Pelvic Health Network Podcast

Physical therapists routinely use models and anatomical images to help patients understand their injuries.Why would we stop doing that after birth?Acute care pelvic health physical therapist, Dr. Meredith Grady, PT, DPT, says she is often the first person to fully explain a mother’s birth injury using a pelvic model. She shows patients where they tore, how the pelvic floor and surrounding structures were affected, and what that means for urinating, bowel movements, sitting, getting out of bed, climbing stairs, and caring for a baby at home.None of this requires an internal pelvic floor exam. It's the same basic rehab principle used throughout healthcare: patients deserve to understand what happened to their bodies at the time of their injury and how to recover safely.Meredith now provides pelvic health physical therapy on the postpartum unit at University of Utah Health. In this webinar, she explains how her own difficult recovery led her to this work, what a bedside postpartum PT session includes, and how she earned the trust of nurses, midwives, and physicians one conversation at a time.She discusses:• Using a pelvic model to explain birth injuries • Screening for urinary retention and bladder concerns • Preparing mothers for toileting, bed mobility, stairs and newborn care • Supporting recovery after C-section and severe perineal injuries • Why education must be individualized instead of giving every mother the same list • Why postpartum rehabilitation should be routinely offered, with the option to decline • Lessons learned while introducing PT onto an established maternity unit Find U.S. hospitals offering occupational therapy and/or physical therapy after birth: https://pelvichealthnetwork.org/hospitals/Support the clinicians expanding early maternal rehabilitation: https://pelvichealthnetwork.org/maternal-rehab-project/This webinar is intended for professional education and does not replace individualized medical care.

Emily Gill laminated referral cards and placed them on every monitor in labor and delivery and the postpartum unit. If OB/GYNs had to remember to order OT and PT manually, she was going to make postpartum rehab hard to forget.Emily developed her OTD capstone around a major gap in Cesarean recovery: mothers spent 2 - 4 days in the hospital yet received very little rehab support before their first postpartum follow-up several weeks later.At Banner Gateway Medical Center, she worked with occupational therapists, physical therapists, nurses, OB/GYNs, anesthesiologists, rehabilitation leadership, and hospital administrators to help establish an inpatient postpartum rehabilitation program.When a system-wide automatic referral order was declined because of staffing differences across facilities, Emily changed strategies. She rounded on the unit, trained rehabilitation staff, created referral instructions, attended hospital meetings, and learned how to explain the value of OT and PT to each profession.The team received 43 OT and PT referrals during her four-month capstone. When Emily returned for a later follow-up, the hospital had recorded 89 referrals without an automatic order set.In this conversation, Emily shares:• How she chose her doctoral capstone topic• How she gained support from hospital leaders and physicians• Why “protect your work” resonated with OB/GYNs• How she responded when the automatic order pathway was denied• What OT and PT addressed after Cesarean birth• How patient feedback changed the team’s approach• How she prepared hospital rehabilitation clinicians for a new population• What she would measure next as the program continuesFor OTD students searching for a capstone idea, Emily’s work shows what can happen when a capstone is designed to solve a real clinical problem and continue after graduation.Learn more about how Pelvic Health Network highlights leaders like Emily every month: https://pelvichealthnetwork.org/Explore ERAD® training in hospital and home-based pregnancy and postpartum rehabilitation:https://enhancedrecoveryafterdelivery.com/program/#occupationaltherapy #otdstudent #physical therapy #acute care #hospital birth #postpartumrehab

It started with mothers on ECMO at WVU Medicine, a Level 1 trauma center. Dr. Marley Sisler had a capstone idea for her doctoral degree in occupational therapy. Today, mothers at her hospital after every vaginal and Cesarean delivery, live and stillbirth, receive an evaluation of their mental health and functional recovery by a rehab therapist. The postpartum recovery program she built has reached more than 6,000 OB patients. This is how one therapist turned a research question into a service line that prioritizes early recovery after birth.Credits: Dr. Marley Sisler - OTD Capstone Defense: Acute Care Postpartum Rehab Program -https://pelvichealthnetwork.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/Sisler-Capstone-Defense-Acute-Care-Postpartum-Recovery-Program.pdfVideo Sponsor: Enhanced Recovery After Delivery® Maternal Rehab Project1. Find a hospital offering OT and PT after birth: https://pelvichealthnetwork.org/hospitals/2. Find a therapist offering rehab to mothers in the first 7 days after birth: https://pelvichealthnetwork.org/directory/3. Start a program in the hospital or home that offers early recovery services after birth: http://enhancedrecoveryafterdelivery.com/program/

When I first discovered Hannah Poulton's work, what impressed me wasn't simply that she specializes in scar rehabilitation.

It was that she questioned why women were expected to recover without first being prepared for surgery.

After 25 years as a physiotherapist, including 17 years with the NHS, Hannah left a successful leadership career to build an internationally recognized practice focused on scar rehabilitation, patient education, and earlier recovery.

Today she teaches clinicians around the world, hosts the UK's Scar Symposium, and is completing PhD research investigating cesarean section scars and pelvic floor function.

In this episode we discuss why recovery should begin before surgery, how scar tissue affects movement and pelvic floor function, why education changes outcomes, and what healthcare professionals can do to better support women after childbirth and surgery.

Learn more about Hannah:

https://www.hlp-therapy.co.uk

https://www.hlp-therapy.co.uk/usacourses

https://www.hlp-therapy.co.uk/scar-symposium-2027

Duke University Health System saved their hospital $815,000 by offering physical therapy on the maternity unit and through telehealth.How do we measure the savings for a mother and her family when we address her mental and physical function sooner after birth?Resources:1. Duke Health Inpatient/Telehealth Postpartum PT Program Benefits Patients: https://obgyn.duke.edu/blog/duke-health-inpatienttelehealth-postpartum-pt-program-benefits-patients2. Implementation of an Acute Care OB and Postpartum Telehealth Program at Duke Health: https://www.aptapelvichealth.org/info/implementation-of-an-acute-care-ob-and-postpartum-telehealth-program-at-duke-health3. Postpartum Recovery Hospital Directory: https://pelvichealthnetwork.org/hospital4. Grow an OB Rehab Program in the Hospital and Home after Birth: https://enhancedrecoveryafterdelivery.com/program/

Most postpartum recovery conversations start too late.This one started with a woman who collapsed trying to get upstairs after birth.She had been discharged home after a complicated delivery. No rehab consult. No functional assessment. No equipment. No one evaluated whether she could safely navigate her own home.By the time a physician finally reached her weeks later, she had been confined to her couch. She could not get to the bathroom independently. She was using a bowl because she physically could not make it across the room.A home health referral for occupational therapy and physical therapy was finally placed at 5 weeks postpartum.In this conversation, physicians, physical therapists, and innovators in maternal health discuss a question that is becoming harder to ignore:What happens when we discharge mothers based on medical stability alone, without assessing whether they can actually function at home?We discuss:• Why some maternal fetal medicine physicians automatically order PT and OT after complex births• How postpartum rehab programs are reducing readmissions in hospitals across the U.S.• What therapists are identifying in the first days after discharge that vital signs at rest often miss• Why movement, function, blood pressure response to activity, and home setup matter after birth• The growing role of telehealth, wearable monitoring, and remote postpartum recovery supportFeaturing conversations with clinicians working to build physician-led postpartum recovery pathways in hospitals and homes.This is not a conversation about “bouncing back.”It’s about whether mothers are being assessed for the realities they’re returning home to.

Four days after her C-section, Jenna couldn’t lie flat.

She was short of breath. Her blood pressure kept climbing. She went to OB triage and was told to go home and rest. Instead, she went to the main emergency department with ongoing chest pressure, where her systolic blood pressure rose above 180 and her BNP registered at 1650. She was treated for postpartum fluid overload and acute heart failure.

Jenna is an ultra-endurance athlete and cofounder of Enhanced Recovery After Delivery®. In this conversation, she shares what warning signs were missed, what happened during her postpartum readmission, and the role of home health occupational therapy after discharge from the hospital.

Topics discussed:

• Postpartum readmission
• Acute heart failure after C-section
• Home health OT
• Return to running after birth
• Early postpartum rehab

1. Start your postpartum rehab practice within the first week after birth: https://courses.pelvichealthnetwork.org/postpartum-rehab-practice
2. Grow an OB rehab program in the hospital and home: https://enhancedrecoveryafterdelivery.com/program/
3. Find hospitals offering OT and PT in the hospital after birth: https://pelvichealthnetwork.org/hospital

Across the country, occupational and physical therapists are beginning to bring early rehabilitation to maternity units. In this panel, hospital-based clinicians share how they built programs for high-risk pregnancy, cesarean recovery, and early postpartum care, and why rehabilitation should be part of standard recovery after birth.

Learn more about the Enhanced Recovery After Delivery (ERAD®) initiative: https://enhancedrecoveryafterdelivery.com/program/

Find hospitals in the U.S. that offer occupational and physical therapy after birth: https://pelvichealthnetwork.org/hospital

Why do randomized controlled trials often miss the mark for rehabilitation research? How can occupational therapy and physical therapy show system level value in maternal health, postpartum care, and hospital workflows? In this conversation Dr. Rebeca Segraves sits down with two past presidents of the American Occupational Therapy Association — Dr. Amy Lamb and Dr. Alyson Stover — to explore practical strategies for measuring real world impact using implementation science, quality improvement, and smart clinical workflows.In this episode we cover:• Why RCTs are not always the best fit for rehab research• What implementation science and quality improvement look like in clinical practice• Concrete examples of workflows and data points hospitals care about (length of stay, readmissions, cost, patient satisfaction)• How to design feasible pilot projects that produce actionable results for administrators• A glimpse at international models that embed OT into primary careConnect with our Guests:• Dr Amy Lamb, Past President, American Occupational Therapy Association (AOTA), Consultant, Implementation Science Research — [email protected] • Dr Alyson Stover, Immediate Past President, AOTA, Consultant, Health Policy and Law — [email protected] an OB Rehab Program in your hospital: Enhanced Recovery After Delivery® (ERAD): https://enhancedrecoveryafterdelivery.com/program/

What if everything you’ve been told about diastasis recti isn’t the full story? In this episode, Antony Lo @PhysioDetective  an internationally recognized physiotherapist from Australia, shares why:

• slowing things down with deep core activation and breathing exercises can backfire
• why people deserve support in their own goals for strength, function, and appearance, and
• why most are far more capable than they’ve been told.

This conversation will challenge what you think you know about abdominal muscle separation and recovery after birth.