Note: If you are a clarinetist who has given birth, please help contribute to this important research by taking the “Clarinet Playing During Pregnancy and the Postpartum Period” survey here before January 31, 2019.

After my first son was born in 2013, I didn’t have much trouble returning to playing after a month or so off. I started slow, built my embouchure back up and did some yoga to help with breathing.

But after my second son arrived in July 2017, life was busier than ever, and my own health took a backseat. Although I took a 3-month leave from editing The Clarinet, I went back to my classroom teaching and private lessons, and my family bought a house and moved before the year was over! I jumped back into playing quite a bit in the fall semester, with several Soldier’s Tale and Nutcracker performances for which I practiced emergency-style: after the kids were finally asleep around 9 PM, it was a scant 5-minute warmup and then right into the tricky stuff for 30 or 40 minutes until I was too tired and had to put myself to bed. (This should be obvious, but with a 4-month-old, nursing and pumping takes up a great deal of the day and night for a working mom!)

As the months went by, I noticed that things didn’t feel quite right with my breathing – while playing clarinet or in general. I found that I was almost holding my breath at times while working around the house or taking care of the kids, which I attributed to stress. I had a hip that felt loose and painful sometimes, and I’ll spare you the details, but things just didn’t feel like they were totally coming back together down there.

It was almost a year until I finally arrived at the understanding that I needed physical therapy, and found the time to do it. It was a total game-changer for me. Through working with my incredible physical therapist, I learned so much. I learned that I was using my larger abdominal muscles (external abdominal obliques) instead of my deeper core muscles for everything from playing clarinet to standing up. This explained my shortness of breath – you can’t breathe in if you’re using your external abs to hold your body up. And I realized that I was actually causing injury to myself by playing clarinet without a solid warmup of my body and without strengthening the correct muscles.

My therapist gave me exercises to strengthen my transversus abdominis and other core muscles, got me Kegel-ing like it was going out of style, and even hooked me up to electrodes so she could monitor my pelvic floor muscles while I played the clarinet. I felt like my therapist was helping me relearn how to play the clarinet with my new, post-two-babies body!

Once I felt the difference in my body and heard the difference in my sound, I knew that I wanted to share my experience with others. I also wanted to learn more about what challenges other women faced in playing the clarinet during pregnancy and postpartum, and how breath support might look different for women than for men, especially women who have experienced childbirth.

All of this led to the creation of a survey on clarinet playing during pregnancy and the postpartum period (still open to take until Jan. 31). There has been a great deal of interest in the survey and the topic so far, and I look forward to presenting the results of my research at ClarinetFest 2020 in Reno, Nevada. Thank you to all who have already shared your experiences.