Being pregnant, especially being pregnant for the first time, can be quite a journey. From the get-go, you may start to feel changes in your body, such as breast tenderness, face swelling, and fatigue. As your pregnancy progresses and your belly starts to grow, you might notice your center of gravity change, your balance becomes affected, your back starts to hurt, you might start feeling sciatic pain, you feel uncomfortable, acid reflux may set in as well as the pesky shortness of breath…
It truly is no news that pregnancy involves a lot of changes to your body in a relatively short amount of time, but what is news to a lot of women is the fact that with consistent chiropractic care there is a lot that you can do to enjoy your pregnancy and prepare your body for birth.
Providing Support Through Your Journey
A chiropractor, especially one who specializes in pregnancy, can provide much more help outside of treatments than you might initially think!
There’s a number of helpful tips, recommendations or referrals that can be provided, so never hesitate to ask if you have any questions on topics such as:
- Safely exercising during pregnancy
- Pelvic floor exercises
- Breech exercises
- Pregnancy belts and pillows
- Prenatal vitamins
- What to look for in your pregnancy team
- Lactation consultants
…and much, much more!
Taking Care of Aches and Pains
As mentioned above, common problems that develop during pregnancy are discomfort, back pain, and sciatic pain.
A key player in this process is relaxin, a hormone that affects the stability of your pelvis and forces your muscles and body to compensate in other areas. This doesn’t only contribute to muscle spasms, it can cause misalignments in your spine that then put pressure on nerves, causing issues like back pain and sciatic pain.
Role of Chiropractic Care
By getting consistent chiropractic care, we’re able to correct the misalignments that are contributing to your aches and pains so that you can enjoy a pain-free pregnancy.
Optimizing Your Pelvis for Birth
We already talked about how we want to stabilize the structure and movement of your pelvis, so that we can get rid of your pregnancy-related pain, but there’s actually another really important reason for doing this!
Visualize your pelvis as two hip bones with a sacral bone that sits between the two of them. When any one of these segments misalign, especially the sacrum, it can distort how much room your baby has in your uterus. Near the end of pregnancy, this can make it harder for your baby to get into position. Not only that, but it can hinder your baby’s exit through the birth canal and prolong labor.
Role of Chiropractic Care
As mentioned, with regular chiropractic care we can restore the alignment and structure of your pelvis. This means that your baby has more room and the baby’s passage during labor is facilitated.
When you reach out to a chiropractor in your area, see to it that they specialize in pregnancy and ask if they are certified in Webster’s Technique, which is a chiropractic approach geared towards pregnancy.
Webster Technique not only works to align key structures to prepare your body for birth, but it also focuses on releasing tight muscles and ligaments that can also be contributing to these misalignments. Moreover, the reason why many pregnant women decide to go to a chiropractor with this certification is because it’s associated with decreased pain during labor and decreased time during labor as well!
Reestablishing Proper Communication Between Your Brain and Body
Most people who go to a chiropractor during pregnancy do so in order to benefit from the last two reasons mentioned above: pain and preparing the pelvis for birth. What they don’t realize is that a chiropractic adjustment does so much more than offer pain relief and proper structure.
Role of Chiropractic
Chiropractic adjustments relieve pressure off nerves and nerves are what direct the functioning of every single system, organ, and tissue in your body. This is a big deal because by making sure that your body is communicating properly, you are able to develop the best baby that you can.
Not only that, things like uterine contractions and milk production are all coordinated by the nervous system! By making sure that your parasympathetic system is firing properly, you can increase the chances of your uterus contracting strongly and with the proper coordination during labor, which means that you can shorten your labor time.
The possibilities for benefiting from chiropractic during pregnancy are seemingly endless!
Takeaway
For a lot of women, the idea of pregnancy can be a scary thought, but it doesn’t have to be!
Chiropractic care can not only guide you through any questions that you may have during this process, but it can also help with pain management, prepare your pelvis for birth, and optimize the systems working to develop your precious baby.
If you want to know more and experience these amazing benefits for yourself, reach out to a local chiropractor in your area today.
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