This guide is about getting an appointment, not about your symptoms or what the treatment involves. Both of those are for a physiotherapist, your GP or the HSE. What the official pages do not say in one place is the administrative part: who is allowed to refer you, whether you can skip that and ring the hospital yourself, and the fact that the deadline is set by the maternity unit you gave birth in rather than by a national rule.
The short version
- The national advice
- The HSE says to talk to your GP for a referral
- But some hospitals
- Let you contact the physiotherapy service yourself, no GP needed
- The window
- Set by your maternity unit, not nationally. Six months in two Dublin hospitals
- Third or fourth degree tear
- At least one hospital books you in before you go home
- Going private
- Tax relief at 20%, but only if a practitioner referred or advised it
The official advice contradicts itself, and that matters
The HSE's own page on exercise after pregnancy says that women's health physiotherapists are trained for these symptoms and that you should talk to your GP to get a referral. Citizens Information says the same thing more firmly: you need a referral from your GP, public health nurse or hospital to get physiotherapy as a public patient. Then, two lines below on the same page and under the same heading, it adds that you can also refer yourself to a physiotherapist, without saying to which service. Even the national pages do not agree with themselves.
Meanwhile the Rotunda's own page says, in as many words, that you can refer yourself. The Coombe's postnatal hubs give a phone number and an email address for exactly that.
Both are true, because they are describing different doors. The national pages describe the general public physiotherapy system. The maternity hospitals describe their own postnatal service, which several of them have opened to direct booking. Nobody has written that down in one place, so the reasonable thing to do, following the HSE's advice, is to go to your GP and wait for a referral you may not have needed.
Before you book a GP appointment, spend two minutes on your maternity hospital's physiotherapy page. If it offers self-referral, you have skipped a GP visit and a referral queue. If it does not, you have lost two minutes and you now know which route you need.
How long you have depends on where you gave birth
This is the part that surprises people. There is no single national deadline. Each maternity unit sets its own, and they are not the same. Three examples, taken from the hospitals' own pages in August 2026:
- The Rotunda. You can refer yourself for pelvic floor problems, including urinary or faecal incontinence, pelvic floor pain and pain during sex, for six months after your baby's birth.
- The Coombe. Its postnatal hubs, which run in community locations rather than in the hospital, offer women's health physiotherapy for up to six months after birth, and you can self-refer by phone or email. Midwifery support at the same hubs runs to six weeks, which is a shorter and separate thing.
- The National Maternity Hospital. Its page lists what the service treats, including pelvic floor muscle dysfunction and prolapse, but does not publish a window or a self-referral route, so this is one to ask about directly.
Three hospitals, three different answers. Assume nothing from another parent's experience, including a parent who gave birth in the same city: the rule that applied to them was their hospital's rule.
Outside Dublin, the units do not publish this. Checked on 29 August 2026: Cork University Maternity Hospital's website was mid-move and serving a holding page, the HSE page for University Hospital Galway lists physiotherapy only among its antenatal classes, the page for University Maternity Hospital Limerick does not mention physiotherapy at all, and the regional physiotherapy department page describes the service without a postnatal window or a referral route. So if you gave birth outside Dublin there is genuinely nothing to look up, and having to ask is not you having missed something. Ring your own unit's physiotherapy department, or ask your GP or public health nurse, and get the answer for your unit rather than a general one.
Note also that at the Coombe the community hub and the hospital's own women's health physiotherapy are two different services with two different doors. The hub takes self-referrals; the hospital service says you will be referred by your women's health team. One hospital, two routes, so it is worth being specific about which service you are asking for.
If you had a third or fourth degree tear
You should not have to arrange anything. The Rotunda states that any woman with a third or fourth degree tear is given a date for a physiotherapy appointment before she leaves hospital, or has it posted to her afterwards.
That is one hospital's policy rather than a national rule, so it is worth checking with your own unit. But it is the right question to ask: if you had a significant tear and no appointment has appeared, that is worth a phone call rather than a wait.
What it costs
Citizens Information states that you can get physiotherapy through the public health service in hospitals, on an in-patient or out-patient basis. Maternity care itself is free under the Maternity and Infant Care Scheme if you are ordinarily resident, and you do not need a medical card or GP visit card for it.
Two things are worth knowing beyond that:
- Community physiotherapy is a different service from the hospital one. Citizens Information says the HSE may provide physiotherapy in your community but that it is not available in all areas, and that you may be prioritised for it free of charge if you hold a medical card or a Health Amendment Act Card. So the community route is patchier and is means-related in a way the maternity hospital route is not.
- If you pay privately, there is tax relief, with a condition attached. Revenue gives relief on qualifying health expenses at the standard rate, 20%. Physiotherapy qualifies, but Revenue's wording is specific: relief applies to physiotherapy or similar treatment if you are prescribed, referred or advised to by a practitioner. Booking a private physiotherapist yourself with nobody having advised it may not qualify, so mention it to your GP or public health nurse first and keep the receipts. Revenue's four year rule applies to claiming refunds, so a bill from last year is not necessarily lost.
What to have ready when you ring
Whichever door you use, the call goes faster if you have your hospital number and your date of delivery to hand. The Coombe asks for exactly those for its postnatal classes, and it is a reasonable guess that any maternity unit will want to find your file the same way.
What this guide does not do
It does not tell you whether you are doing pelvic floor exercises correctly, which is the other half of the question most people are actually asking, and it is not a question a website should answer. That is what the appointment is for. The HSE publishes exercise guidance and several maternity hospitals have free video series and free postnatal classes, all linked below, but none of that replaces being assessed by a physiotherapist who can tell you what your own pelvic floor is doing.
Leaking urine after having a baby is common and is treatable. It is not something to put up with, and it is not something to diagnose from a guide. Ask your GP, your public health nurse or your maternity unit.
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Official sources
- HSE: Exercise after pregnancy
- HSE: Pelvic floor muscle exercises
- The Rotunda Hospital: Physiotherapy
- The Coombe Hospital: Postnatal Hubs
- The National Maternity Hospital: Pregnancy and Postnatal Physiotherapy
- HSE: Services at University Hospital Galway and at University Maternity Hospital Limerick (checked for a published postnatal referral window and route, which neither carries)
- Citizens Information: Physiotherapy services
- Revenue: What are qualifying health expenses?
Facts checked against the official pages on 29 August 2026, the units outside Dublin included. This is general information, not medical advice, and it does not decide your care. The HSE and your maternity unit provide these services and make every clinical decision; Revenue decides tax relief. Hospital referral rules are set locally and change without notice, so always confirm with your own maternity unit, and speak to your GP, your public health nurse or a physiotherapist about your symptoms.