Chiropractic and Pregnancy
For a healthy birth
Pregnancy is a natural process for all women. The expecting mother should feel as little discomfort during her pregnancy as possible. During pregnancy the mother will release a series of hormones into the body enabling the body to deal with the growing baby. Many of these hormones act on the soft connective tissues including muscles, ligaments and skin allowing these structures to become more lax and, in doing so, allowing the baby to grow.
The
problem that can ensue in many pregnant ladies is
that all the muscles and ligaments are affected in
the body by the hormones which is not always a good
thing to happen. The reason why this is not a good
thing to happen is because the main stabilizing structures
of the spine are the muscles and ligaments and when
these become more lax due to hormonal changes there
is less stability in the spine and more chance of
spinal injury.
Also,
it is important to remember that the expecting mother
will also notice that there is a large increase in
the curve of her lumbar spine (low back). The reason
this occurs is in order to compensate for the increased
weight at the front of the body. Also, in order to
maintain the body's centre of gravity the mother naturally
arches her low back more. In doing so, an increased
pressure is placed on the discs, nerves and muscles
in the low back and thus creating low back pain.
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Structural
changes during pregnancy
The
birth canal
The
birth canal is made up of the 2 identical pelvic bones.
The 2 pelvic bones make 3 distinctive joints that
articulate with each other to form the pelvis as one.
As in any joint in the human body, these joints are
designed to move when the body needs them to.
As
the growing baby gets bigger, it puts an increased
amount of stress on these three joints, the end result
most commonly being misalignment of the sacroiliac
joints (seen either side of
the spine in the diagram).
This misalignment results in two possible outcomes. Firstly, the joints affected have large amounts of pain receptors (nociceptors) situated in and around them and so any misalignment of these joints can cause a large amount of low back, buttock and groin pain. Secondly, misalignment of these joints will also change the shape of the normally smooth circular birth canal and, in doing so, decreasing the overall size of it. The end result is that the new born baby who has already got a very small opening to move through during birth has an even smaller birth canal. This can potentially cause more stress for mother and baby during the birth process as more force may be needed by the obstetrician to deliver the baby.
How
can chiropractic help?
Firstly, your Chiropractor will carefully analyze your spine and pelvis to find out exactly which joint is responsible for any misalignments. Your Chiropractor will then specifically and gently correct any misalignments reducing your pain and also allowing the pelvis to be in its optimum position to allow your baby to comfortably manoeuvre into the vertex position. Research has shown that, due to a correctly aligned pelvis and an optimal birth canal size, pregnant woman who are under chiropractic care during their pregnancy experience less discomfort during delivery and can expect up to a 39% reduction in labour time.
