Estrella Jaramillo is the Cofounder of B-wom, a digital coach for women’s health that offers users personalized care programs with habits, exercises, educational contents, and a tracking tool. Their mission is to guide women through health priorities and concerns at every stage of their lives, from pre-fertility to after menopause. B-wom has 215k end users in 10 countries, and helps organizations design female-adapted benefit strategies, supporting a healthy return to work after maternity, in addition to continued support through previous and subsequent stages in a woman's life. Estrella is a passionate women's health and mental wellbeing advocate and aims to eradicate the anxiety women suffer when it comes to their bodies and their intimate health, removing the stigma and the taboos around them.

What is pelvic floor and pelvic floor health?

The pelvic floor is a group of muscles (and tissues) shaped like a hammock based in the lower part of your core that is used to help facilitate and support certain bodily functions. They also work together with your abdominal muscles. There are four main functions of the pelvic floor area:

• The pelvic floor area supports and holds the bladder, uterus, and intestines in place within the pelvis.
• It buffers the pressure from the abdomen from coughs, sneezes, and the weight of pregnancy.
• It prevents bladder and anal leakage, and also constipation if functioning properly.
• It also helps sexual activity and pleasure. It facilitates entrance and exit to the vagina and anus. This affects orgasm and sensations during sexual intercourse.

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In yoga, the pelvic floor is known as the root chakra. In sex research, the pelvic floor is known as the root of female orgasm! Many of us learn to tone the pelvic floor with the Kegel exercise, named after Dr. Arnold Kegel who also studied how the pelvic floor contributes to our sexual health. The pelvic floor is made up of the muscles and tissues that line the pelvis. During penetration, the pelvic floor is stretched and widened. During orgasm, the pelvic floor contracts. And a toned pelvic floor that can contract and release its muscles more deeply, helps us to experience orgasm more deeply. Find out more in our blog post How Toning the Pelvic Floor Can Help Us Have Better Orgasms? Link in bio! . . . #pelvicfloor #sex #sexualhealth #orgasm #clitoris #gspot

A post shared by Bwom (@hellobwom) on Oct 31, 2017 at 9:40am PDT

What are the most common myths and truths about pelvic floor health?

One of the most common myths is that Kegel exercises are the only way to exercises your pelvic floor, but there’s more to it than that!

There’s hypopressive exercises, lengthening and breathing exercises. Also, Kegels are not always recommended for all types of symptoms. Sometimes, relaxation exercises are more appropriate. The pelvic floor also has a full range of motion! The key is to understand that there’s no one size fits all. It’s about finding what benefits you at every stage of life. The care practice of a young adult who is a frequent runner - impact sports affect the pelvic floor - might look completely different to the exercises that are beneficial when preparing for birth. The same applies to managing symptoms that become more present as we age, like incontinence. There is a false belief that there’s nothing that can prevent it, but that is not true. There are specific exercises that mitigate cases of stress leaking. It’s about committing to a routine and finding the right medical support.

We have been led to believe that we need to get used to living with certain symptoms as we age, and it really doesn’t have to be like that! We just need to place more importance on intimate and sexual health and take it as seriously as we take other areas.

While we are on the topic of aging - how does aging affect women’s sexuality? Does it affect our libido and our desire? Does it change any physical aspects of sex?

Women experience many transitions in a lifetime. We get our periods for the first time, we go through the fertility journey, we might have children, we transition to menopause - all of these phases come with their own hormonal changes and naturally have an impact on our wellbeing and our libido. There are well-known symptoms that come with those transitions, such as vaginal dryness or birth tears, but these can be improved and healed with the right resources and products!

These changes don’t mean that women stop being sexual as they age. We need to stop seeing sexuality as a good v. bad or horny v. no libido game. As our bodies and perceptions evolve, we just experience sexuality in different ways, and that is a good thing. In fact, some research shows that women get increasingly comfortable with their bodies and their sexuality after 30, way later than men*. I think that’s pretty awesome!

Does pregnancy and motherhood change in any way how we feel about our bodies and how?

Motherhood is a big change. Many women feel like their bodies are not the same, and it is not uncommon to see that it takes them some time to adjust to their new body and role. Nowadays, there is lot of pressure for women to “bounce back”, and yet we still don’t have established protocols of care for new mothers to know what specific steps they need to take to ease the recovery, particularly when it comes to the pelvic floor and to restoring their sexual life. There is no magic recipe, but there’s definitely a lot of good habits and care practices that could make women’s transitions easier and help them gain confidence in their new body.

*Estrella Jaramillo*

Do you feel there is a certain stigma (and fetish) around pregnancy and sex? How about motherhood and sex?

There's definitely a taboo around sex after the baby. It’s not really discussed even though it is something that concerns some women sooner or later. At B-wom we aim to offer personalized resources so that women can take an active role in their recovery, feel supported, and avoid the isolation and the feeling that there’s something wrong with them. Many changes happen to the female body during and after pregnancy, and sex is one of the aspects that changes, but it doesn’t have to be for the worse!

We get overwhelming feedback from women wanting to lead satisfactory sexual lives after having their babies. Some women even report more intense orgasms and sensations after pregnancy!

On the other hand, I absolutely believe there is a fetish, more so with mothers. That’s why the term MILF even exist, which became popular after American Pie. At the beginning I felt rejection towards the term. To me, the fact that it even exists proves that society perceives as something remarkable to consider a mother sexually attractive. It reinforces the notion that women are expected to lose their sexual quality after motherhood. However, I now see more women owning their own version of MILF - see Fergie’s video hit - and that’s powerful!

** A lot of research has been conducted in terms of at what age are women/men most comfortable with their sexuality and experience a sexual peak. And of course there are a lot of different results, which Bustle kindly collected here.

lede image by Heather Gallagher Photography