Credence Therapy Notebook
 Not a clinic and not a waiting room: one woman's record of pelvic health physiotherapy, the exercises that actually work, and how long they take.
Pelvic health physiotherapy, what it involves and how long it takes.

Health Disclaimer

Last revised: July 30, 2026

The list comes first, because it is the only part of this page that could matter to somebody in the next hour.

Stop reading and get emergency help now

Go to an emergency department, or call your local emergency number, if you have any of these:

  • New bladder or bowel trouble together with back pain, numbness around the saddle area (the parts of you that would touch a saddle), or new weakness in both legs. This combination can mean cauda equina syndrome, and it is time critical.
  • You cannot pass urine at all, or you can only pass small amounts while feeling desperate and in pain. That is acute urinary retention.
  • Heavy bleeding after childbirth, or bleeding that is soaking through pads quickly.
  • Signs of sepsis after childbirth or surgery: fever with shivering, a very fast heartbeat, confusion, breathlessness, or feeling more unwell than you can explain.

Contact a clinician the same day

  • Fever with pain in your side or flank, which can mean a kidney infection.
  • A surgical or perineal wound that opens, or a wound that becomes hot, swollen or smelly.
  • A prolapse that has become painful and will not go back in, or that looks discoloured.

Urgent, and not a physiotherapy question first

These need investigating by a doctor before anybody starts you on exercises:

  • New leakage of stool or wind after childbirth, which needs an obstetric anal sphincter injury review rather than a general exercise sheet.
  • Any vaginal bleeding after the menopause.
  • Visible blood in your urine.
  • An unexplained lump or mass in the pelvis or abdomen.
  • Unexplained weight loss, or pain that wakes you at night and is getting worse.

Nothing on this page is a substitute for being seen. If you are unsure which list you are in, treat yourself as being in the more urgent one and let a clinician tell you otherwise.

Three things this site is not

1. It is not a service. Credence Therapy Notebook does not provide, sell, arrange, refer or book pelvic health physiotherapy or any other treatment. There is no practitioner list, no booking form and no clinic behind it. The registers page points at regulators so you can check somebody yourself, and that is the closest this site comes to helping you find care.

2. It is not clinical advice. Everything here is general information about a treatment, described by somebody who received it and checked by somebody who delivers it. It cannot take a history, cannot examine you, and does not know whether your pelvic floor is underactive, overactive, or not the source of your symptoms at all. Reading it, or writing to us, creates no professional relationship of any kind, and our reviewer is not your physiotherapist.

3. It is not a shortcut past assessment. This is the one we care about most. Pelvic floor exercises are not universally safe: for an overactive pelvic floor, conventional strengthening makes symptoms worse, and telling those two presentations apart requires an examination. If you take one thing from this site, take the assessment, not the exercise sheet.

About the figures

Every number quoted here comes from a named guideline, systematic review or trial, with the population and the comparison stated, because a success rate means nothing without them. They describe groups of people studied under particular conditions. They are not predictions about you, and no figure on this site is a promise of an outcome.

Costs and waiting times are worse still: they vary by country, by system, by insurer and by year, they date quickly, and they are given as ranges to be checked locally rather than relied upon.

Distress

Pelvic symptoms, birth injury and years of not being believed take a real toll, and some people arrive at this subject already exhausted by it. If you are struggling, the resources page lists international helpline services and the numbers for several countries. If you are in immediate danger, use your local emergency number.

We link only to health authorities, guideline bodies, professional regulators and learned societies, and we check those links, but we do not control what they publish and are not responsible for their content. We work to keep this site accurate and current, and we correct errors when we find them or when readers report them, but we cannot warrant that everything here is complete or applicable to your circumstances. Any reliance you place on it is at your own risk.

Always ask somebody who can examine you

Whatever you have read here, take questions about your own symptoms to a clinician who can assess you in person and follow you up. Never delay seeking that assessment, and never stop or change treatment you are already having, because of something on this website.