Chiropractic care for pregnant women as they go through gestation is critically important and has so many benefits in regard to posture and how the moms are feeling and functioning during a pregnancy.
Chiropractic care really helps moms during gestation with all the changes that come and then really prepares their bodies for their due date and delivering their baby if they plan to have a natural birth. Moms who are under chiropractic care during gestation have a lot less chance of intervention, that is Pitocin or epidural or emergency C-section during delivery.
As moms go through gestation and are preparing to get ready for their baby, they can experience lower or upper back pain. When the breasts get engorged and filled with milk ready to feed the baby, that increases the weight of the upper body, which typically increases that curve in your upper back and rolls the shoulders forward. So, moms that are going through gestation can typically get quite a lot of upper back pain.
When we’re in pain it shifts back to the spine. The spine can subluxate. Subluxation means the joint is stuck and/or shifted. Subluxation creates stress on the nervous system. Stress on the nervous system manifests as upper back pain or can manifest as conditions. In that area, the nerves in your upper back can innervate the heart and lungs, they can innervate your esophagus, you can get reflux, indigestion, or heartburn for example. By getting adjusted, you can get the joint back in alignment and take stress off the nerve. The nerves not under stress are not going to be able to emit a pain signal, so you will feel less pain. Also, it improves the function of that joint to really help with reflux, indigestion, and heartburn.
When it comes to lower back pain, the body is going through a massive change, getting ready for a baby. A lot of progesterone is released which loosens up ligaments so moms can actually physically birth the baby. Typically, there is a lot of lower back pain too as you grow the baby. You’re going to pull your spine forward, change the shape of your spine, plus ligaments that are loose aren’t going to keep you in alignment. Again, chiropractic adjustments can evaluate the pelvis, sacrum, and low back, make sure they’re in alignment, take stress off the nerve, and obviously get you out of pain. But remember all those nerves in your lower back don’t just innervate the lower back in regard to making pain signals, some nerves don’t have the ability to send pain signals.
All those nerves are vitally important in feeding the reproductive organs to make sure they’re doing the job as we go through gestation. Being adjusted takes stress off the nervous system so we feel good, but we also function good.
Sacral alignment and pelvic alignment is really important for allowing a baby to spin and get face and head down, getting ready for the due date. If we’re misaligned in our pelvis and our lower back, we can have pain but also can actually create physical blockages where the baby is unable to spin. There is a specific technique you can perform where you’re evaluating pelvic, low back, and tailbone alignment and you can do some soft tissue work. The round ligaments anchor the abdomen and the sacral pelvis together. We have had, this year alone, about half a dozen breech babies in the practice and we’ve followed through on chiropractic care and we managed to spin the baby around and moms have managed to follow through on their natural birth plan.
