you know is this one of the reasons why we have kind of such a low breastfeeding rate

you know what I mean because it does change in your body but that's sorry going into one element of you know postpartum but what we want to do is like it's kind of mainly selfish because you know if I'm going to have a child in the future and if I'm you know in a relationship even not as a single person

how do I have really good sexual well-being, you know, like after having a child. And again, we have also a workshop around this where a sex therapist and a pelvic health physiotherapist will come in and give you the understanding around what are the tools, again, to like

this time of your life and it's difficult anyway but even to you know I think we spoke to the study I was talking about a study earlier on about women who are bisexual and also or might identify as pansexual as well and it was a study that

this book to 30 of them and this is from like you know they knew their orientation they knew that they were bisexual or pansexual but they were partnered with men and they were navigating the first year after having their first baby so

this is a time that the study said you know where there's intense heteronormative expectations and like those kind of tensions as well obviously like little sleep people are having and they're trying to connect with one another but like obviously there's another little being here yeah

It's often called the roommate phase after you have a baby. Yeah, exactly. And I mean, you can tell me more about it, like, you know, about this experience. Like I've, I was kind of more like, well, you know, looking forward, like how do I, how do I be prepared for this? You know what I mean? And, and,

um so yeah so looking into that and it was really interesting what it said about the results so most of the women they actually said that you know their sexuality was less central to their overall identity which is we can you might be able to expect that because of this roommate phase you know you're you're doing a job you're a new it's a new role but also the um

the women most of them did still identify as bisexual or pansexual but that they said it was a private identity that they couldn't really share it because they were under the pressures you know I'm not a sexual being or I'm not you know allowed to connect with this because I'm now a mam yeah well after you become a mam it's such a huge transition that I don't think that men experience the same way because everybody views you differently whereas like you wouldn't really view a man

like even if you're breastfeeding the baby's kind of attached to you all the time you feel solely responsible for this other child and then you can only see yourself through the lens of your baby as well so you want to be the perfect exemplar of an angel mother whereas I don't think men get that pressure but also that comes along with that as well as Catholic guilt and other elements I think that go into it is like

the woman can't you can't sexualize yourself or see yourself in a sexual capacity because you want to be innocent or something in the views of your child even though that's how they came to the world in the first place so it's mad but even you can see that I remember I was sponsored by a sex toy after I gave birth and I got a hate comment about it being like your company was selling a sex toy and your postpartum child that you breastfeeding on top of you and

So that expectation is like reinforced by other people as well, not even just yourself, but like no wonder we feel so much shame. And then there's our body healing as well. Also, if your boobs are leaking, your body has completely changed, your hair is falling out, you're not really feeling the sexiest either. So it's so much that goes into it. But then your partner...

as a byproduct of that is feeling maybe neglected and not he doesn't feel attractive or they're not doing anything they're doing something wrong and it's I think a lot of women as well

and men would feel validated by being sexual with each other or it validates the relationship that it's romantic in a way and maybe that's why it's called the roommate phase absolutely you know like there is the basic human need of wanting to be intimate with somebody but it doesn't mean sex like it has to be penetrative sex like my initial understanding of sex was so limited I just thought it was penetrative because that's what you see you know growing up and in the media and in porn and everything like that

But no, I think that that's, it's really hard, I think, when you feel like your body is being pulled in all directions as well. And I think, yeah, you're speaking about the partner, you know, and even around that, like having a conversation, I think, around, you know,

About how you want to be touched as well. And I think a lot of it comes down to actually a lack of communication, right? Yeah. But you don't even know what you want. You want yourself. Because you're like, I want to be touched by you, but...

I want you to fuck off at the same time and don't touch me and if you're holding the baby all day if you're breastfeeding you can totally like you can feel so overwhelmed with being touched all day every day when you're not used to it so then when your partner is like wants affection or wants a hug you can be kind of like

a little bit even though you still want to connect it's so it's hard it is hard to navigate like I still only kind of figured it out now only because my child's a toddler and she's not actually the cluster feeding stage is the most difficult transition because you don't know what and what

planet you're on with your partner at all and even sorry even to go back to like you know that's one element right so you may or may not have a partner as a new parent as well and you might like I think it's even to connect with yourself you know people um like people don't even see like you know that they themselves can like express themselves in that way and feel you know

like lean into that central side of themselves do you get me or like you know i think maybe had you said it before and you know i did i didn't know how to dress you know even yeah no you speak can you tell me a bit about that because i i'm you know it's your your it's how it's how society is seeing you as a new mother right yeah like it was well first it's the whole you want your child you see yourself through the lens of your child so you want to be innocent and my idea of a mother

Was like Brie Vanderkamp in Desperate Housewives

I was like, I need to wear large collars and duffle coats and also your body changing. So after you give birth, because you're so used to having a huge pregnant belly and for some reason, and you're not, you don't have your child yet. So you still are attached to your own identity. You know who you are. You think you know who you are. I love dressing my pregnant body. I thought it was so fun. But then after that went, then it was like another identity crisis because you're

You grow pregnant over time. Slowly you can see your belly growing. And then when I gave birth, my... Now this is different for...

every woman but my belly literally disappeared like the day the midwives are literally going I can't believe your stomach just went down it was like deflated but the skin was also loose um so the skin was loose and wrinkly and tanned obviously because of summer and I was like sunbathing all summer so it was all tanned and wrinkly and loose and then my boobs doubled in size and already your tits are big from being pregnant and then when my milk came in it was sore leaky like I

I couldn't fit into anything. Anything I wore looked like I was being provocative because it looked like I was trying to get my tits out. I was just like uncomfortable and not... And my hips were much wider than what they used to be. I didn't recognize myself in the mirror at all. I didn't know who I was and my hair started falling out. So...

I went through the phase of just like wearing baggy clothes and then I tried to attach myself to my perception of what a good mother is supposed to look like so I think that's why a lot of mams now I know it's like a joke but you know the way mams just wear like

gym clothes all the time but that's just kind of like it's a neutral look because they don't know I didn't know who if I was supposed to dress like I did before because I wanted to seem mature and for some reason the way I used to dress isn't attached to like maturity this just reminded me of like was I telling you at the time I kept going to house viewings to get rooms and I thought in order to actually look more mature that I had to wear a trench coat a trench coat

though for some reason when I put a trench coat on I'm like wait I own property I just look like you know Inspector Gadget you know like going in and I never got the rooms you know what I mean so it didn't work

I would have been better off going in as myself, you know? But no, I can imagine that. And I hear it as well a lot of the time across the board with women, like body issue or body image and how they think of themselves so self-critical a lot of the time. And it's all about like what I should be looking like, what I should be looking like. And that's across women who have, you know, experienced all the types of different pelvic pain conditions as well. Yeah.

like too postpartum you know and it's just it's difficult to be able to try and connect with yourself but yeah I think it's really important to even zoom out of what sexual well-being is and to redefine that for yourself also so it's not just my relationship to someone but it's also my relationship to myself you know overall

Yeah, because I feel for women especially, body image is probably connected to sexual well-being at the same time. Because if you don't feel like you are conventionally sexy, it might have an effect then on your self-esteem, which then has an effect on how you perform sexually or whatever. Yeah. Or the mental blocks that come with it.

vaginismus and there's the tensing up yeah and like definitely definitely postpartum like there's so many there was this amazing study that i was on that i got really excited i was like this study was done in ireland it was amazing and it's actually called the mammy study m-a-m-m-i i'm sure it stands for something like i remember maternal something but around it was around maternal health overall and i think this is the very first study to actually look at um

Postpartum sexual well-being And Oh what was it I think it was 86% or 87% Of women are not asked About their sexual problems Like postpartum Either by their doctor Or public health nurse Yeah And I mean They usually just talk to you About contraception And I'm like I'm literally My vagina's infected How am I going to have sex Yeah And it's It's

It's just bonkers to me, you know? Maybe it's because I've been in this area for too long and I've been looking at all these... Everyone talks about their vagina now. You're not all talking about your pelvic floor issues. Yeah, exactly. And yeah, it just doesn't make any sense to me. And then people think that they have to...

bounce back you know what i mean yeah overall like they think they need to like it's barbaric to me that you would say to someone who was six weeks after having a child that you know are you back having intercourse yeah you know that's like well if that if you do want to do that and you can do that great but like that's not the majority of people at all no but from like when i looked at it from like a pain perspective right that it was something like um

1 in 5 women or 20% of women experience pain with penetrative sex across the board and this study also said that and then at

about six months after they have a baby that jumps to 30% of women so we know that it's caused by that but it doesn't matter about how as I said the baby is delivered so when my friend came to me and said oh I'm having I think I have vaginismus and it was because of breastfeeding right and she had had a cesarean section so and actually the pelvic floor physiotherapists are always telling me they like

yeah people think that they shouldn't need they don't need to come to us because they had a caesarean section you know I had a c-section so nothing happened down there not like nothing went through my vaginal canal so therefore I don't like I don't deserve to go to this or like you know even if they are experiencing you know symptoms like leaking and stuff and like incontinence yeah

If you're experiencing anything that Ciarán and I spoke about on this episode and it's causing you anxiety, stress, pain or general hardship in your life, there are three types of people that I would recommend. The first being a gynaecologist. So you might need a referral from your GP in order to get to your gynaecologist and the point of going to one is really to rule out any physical obstructions or biological reasons as to why you have, you know, pain or discomfort down there.

The second person is a sex therapist. So this is especially for people if you're like me who had, you know, anxieties and fears around intimacy and a fear of pain. But also for many other types of reasons around sex, around relationships, I would recommend to see one. In Ireland, you can actually go to sextherapist.ie and in the UK, I recommend a website called

which is cosrt.org.uk, that is c-o-s-r-t.org.uk, where you'll find all accredited sexual and relationship therapists.

And thirdly, if you are experiencing any problems with your pelvic floor, so that could be from tension to incontinence. So you might be needing to run to the loo and have bowel movements and bladder movements more often or not as often as you'd like. I would also recommend you see one of these people and they're regulated. So you'll be able to find a pelvic health physiotherapist, hopefully in your area.

And so please remember that you know your body the best. You know your body and your mind better than anyone or any professional. So when you go into any of these rooms, especially if you go to a GP, just because

they don't ask you outright about your sexual well-being does not mean that it's not important or that it shouldn't be addressed whatsoever. In fact, it's such a big part of your overall well-being it should be asked a lot more often if people are experiencing problems. If you're looking for more information about how you can improve your sexual well-being feel free to check out Norma

On socials, it is at Feel Norma. And if you're looking to perhaps get involved with any of our live workshops on sexual well-being, you can find them at www.feelnorma.com.