My name is Iveta and this is my story.

I had always been someone who took pride in being fit and healthy. Even though my career kept me behind a desk for years, I made time for movement and believed I understood my body well. When I became pregnant, I had dreams of being one of those women who gracefully transitioned through motherhood while maintaining her strength and vitality.

How beautifully naive I was.

When Everything Changed

After two days in labor and four hours of pushing with almost every possible complication there was, my son was born and I was dismissed from the hospital with a pat on the shoulder and a pair of diapers. Nobody told me about prolapse, or what the weird bulge in my vaginal opening was. I had back and hip pain. I was exhausted like I had never experienced before. By the end of each day, I was so drained that even the thought of exercise felt impossible. After three months of maternity leave spent trying to recover, I returned to work with hope in my heart. Surely now, I thought, my body and my life would start returning to normal.

Instead, I found myself in a reality I didn't recognize.

No one told me I’d be peeing my pants just by raising my voice, God forbid I would sneeze or laugh.

I No Longer Knew My Body

My body hadn’t just failed to bounce back – it felt like it belonged to someone else entirely. The chronic sleep deprivation, combined with the beautiful chaos of new motherhood and work pressures, left me feeling like a shell of myself. But what broke my heart most was discovering that something fundamental had changed in my pelvic floor. I found myself leaking with every cough, every sneeze, every moment of laughter. At first, I held onto hope that this was temporary – surely after three months postpartum, then six months, then nine months, my body would remember how to be strong again.

The months passed, and nothing changed.

My Own Expertise Wasn't Enough

The irony wasn’t lost on me – here I was, a certified personal trainer and a yoga teacher who was supposed to understand bodies and movement, and I couldn’t help myself heal.

I tried returning to the gym, but everything felt wrong, empty, disconnected.

I couldn’t run without embarrassing leaks.
Jumping was out of the question.
Even laughing freely or cheering at my child’s activities became sources of anxiety.

I felt betrayed by the body that had once been my source of confidence and strength.

Searching for Help in All the Wrong Places

My first visit to a pelvic floor therapist lasted all of thirty minutes. She prescribed some Kegel exercises and sent me home with little explanation and no follow-up plan.

Desperate for answers, I turned to my OB-GYN, but her response left me feeling even more hopeless.

She shared that she herself had never been able to return to running after having her children.

"Maybe it's time to accept that wet pants are just part of being a mother," she suggested.

Pain Became My Constant Companion

As my child grew and reached four years old, persistent headaches began following me home from work, growing stronger and more frequent. Soon, I was waking up with pressure in my temples, facing each day already in pain.

I felt tired, frustrated, and heartbroken. This wasn’t the motherhood I had imagined. This wasn’t the life I wanted to model for my child. The unfairness of it all felt overwhelming.

I saw an orthopedic physical therapist for back pain and persistent headaches. After three months in therapy with ZERO results, she dismissed me, saying something else must be wrong with me.

Now I know how incredibly wrong and incompetent she was. Headaches ARE connected to pelvic floor problems!

WHY I DIDN'T SEE RESULTS IN THERAPY

#1

I was doing the exercises incorrectly at home, which is the number one reason why women don’t see results in any therapy, orthopedic or pelvic.

#2

The therapist wasn’t addressing the root cause of my headaches. Missing core strength, dysfunctional pelvic floor, and shallow breathing led to my thoracic and cervical spine compensating and overworking.

This is What Caused My Headaches

Nonexistent core control
Weak glutes
Shallow breathing.

My neck and shoulders tried desperately to stabilize my spine due to the absence of a stretched-out transversus abdominis, which led to chronic tension headaches as all my upper body worked overtime.

Yep, my headaches had nothing to do with my neck, nor shoulders, nor hormones, nor nutrition, but all to do with my pelvis, abdominals, and diaphragm. A doctor of physical therapy could not help me! Imagine that!

The Moment I Chose Myself

Then came the realization that changed everything: I had a choice.

I could continue accepting this diminished version of myself, or I could take radical steps to reclaim my health and vitality. I discovered Sarah Duvall’s rehabilitation program.

I thought, “finally, someone who speaks to the reality of prolapse and postpartum recovery with both expertise and compassion.“

I began the slow, patient work of rebuilding my body from the ground up, learning that healing doesn’t happen on anyone’s timeline but your own.

The Decision That Changed My Life

Despite the self-paced rehab, my progress was slow and I still felt like a zombie. If this was supposed to be my new life, then I didn’t want it.

I realized that I had to resign from my six-digit salary job to be able to progress significantly.

Making the decision to leave my full-time job was terrifying, but it was also liberating.

For the first time in years, I had the space and energy to focus on my recovery without constantly fighting against time constraints and competing priorities.

That’s when the real transformation began. I dove deep into learning about my body, addressing not just the obvious issues but all the small injuries like:

IT Band syndrome,
Sciatica,
Piriformis syndrome,
Flat arches, and
A worsening kyphosis that contributed to my headaches

#3

WHY WE DON'T SEE RESULTS IN THERAPY

Imagine you exercise 60 minutes a day, three to four times a week, but for the rest of the day and week you keep:

Bearing down,
Overusing your back muscles,
Clenching your butt as you sit down and so on.

Time spent on the mat doing corrective exercises will barely offset your dysfunctional movement patterns throughout the day.

We have to be functional throughout the day, every minute, every hour.

What I Learned Along the Way

This journey opened my eyes to how little support and understanding exists for women throughout their lives, whether directly postpartum or as we reach peri/menopause.

As a mother, I learned to value my time and energy differently.

I didn’t want to spend time constantly making appointments with my therapist, let alone travel back and forth!

Who has time for that?

Active women with jobs and family sure don’t. Online was the way to rehab! (but not self-paced!)

I became unwilling to work with fitness professionals who didn’t truly understand the complexity of the female body after childbirth.

I have two personal trainer certifications and the parts for pregnancy/postpartum were barely ONE CHAPTER!

Yes, only ONE chapter to address the most significant physical transformation a woman’s body can experience.

Do you think it is enough? Would you trust your body, money, time, and energy to a person that knows this little about you and your anatomy?

Finding My Purpose

Fast-forward, I rehabbed my incontinence and back/hip pain and improved my bladder prolapse-grade two to be completely symptom free with corrective exercise. During this time, I certified as a Postpartum and Pregnancy Corrective Exercise specialist to solidify my knowledge.

I’m back to running and lifting weights, and I tried Crossfit and even pole dancing.

I realized that my struggle had given me something invaluable – deep, personal understanding of what women go through postpartum and as we age.

Today, I understand that my journey through pain and healing wasn’t just about me.

It was preparation for serving other women who find themselves in similar struggles, feeling lost and unsupported in their recovery.

I figured out the hard way what works for women and what doesn’t work. And what doesn’t work is:

A self-paced approach
No or limited guidance from the therapist
Treating symptoms instead of root causes
Treating the pelvic floor in isolation instead of using a whole body approach

I designed my InControl Pelvic Floor Transformation program to address these shortcomings so my clients fast-forward their success.

When I work with clients now, I see myself in their stories. I understand their frustration, their fear, their hope.

And I have the knowledge and experience to guide them toward genuine healing – not just quick fixes or empty promises, but real, sustainable recovery towards a…

Prolapse-, pain-, and leak-free body that is strong and resilient, and also sexy and bikini-ready at any age!

Certifications

These certifications represent not just credentials, but a commitment to truly understanding the female body — so Iveta can guide women with both technical expertise and lived experience.