Why your vagina needs video games

There are two reasons humans with vaginas don’t do their pelvic floor exercises.
1) they’re boring
2) we’re not taught how important they truly are.

And also did I mention how kegals are boring? 

When I got past the frustrating “down training” part of women’s physiotherapy (where I learned that clenching your pelvic floor as often as possible throughout the day can do more harm than good,) and learned how to activate the multitude of muscles in my pelvis properly, it was time to build strength. 

Which meant doing a full set of exercises three times a day, every day. And some of them aren’t too bad. It’s not easy to teach yourself to lift your pelvic floor while you cough and sneeze, and some of the visualisations are funny the first few times. But after a week? A month? A year? Ugh. Like going to the gym, pelvic floor fitness isn’t something you can achieve, tick off, and forget about. If you don’t want your insides falling out (or coming out further, in my case) you need to be on it. Every day.

But it’s boring. And most of us can’t even invite a buddy to spot for us, like “Hey Janet, want to hang out on Tuesday and rep some  vag?” It doesn’t happen. 

Enter the Perifit. One look at the price of this thing will send you screaming into the hills, which is why it took me so damn long to commit. It’s one of those things you have to save up for. And wait for a sale for. And cry a little bit after you buy it. And thus, I felt a super guilty giving myself this gift. And a bit scared too when it arrived because there’s no way to charge this thing and it doesn’t come with a whole lot of instructions. It seems to me that once it dies, it dies.  I know they can make really great batteries now (but not for phones it seems. Why is that?) but this fact irks the shit out of me. I haven’t yet contacted the company to ask these questions, mostly because I’m lazy and my Perifit is working fine.

Realistically though, say this Perifit lasts a year and then dies and I have to buy a new one. That’s a couple hundred a year. Which is nothing compared to how much I pay my gyno or my colorectal surgeon. It’s nothing compared to missed wages if I need to have an operation. If I don’t do these exercises it’s only a matter of time before I’ll need surgery. Before the symptoms of my prolapse make my life unlivable. Put that way, it’s really not so expensive.

I’m going to jump into TMI territory here, so feel free to skip to the next paragraph if that’s not your jam. You’ve been warned. Okay, so for ladies who already have a prolapse, I do find that on ‘heavy feeling’ days my bulge (cystocele grade 3) pushes the Perifit out during the resting phases. I do have to (very lightly) hold the device in.

SAFE! Anyway, so I was feeling pretty guilty, but also stoked because I was finally enjoying doing my kegals. At last I’m using my muscles until they are fatigued instead of just getting bored, going to sleep, or wandering off to clean my bomb house. And it’s a bonding experience. You know how in the Brady bunch they always had those scenes where Mrs Brady and Mr Brady are in bed (fully dressed haha) and they’re reading together? Well, Deer Heart and I are like that now, except I’m playing Perifit and he’s on Hearthstone. Nerd out!

Obviously I really recommend this thing, but what does my physiotherapist have to say?

I got her permission before I started, and she’s like “I feel confident you won’t bear down and damage yourself by using it incorrectly, but there are so many cheaper biofeedback options.”

And this is true. But those biofeedback options are so you can see you’re doing the exercises correctly (some women can’t feel if they are clenching or not) they don’t make it any more entertaining. Frankly, at this point in my prolapse journey, I’m pretty sick of having things put in my vagina or up against my vulva. If I’m going to shove something in on my own time, it needs to be for fun damn it!

The next time I saw her was the best physiotherapy session I’ve ever had. That is to say, I didn’t cry or feel utterly defeated at any point. I went in prepared for the worst, having suffered a bad cough over Christmas, and remembering the previous visit where I’d gone in super proud of myself. Sure of my progress. Yet she couldn’t feel me using my deep muscles at all, and my hold wasn’t the ten seconds I’d imagined, it was less than five. It was embarrassing and frustrating in equal measure. Not this time! I still can’t hold ten seconds, but I’m doing better. I’m stronger. I’m activating the deep muscles as well as the superficial. She cleared me for ab work, saying that I wasn’t bearing down during my core engaging activities and  I can’t express how happy that made me. I’ve hated my tummy my whole life, and not being allowed to do so much as a sit-up to improve it was devastating.  On top of that, I finally progressed to new physiotherapy exercises. Ones that need to be done standing. Because I’m finally well enough for that! (She says I can do them with my Perifit so I’m not so bored.)

My physio is now excited to recommend it to other women as an option. 

Perifit tracks your progress and your time spent training. It has a range of different games from the standard collect the lotus to an under the sea challenge where you’re a shark trying not to eat dynamite (why isn’t it plastic bags tho?) and even summon the clouds so rocks don’t smash God in the face. Perifit is easy to use, easy to keep clean, and stops you wetting yourself. That’s a win by me. So give yourself one. Buy one for your bestie. That new mum you know? As much as she’ll appreciate that home pamper kit you’re putting together, she’s not going to get the chance to use that for a good while, and in that time her gearbox might fall out. Consider banding together with the other ladies in your group to get her a Perifit instead.

And, for the love of all that’s holy, can we stop laughing off the very real need for products like these? Can we kick the awkward giggle and the shame to the curb and talk about this stuff with our mates, our daughters and trans sons, and Hades! With our partners and penis-owning friends too. Imagine the power women would have if we actually spoke about our needs. Our bodies. Our issues. Imagine the funding women’s health could receive if we stopped being so embarrassed about our bodies.

That would be pretty awesome. So treat your vagina like the champion it is. Buy it a video game, buy yourself a bottle of wine, and share this post to empower your friends to nerd out their privates too.

Miriam Cumming was not sponsored for this post. Her broken vagina makes her zero dollars, but Miriam still loves her anyway.