Kaye Burrows | Navigating Postpartum & Pelvic Floor Challenges

In this episode of The Mama Making Podcast, host Jessica chats with Kay Burrows, founder of Core Love, a fitness program designed for women and mothers. Kay shares her postpartum journey, the challenges she faced, and how they inspired her to create Core Love. 

They discuss the importance of pelvic floor health, self-care, and how Core Love has evolved to support moms at every stage. Kay encourages women to prioritize their well-being, reminding them that taking care of themselves is essential for both motherhood and overall health.

You can connect with Kaye:

• On Instagram at: @corelovefitness
• On the web at: www.corelove.ca
• More on Core Love Fitness Plans 

This episode is sponsored by Collabs Creative - a digital marketing company supporting makers, creatives, and small business owners with all things digital and design.

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Transcript

Jessica (00:59)
Hello everyone and welcome to the mama making podcast. If you're new here, I'm your host Jessica. If you're not new, then welcome back. Today. I'm very excited to have Kay Burrows on the podcast. Kay is the founder of core love, a fitness program created for women and mothers in mind. we're going to get into how core love started, and a little bit more about you. thanks for being here today. I'm so excited to have you.

Kaye (01:23)
Yeah, thanks for having me too. I'm pumped to chat.

Jessica (01:26)
Me too. So, tell us a little bit about you, where you're from, your family, whatever you're comfortable sharing.

Kaye (01:33)
Sure. Yeah, so my name's Kay. I live in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. And I've got, my husband and I have three kids and this is crazy to me, but they are now 13, 11 and eight. And I think I found motherhood a completely life-changing, turn your world upside down transformation, which I know you and I have chatted about before and I know is a pretty common theme with the other people that you've had on your podcast.

But yeah, core love started when my youngest was a baby. I don't know that I should have started a business and had a baby at the exact same time, but that's what I did just because, yeah, it was born out of my own experience and, you know, going through pregnancy and postpartum. And I actually had quite a bit of experience in fitness and I was a biology teacher and a hockey coach. I knew a lot about my body and still felt very lost in my postpartum recovery. So.

That was the starting point for Core Love.

Jessica (02:33)
Yeah, do you want to get into a little bit more about your postpartum experiences and kind of how they led you to where you are now? What kind of informed your decision to get into this area?

Kaye (02:47)
Yeah, I think, you know, like a lot of people during my first pregnancy, I just really wanted to be healthy. I wanted to have a good outcome for me and my baby. And then I thought like, you know, I'll birth the baby and then I'll just, I'll just get back at it and I'll just my body, you know, I figured it'll take a few weeks, but like, I'll feel good. And you know, my doctor was really kind of like,

reaffirming that you're fit, you're exercising, you're doing everything right. He actually would tell me, you're gonna bounce back, it's gonna be great. And then, yeah, it was hard. And one of my main symptoms after my first baby was back pain, kind constant back pain, but then all of a sudden, debilitating back pain. Every couple months I would end up on the couch for a day or two, and it's like, as you know.

basically impossible to take care of a child if you are literally crawling hands and knees to go change their diaper. And so, you know, I was trying to do all the ab exercises because that's what I thought I needed. And yeah, just kind of generally feeling frustrated with the fact that I didn't, you know, quote unquote, bounce back in the way that I had expected. I think

I had my first baby pretty young. I think probably a lot of people would have looked at me and said I bounced back in the fact that I could wear my clothes from pre-pregnancy and things like that. But I did not feel great in my body. And one thing I've learned over time is that that really impacts how I show up for my family and how I show up in the world. And I'm not very patient if I have back pain. I'm...

Yeah, you know, I'm not very confident if I don't feel like I can just like jump into an activity and I'm not worried about peeing my pants or like feeling like things are going to fall out of my vagina, you know? So yeah, I really was pretty humbling having having that first kiddo and then I did it two more times. So my body went through all the changes again.

Jessica (04:45)
With each pregnancy, did you feel like your current symptoms had gotten worse or that you had new symptoms or a combo of both?

Kaye (04:57)
For the first two a combo of both so I did have a second baby and then I noticed a lot more problems in terms of like pelvic floor things so you know leaking and heaviness in the pelvic floor and prolapse type symptoms, painful sex but even I remember saying to my husband like I'm leaving a workout class

My pants are soaked and I don't even know. Like is it pee? Is it something else? Like I feel so humbled that I don't even know what sort of body fluids are like exiting my body. But yeah, I would say it definitely kind of compounded with my second baby. And then of course you're also caring for a toddler, right? So, you you have this healing postpartum body, but you still have a 30, 40 pound kid that wants to jump into your arms and wrestle with you and all of those things. With my third kid, I do remember saying to one of my good friends,

Jessica (05:33)
Yeah.

Kaye (05:55)
feel better in my body than I did honestly before I got pregnant with my first kid. By that point, I had figured it out. In between my second and third kid, I became slightly obsessed with core and pelvic floor and the changes that our bodies go through. And so I exercised in a really smart way during my pregnancy and yeah, being postpartum, even though I had a four year old, a two year old and an infant and you know, was doing primarily all of the childcare and parenting.

felt really, really good. So to be honest, that was kind of what led me to start Core Love because every time, you know, one of my friends would notice that or we'd be talking about our bodies and I would say like, no, I feel really great. They were just like, how? Tell me everything.

Jessica (06:36)
Yeah. So the, seems like the third, you really felt like, okay, I have a handle on this. How did you, how did, how did you spin it up into a business?

Kaye (06:41)
Mm-hmm.

Well, mostly just started talking to my friends and family, of course, because I wanted other people to stop peeing their pants and dealing with back pain and all the things. I still laugh. remember a couple of times meeting people at the park and it would be like, what do you do? And then all of sudden I'm talking to someone about all her bits, all her pieces, right? And then we're like, yeah, by the way, my name's Kay. What's your name? Just right into it, right?

So I knew that other people wanted this information because any time it came up, people were begging me to tell them more. So that's really kind of how it started. I was just talking to people and constantly my friends, my family members were like, can you, could you teach a class or something? Could you do something about this? And so, yeah, I took my little, how old would he have been? Seven, eight month old baby on a plane to Florida, which is really, really far.

I'm in Western Canada, so basically across the continent. And did a training with someone that I really loved and respected there and that kind of got the ball rolling. And yeah, I just was kind of for my own self, relentlessly obsessed with learning more and finding out more information. And then once I knew it, of course I wanted everyone else to know.

Jessica (08:04)
Yeah. And I think it's so funny that you say like before even introducing yourselves as moms were like telling everything. And I think that, I, I feel like there's not a lot of information out there about pelvic floor. There's definitely more now than there has ever been, but I feel like one, it's such a taboo topic and people often don't want to talk about it or they're like, well I've had kids. This is the

Kaye (08:23)
and

Jessica (08:32)
the rite of passage, the incontinence and feeling heavy. But I think people don't realize lower back pain is a symptom. there's so much. I felt like I knew a lot about pelvic floor until I went to a pelvic floor therapist after my son. And I was like, my god, there's so much more to know about it. So can you talk a little bit about

Kaye (08:33)
made it totally

Jessica (08:58)
just public floor, what did you learn from the beginning and how did you kind of build your program?

Kaye (09:07)
Yeah, well, I mean, like you said, Jessica, like I think there is more information out there now, which is amazing, but there is still that piece of just like, you you had a baby, so your body's ruined, just accept it, just expect it, maybe is the better word. And so yeah, what I have learned kind of in a nutshell is like, yeah, your body goes through a lot, pregnancy, birth, and even postpartum, I think we think that once the baby's out, like there's no challenges on the body anymore, but.

Anyone who has had a baby knows that actually caring for a newborn and an infant and a toddler is very physical. You do so much bending and lifting and carrying and all these things. And so, yeah, it's a big deal. And also, like we don't have to just feel like garbage because we had babies. And actually, if your body feels good, you will be able to parent better because you'll be able to jump into activities with your kiddos. You'll be able to pick up your baby without.

you know, a ton of back pain and so you're not like miserable and irritable by the time your partner comes home at the end of the day or something like that. So yeah, I mean that was one thing I had to learn for sure because I remember talking to my mom after my first baby. My mom and my aunties, right, they're all sitting around the table and I had gone to a trampoline park actually with a friend. It's like, you know, she called me up, hey I have a free pass, do want to come to a trampoline park? I'm like, yes, I love trampolines. Not even like on my radar that like I had a baby and you know.

So I go to the trampoline park and I remember, like literally, I had my period at the time and like the tampon was just like falling out and I was like, my God, like what is happening? So I remember kind of like mentioning to my mom and my aunties, you know, I went to a trampoline park and like it was awful. this, and all of them were just like, darling, like you're a mom now, like you don't go to trampoline, but we don't do those sort of things.

That was your previous self that got to have fun and do those things and now you just need to sit on the sidelines. So that was kind of my framework coming in. So that's one thing that I really have learned and that I really advocate for with women is like, no, we don't have to sit on the sidelines and your mental health and your emotional health will be so much better if you have a body that you can trust and that you feel confident in so that you can.

you know, do whatever you want to do and that's going to look different for people. Lots of people want to get back into like ultra marathon running post baby and some people just want to be able to like chase their kid at the park, you know, or, or just be able to chase your kid when they run out on the road and not feel like that's going to be a risky thing to do for your body. So that was a big kind of like important piece of my learning. And then again, once I knew that I kind of became obsessed with sharing all of the things. So I would say the second kind of biggest

learning piece for me was just how your pelvic floor really is so connected to so many things. So like you said, I wasn't connecting my pelvic floor with lower back pain. I didn't think those two things were related. I didn't think that painful sex could be a part of the way that I was exercising, the way that I was bracing my cord. Like those to me were two very separate things. I didn't think that they could be related. You know, you're doing an upper body exercise. To me, that's another

that was an upper body exercise. couldn't possibly be also impacting your core and pelvic floor. But you know, our core really is this whole big canister, this whole space in between our rib cage and the bottom of our pelvis and the pelvic floor is bottom of it. And so anything going on that involves the middle of your body, which is everything, because it either involves the middle of your body moving, right? If you're like doing a flexion type of movement where you're bending over, you're curling your spine, or if you're doing something and you don't want.

your spine to be moving. You want to be able to lift something up and put it on a tall shelf. You want to be able to do that and hold your body in position. So your pelvic floor is really reacting and responding to most movements that you do. And that's one of the really cool things about your deep core and pelvic floor, again, that I didn't know before, but they're really anticipatory muscles. you know, we do have this ability to turn them on when we need to and contract them when we need to, which is amazing.

Also, our brains and our bodies are so cool and even you just thinking about putting something on the top shelf is gonna have your pelvic floor and core contracting and getting ready to turn on, right? So yeah, mean, once you know, okay, my core and pelvic floor are involved in everything, it makes a lot more sense as to why when those parts of our bodies are not functioning well, everything just feels really crummy.

Jessica (13:47)
Yeah. Yeah. I totally identify with the trampoline park example. I, I always had said to my husband, I was like, I don't want to be the mom that just like sits out and doesn't do the fun stuff prior to having kids. And it, it wasn't until recently that I was like, this is why the moms aren't going on like the roller coasters or are just like sitting while everyone plays. Because for me, it was my

Kaye (13:52)
Thank

Thank

Jessica (14:15)
body changed so much and it was one like, it's almost like negotiating with yourself. Like, okay, my body is very different because I had a kid and I think so many people feel like, well, it's just over and don't realize that there is stuff that you can do to help your, not help your body get back to what it was before. Cause it obviously is never going to be, but how to feel optimal.

Kaye (14:22)
Mm-hmm.

Jessica (14:44)
and the body that you're in and, yeah, I have, I have had the same type of issues where I was just so uncomfortable and didn't know why. and I, like you said, in postpartum, like I wasn't resting. was moving around a lot. was, moving, I never rested. never rested in postpartum. And so I think that that was.

a huge detriment to me in recovering and recovering well. I had a really, really long labor. And so that was part of it too, where my son just sat in my pelvic bowl for like days. So I think there's all these compounding things that I think we just assume that it's over. And we're, like you said, we're on the sidelines of life. But then I think I'd love to hear more about what

poor love all entails. So now knowing what you know, how you've kind of built this program to help women get back to a space where they feel comfortable and confident to exercise, but most importantly in their everyday life, they feel more empowered to go to the trampoline park. And yeah, I'd just love to hear more about the program and kind of how you built it based on your experience.

Kaye (16:08)
Yeah, yeah. And you know, to add to what you said about like, I'm not gonna be one of those moms that sits out like that also like these days gets me real fired up because I'm like, we always thought those moms were choosing that right. And some of them are amazing. I love that they get to choose to sit down and rest. But a lot of people are doing exactly what you said, right? They're like, my body can't handle that. And you know, we look at like,

Jessica (16:21)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Kaye (16:32)
osteoporosis and fall rates in older women and all of the messaging is like, women, you have to keep exercising, you have to keep on top of this, you have to, you know, and I get frustrated because I'm like, well, the reason they're not exercising is because, you know, they're peeing their pants and things are falling out of their vagina. So like, you know, let's go back and deal with that. I would say, you know, to answer your question, that's kind of the first piece of what I want women to take away at core love is just like a little bit of education, a little bit of understanding of like, this is what your core looks like.

Jessica (16:48)
Right, right.

Kaye (17:01)
And when I say core, don't just mean six pack abs, right? I mean that whole core system. Yes, your superficial ab muscles, your six pack, your obliques on the sides, but also your deeper core muscles that are wrapping around your spine, your pelvic floor at the bottom. Even just knowing what those muscles are and having an idea of kind of what that looks like can be really helpful to people to just learn a little bit about their body. And we say that all the time, like learn your body.

it's almost like a language that you can learn and it changes, right? So, you know, it's really well-meaning to tell someone to listen to their body. And that's of course what my doctors told me, you know, post-baby, just listen to your bodies, you get back into exercise. And I remember being like, I've never spoken to this sort of body before, right? Like this is a whole different language. So we always start there with some education. And then the second piece is we teach some really like foundational breathing strategies. So there's...

you know, a few different ways to do it, but breath has been proven in the research to be so effective. It's often shown to be way more effective than specific cueing or exercise techniques. So, you know, pick up a blueberry with your vagina or stop the flow of urine or those are kind of like commonly given cues for a kegel. but just queuing someone to breathe all the way down to the bottom of their spine, breathe into your tailbone.

breathe into your butt cheeks, those can be really helpful cues. And those cues are gonna help someone to relax their pelvic floor. And so this is something that a lot of people don't understand, right? If you're peeing your pants or feel like everything's fallen out, we often just assume like, my pelvic floor is so weak, it's such a mess. Like, I hear that all the time, it's loosey goosey is something that people will say.

And that might not be the case. Your pelvic floor is like any other muscle, right? You need to be able to fully relax to get that full range of motion. And then you need to be able to fully contract. And what we typically see is that that relaxing piece of the range of motion for pelvic floor is harder for most people than the contracting, turning on tension, know, engaging that muscle. And I mean, that goes back to what you said, Jess, about your postpartum experience.

Again, our bodies are brilliant, they're amazing. Our pelvic floor is so connected through our nervous system. And so, yeah, if we're not relaxing, if we're just go, go, go, we're stressing, we're worrying about a bunch of things, our pelvic floor is going to naturally create more tension, to contract, to be ready. Clearly there's a threat coming is the way that it's perceived through the brain, right? And so it's like, all right.

Tense up those muscles, our neck gets tight, we get that tension in our upper back, but we're also gonna get that tension in our pelvic floor. And so being able to relax and get through your full range of motion of your pelvic floor can often be game changing. And a lot of people just get into that one step, we'll be like, my low back pain is disappearing. And, I haven't peed my pants all week. It can really like change everything.

Jessica (20:08)
Yeah. I think one of the things that shocked me is that some people's pelvic floor is tight and some people's are not, but the, at first you think like, well, I'm peeing and I feel like things are falling out. first thought is, it's loose. My muscles are loose, but a lot of times it's the total opposite. when I went to pelvic floor therapist, she had said, your muscles, your pelvic bowl is really tight.

Kaye (20:14)
Okay.

Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Jessica (20:35)
And I was like, how is that possible? And she was like, well, you have to think like your pelvic bowl is, think about how many organs your pelvic bowl is protecting. So for whatever reason, the muscles think that they need to be tight to protect what's in there. And it's contributing to some of the other issues. Like I was having issues just like moving my legs fully. So it's so many different things. And I think that

Kaye (20:56)
huh.

Jessica (21:01)
It can be very eye opening for people just to even have that educational piece, but then also like the practical breathing. And I mean, as moms, I feel like we're constantly like, like holding our breath and like, like you said, the shoulder tension. I think, the functional piece of that has to be so helpful for your clients.

Kaye (21:11)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, and then I mean as nice as it sounds most of the women that I work with are busy and they've got a lot of balls in the air and they are managing so much. You know and so as much as I would love for them to like lay down and do a 30 minute breathing meditation every day that's not happening. So you know it's always built into our classes. We start with breathing exercises in the warm-up. We're cueing them in exercises. So for example you know say you're doing a deadlift or some form of like hip hinge.

you can breathe into your pelvic floor. You can lengthen through your glutes and your pelvic floor, like right in that exercise. So you can be, you know, get more bang for your buck quote unquote, like kind of moving your body, strengthening your body, just like any other workout, any other fitness class, you're building your glutes, but you're also increasing that range of motion for your pelvic floor. So you're getting that full relaxation and then also some contraction. And it can just, again, be such a game changer for how a workout feels.

And a lot of women will tell me, I went to so and so class or this class or this drop in thing, but I was peeing my pants or it just hurt my pelvic floor. And it's a hard thing to ask for help, right? You sprain your ankle, it's not embarrassing to say to everyone, yeah, I need a modification, I sprained my ankle. It's another thing to be in front of 20 people and be like, need a modification.

my bladder is pushing on my vagina, I have a bit of a prolapse, like that's harder to ask for help, right? So we try and just build that into the program so everybody knows what we're doing and everybody can then kind of pick and choose which versions they need based on what's going on in their body.

Jessica (22:48)
Yeah, right. Yeah.

Yeah, I think that's such a huge thing too. the, we don't talk about it a ton. It's like, we, I think we, it's such a private thing. I feel like for most people that it's hard to talk about. I know for me specifically, I, so through my pregnancy didn't work out because I had a, I can't, think of it pubic, synthesis dysfunction. And so starting at 10 weeks, I had like horrific pain.

Kaye (23:25)
So painful.

Jessica (23:28)
it was the only symptom I had during pregnancy. And so, I didn't work out for the, thought it was going to be like cross fitting through my whole pregnancy. And I was doing yoga, which wound up being super helpful, helpful for me later on. But, and then all of my postpartum, I was dealing with these pelvic floor issues and just like, to think about walking into a class and just trying to do the workout was just like,

So incomprehensible to me. And it, mean, my son's going to be two in a couple of weeks here in October. And I'm just now feeling like, okay, maybe I can go to a class after having done really intentional personal training with one of our coaches who is focusing only on core and pelvic floor. And, like only now am I feeling like, okay, maybe I can start to do a little bit more or.

I think most of all, like you said, like relearning the language of your body, your body is so different. But then, like I, when I remember one of the main things was like anything with my legs parallel to each other, I was definitely going to pee my pants. But if they were like the farther they were, I was totally fine. And so it's so weird to think that like your body is just so different than what you expect. So I think.

taking the time to just focus on that one area. And I mean, I kind of had to reframe what working out looked like to me, because I just needed to start from point A. And that's a huge adjustment, especially if you're someone who, not that I was like a super athlete, but if you're someone who enjoys working out or spends a lot of time in a gym or has a hobby or activity that is physically focused.

it's a whole mindset shift too. So I love that. Like you guys have like your clients are able to come into whether they're coming into the gym or working out at home. Are with a group of people that are like, this is just what we're doing and can like feel free to let it flow.

Kaye (25:41)
Yeah, yeah and what you said about like that mindset shift that can be so hard and it was really hard for me to be honest after my first especially but my second still like I had these ideas about who I was as a person and what that looked like and the activities that I do right and so or even just what a good quote-unquote workout is has to be an hour long has to be 45 minutes long I have to be like laying in a pile of sweat at the end or else like it didn't count or

You know, so we use a system actually at core love. We call it one, two, three plus R and the plus R is a little bit related to like cardio and joy out of movement and recovery and that breathing stuff. But the one, two, three is meant to just quickly help you kind of do a quick scan of your body, a quick kind of sense of like where you're at and then choose the right workout for you. So that's something I really want women to understand is that like,

that 45, 60 minute workout that like completely kicks your butt is awesome when it's good and when you have enough sleep and you've had enough food in you and you know your body is ready for that. But it's actually the wrong choice if you're not in that state right? If you've been sleep deprived for months, if you haven't eaten anything except for like a couple like soggy goldfish off your kids snack tray, you know showing up for an hour long like kick your butt workout would actually be not very

smart for your body. And I think it's hard, it can be hard to kind of take like a quote unquote like modified version or a shortened version because we feel like we're being lazy or we're kind of taking like, you know, the shortcut or the easy way out. But I really try and teach women that like, hey, if your stress is really high, your sleep is really low, your food has been pretty chaotic and crummy. You're just time crunched like you have 20 minutes.

take a level one workout. We kind of, we design all of our workouts so that like a level one is gonna take you anywhere between like five and 12 minutes. It's gonna hit all the things, gonna do the core, the breathing, the glutes, like all the main stuff, and then move on with your day. And that was the right choice for you at that time, right? And there will be other times where a level two makes more sense, because you've got 30 minutes and a level three makes more sense, because you have 45 minutes and you really do wanna push it and that will feel good to you.

But I think, yeah, that mindset shift is huge. And it's not that taking a level one or a level two workout is, you know, copping out or taking, you know, the easy route. It's actually like the right choice for your body. But that's hard to learn.

Jessica (28:19)
Yeah. Yeah. I love the idea of making the right choice for that day or that week or whatever timeframe you have. cause I think it, I think as moms, we want to do everything like right and perfect and good. And so I think kind of reframing to like what's good for me today. and, kind of using that like self focus, can be really great. And to have the option to, to have multiple options of things that you can do is amazing.

Kaye (28:30)
Thank

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

And it seems like it wouldn't be enough, but it is. It's totally, and what it ends up being is more than you would do if you were trying to like hit those level threes all the time, right? Because it gets overwhelming and you're so sore and you can't keep up. So you're just like, I can't even do this. And so you do nothing. Whereas, you know, three little 10 minute sessions throughout the week would have actually really, really helped your core and pelvic floor and had you feeling less back pain and you know, over time.

that really does add up. call it the bam, as in bare ass minimum, because I feel like every person deserves a bare ass minimum of like five to 10 minutes of self care every few days. That's not asking for too much, even though I know that as moms we have so much on our plate. But we've had people be like, okay, I just bammed it for like two or three months, and then they feel ready to come back to longer workouts, and they always are so surprised. Like, my God, I actually still...

did build some core and public floor function, even though it didn't feel like it was long enough, didn't feel like it could possibly be hard enough. But yeah, again, that mindset shift, it's hard to get there.

Jessica (29:57)
Yeah, I love the bare ass minimum. I really love that. I feel like you could apply that to anything motherhood, but especially like moving. I don't want to say doing something is better than nothing because sometimes nothing is exactly what you need, but like doing the minimum is still doing something. So I love that.

Kaye (30:20)
Yeah, and I think it's just a helpful kind of framework to like remind women to like keep yourself, you know, in the mix, right? Sometimes it's like all of our energy is going to our children and to our family and to managing the house and to all of these things. And it's like, no, also like where are you on the to-do list, right? And even if it's just the bam, it still keeps you there versus just completely turning into like martyrdom.

not getting any self care and you know, not even just the physical symptoms of that with our core and pelvic floor and we talked about back pain and stuff, but the emotional way that it feels, the resentment that builds up if you just like day after day, week after week, month after month are just caring for everyone else and feeling like there's no space for you. It's not, it's never great. And so yeah, that bam is also a bit of a like, nope, like you gotta keep yourself a little bit on.

on the priority list too.

Jessica (31:21)
Yeah, I love that. It's a great tip to having a bare minimum thing for you. What if it's just 10 minutes in the day? I think I struggle admittedly, like putting myself anywhere in our schedule for the day. But if, if it's just like 10 minutes is 10 minutes. And so I think that that's really great advice to do the bare ass minimum for 10 minutes. If you can do 15 minutes, 30 minutes. Great. But,

Kaye (31:37)
Mm-hmm.

Jessica (31:50)
Yeah, I think a lot of moms struggle to be like, okay, where do I fit myself in? How do I even justify putting it in there? But I think that that's a really easy way. The 10 bare ass minutes a day, I'm sure is life changing.

Kaye (32:03)
Yeah.

Well, and you know, now I'm 13 years into parenting and you know, not, if you want a little help, justifying it, Jessica. I really believe now that I'm like, okay, taking good care of me is good parenting because now that my kids are getting older, yeah, like Bill recently, my youngest said to me, I was like really frustrated with him and he's like, mom, you're pretty grumpy. Like, do you think you need a workout?

I was like, that's so cute, but I want to strangle you. But even my older kids, now I get him, mom, do you want to go for a run? I'm just kind of like my middle kid a couple days ago was like, I feel grumpy. I just feel kind of like he's bored. He didn't really know what to do, And I just kind of like, instead of sending him to video games or TV, I just kind of let him sit in that. And he was like, you know what, mom, I think I'm going to go for a run.

And like how amazing is that? So now, you know, even more so looking back, I'm like, I feel less guilt carving out time to take care of myself because I actually think that not only does it, you know, just make me a calmer, more centered, healthy, happy person, but I'm also showing my kids that like moms also deserve to be cared for and mom is also important. And here's some ways that you can care for yourself even when you're busy or you're not feeling great or whatever it is, right?

Jessica (33:28)
Yeah, that modeling is huge. Yeah, that's a really good perspective. Thank you. So let's talk a little bit about what core love looks like. Who is it for? Where can people find it? What does it all look like?

Kaye (33:33)
Yeah.

Yeah, so when I started CoreLove eight years ago, it was very much like pre and postnatal, kind of where my world was, pregnancy, know, toddlers, preschoolers, kind of that's where everybody was that came to our classes and to our workouts. And so we still have a huge emphasis on pregnancy and postpartum. A lot of what I want people to learn in pregnancy is that you can do so much to prepare your body.

for postpartum, I think, and I remember this too, when I was pregnant with my first, all I could think of was birth. How is this human gonna exit my body? Really hard to look past that very overwhelming event that's gonna happen, but I often am trying to coach women and be like, listen, you can do so much in pregnancy that's gonna make you feel like future you, nine, 10, 12 months from now is gonna feel so grateful if your upper back is strong when you're picking your baby up out of the crib, if your glutes are strong.

Jessica (34:21)
All right.

Kaye (34:42)
you know, as you're constantly getting up and down off the floor. And so yeah, that's a huge piece is just helping women to manage those huge transitional stages, help them to understand what's going on in their body, help them to recover. And all of our classes are child friendly. So we try and make sure that childcare is like not a barrier. We design the workouts so that, you know, your kiddo can join with you, they can be your weight or if they're not feeling it today, they can go over to kids corner and play with the toys over there.

But that's still a huge focus is just like taking really good care of the mother. But over time, of course, yeah, things have shifted a little bit. We have a lot of people kind of come to us more so when their kids are like, say, five to 10 years old, and they're almost like coming up for air and kind of being like, what just happened in the last decade of parenting, right? And so that's a really fun group of women to work with for me because yeah, they just are feeling

typically so awful, their bodies, don't recognize their body anymore, they have a lot of aches and pains, and just a little bit of exercise can go so far. So I love working with women that are kind of in that like middle parenting stage. And then, yeah, now we have a lot of women that, you know, had babies with us eight years ago, but now they're coming into perimenopause. And that's like a whole nother transition and change for our body. And again, I think an area where like,

there's just not a lot of great information for women. I was astounded when I had my babies at the lack of postpartum education, you know, because people are having babies everywhere, all the time, every day. So I just thought like, you know, there will be so much information and support. But as, you know, myself and like a lot of my clients get closer to that perimenopause transition, I'm like, somehow maybe this might be worse than postpartum. And again, I think it's just, you know, people are...

still a little timid to talk about it, it's a little bit taboo. But I'm thinking about my clients right now, you know, if you're in your kind of late 30s, 40s, early 50s, like let's look 10, 20, 30 decades ahead and like build you strong bones and strong muscle and all of the things that I know that you're gonna need to have a really high quality of life for like decades to come.

Yeah, now we kind of have a whole range. We're seeing women from pregnancy right through that menopause transition and it's really, really fun. I love it. And we have a mix of programs. So we have in-person classes, like I said, where people are bringing their kiddos and we're all working out together. We do virtual classes over Zoom, which we were forced to do when COVID started and totally thought we'd just be like this short-term fix to get us through that stretch. But,

People actually really love them. They're not like a, you know, I think they're different than what a lot of things were offered in that online fitness space over COVID because we don't record anything. It's not like a pre-recorded video that you're gonna follow along. It's like active live coaching. I'm watching you move. I'm giving you feedback. There's a community of people that wanna see you, right? So there's a little bit of accountability. Like we want you to come to class. We wanna know how you're doing. Everybody gets a little bit of feedback. Everybody gets.

some connection and check-ins throughout the class. And then we have a little bit of like online programs and app support. So COVID really has kind of forced us to come up with this like hybrid model, which I would say is working really well for a lot of women because, know, as a mom of a toddler or a baby or older kiddos, it can be hard to get to the gym like multiple times a week, even just like driving and car seats and all the things.

So having the option to maybe do one or two workouts in person and then do some other stuff online, or for some people they just do all online. They never ever thought they could be a person that works out at home and then they tried it and they're like, I'm never driving anywhere again. I'm just gonna do all my workouts at home. So yeah, those are kinda all the ways that we work with people right now.

Jessica (38:40)
I love that. And where can people find you?

Kaye (38:44)
We are online at corelove.ca because we're in Canada and yeah, Instagram, Facebook, Core Love Fitness, those are kind of the main places that I hang out online.

Jessica (38:56)
Awesome. Anything else on pelvic floor, fitness, motherhood? Anything?

Kaye (39:03)
yeah, I would just kind of like love to give the pelvic floor one more little plug. It's so, so important. And you know, sometimes that looks like really specific core and pelvic floor training. Like you were talking about, you know, whether you're doing that with your physio or with like a core pelvic floor trainer, someone who's specialized in that area. But like your body still needs full fitness, right? We still need a strong upper body.

And it goes both ways, like the stronger your core and pelvic floor are, the easier you're gonna find, say, pressing weights up overhead or putting a heavy box on top of a shelf or squatting or getting up off the floor or jumping, all of those things. But it's true in the reverse as well. Like the stronger your upper body is, the less pressure on your core, the less pressure that your pelvic floor has to be managing. And so, yeah, I would just really encourage women to get strong.

Build muscle, don't be afraid of that. It's gonna make your body feel so, so much better. But if you're trying to do that and you're peeing your pants or you have back pain or things like feel like they're falling out, don't feel like that's something you just like have to deal with for the rest of your life because you had a baby or because you didn't have a baby, you're just a woman and those are common symptoms that women are gonna navigate.

Jessica (40:23)
Yeah. Well, I love that. Thank you so much for being on. this was so great. know for me, it's very helpful to know that there's like other people experiencing it. It's all normal. A lot of people are going through it. So, I'm sure it's helpful for others to hear as well, either for the first time or, multiple times now to make a decision to, to prioritize themselves. Yeah.

Kaye (40:36)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah and

again like I really believe that like taking good care of yourself is good parenting so drop the mom guilt like carve out that time to take care of you and your body and everybody will benefit your whole family. Thanks Jess that was fun.

Jessica (41:00)
Yeah, well thank you so much for being on. It was great to have you. No

problem. All right, let me stop recording. This was great.