The identical factor can occur if you hover your butt over a bathroom seat, she provides. That squat posture typically entails flexing—you guessed it—your pelvic flooring muscle tissue, which may make it powerful to get a great move going.

3. You’re taking a decongestant.

Had been you as we speak years previous if you discovered that oral decongestants may cause your urethra (the tube you pee from) to contract? As a result of, identical. Extra particularly, the drug pseudoephedrine (which is the lively ingredient in Sudafed and included in allergy drugs with a “D” of their title, like Zyrtec-D and Claritin-D) can “trigger an elevated sphincter tone,” Julie Drolet, MD, a board-certified urogynecologist in New York Metropolis, tells SELF. Which means when you take a excessive dose of pseudoephedrine or pop it persistently (say, throughout flu season or when your allergy symptoms act up), the muscle that lets urine transfer into your urethra can change into extra lively, making it more durable to empty your bladder or to take action in a single fell swoop.

4. You could have a urinary tract an infection (UTI).

Having a UTI may be depressing for lots of causes—you may as effectively be peeing flames, and the ache in your pelvis may be powerful to endure. However it may additionally actually mess along with your stream.

“You might need the feeling that it’s essential to use the toilet very regularly, however there’s solely slightly urine that wishes to come back out,” Dr. Drolet says. The an infection may cause each swelling and irritation of the urethra and bladder weak point (making it much less able to pushing out urine), all of which may result in inconsistent dribs and drips.

5. One thing’s up along with your bladder.

A wide range of bladder points may intrude along with your normal rush. It’s potential that your bladder “has change into slightly floppy and isn’t pushing the best way it’s imagined to,” Dr. Greenleaf says, which may typically occur with years of holding in pee for hours on finish. (This tends to have an effect on staff who can’t simply depart in the midst of their shift, like academics and nurses.) “In the event you stretch out the bladder an excessive amount of, it turns into tougher for the bladder to contract.”

One other chance is prolapse, which is when the bladder drops throughout the pelvis because of a weakened pelvic flooring (typically brought on by being pregnant or childbirth). On this decrease place, it may press on the urethra or in any other case trigger it to change into kinked, which may block the standard move of urine, Dr. Drolet says. An identical factor can occur with an enlarged prostate in folks with a penis or a colon that’s particularly blocked up (that means, stuffed with poop); each close by organs can push in opposition to the urethra, partially slicing off pee’s skill to go.

There’s additionally at all times the small probability that one thing inside your bladder is interfering along with your pee stream, like a bladder stone (a clump of mineral build-up) or a benign or cancerous progress, Dr. Greenleaf says, however these would sometimes present up with different signs too (extra on that under).

6. You could have some type of nerve harm.

Once more, the method of peeing hinges on nerve alerts firing between your pelvis and mind. Which means if something is obstructing these channels, you may expertise pee that stops and begins. “It may very well be both the nerves in your pelvis are affected, or the nerves wherever alongside your spinal wire—which runs out of your tailbone to your mind—are compressed,” Dr. Greenleaf says. (So something from a herniated disc in your decrease again to a neck harm may have an effect on your bladder operate.)