Excerpt From Interview with Open Forum:
As a high school and college softball player, Jill Bigelow received top care to keep her body in top shape. Delivering her three children was the hardest events she has ever put her body through—and yet, she found that support for recovering moms, whose bodies suffer major trauma at birth, had very little post-birth support. Bigelow received more care as an athlete then as a new mom. That realization spawned a business, PELV-ICE, and a device, Mama Strut, aimed at supporting, in a physical sense, the bodies of moms who just gave birth. The Mama Strut is a soft brace for a woman’s midsection and pelvic area that can also accommodate hot or cold packs.
1. Why did you start your business?
I started PELV-ICE, like many entrepreneurs do, after experiencing a problem that did not have a solution that I thought was acceptable or effective. I was an athlete and have experienced many skeletal and soft tissue injuries and always got great orthopedic sports medicine care, including supportive braces, ice and heat therapy and physical therapy to aid my recovery. But after experiencing the most significant injury of my life—childbirth—I was given nothing that resembled a modern solution. At the time the only thing available were home remedies like a frozen diaper, ice in a glove, mesh underwear and belly wraps—all which can offer some relief but none are neat, easy, discrete or really address the seriousness of the injury to the pelvic floor that all new mamas experience to differing degrees.
My frustration led me to research and then invent an effective solution for pelvic trauma recovery and Mama Strut by PELV-ICE was born. I named our first product line Mama Strut because a strut is an engineering device that resists pressure. It also means to walk with a proud gait.
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