When to seek chiropractic care in pregnancy

Chiropractic care during pregnancy
Chiropractic care has been recognized as an efficient and safe way to promote balance in the pregnant body, especially in efforts to minimize discomfort during pregnancy and aid in faster, easier labors. In the past it was almost unheard of to have anyone other than a midwife or doula refer a woman to me during pregnancy. Fortunately, more and more providers are realizing the benefits of chiropractic care, I even have obstetricians recommending patients now! Part of that is due to the hard work of passionate chiropractors hitting the pavement and getting information to providers so they can fully understand the benefits patients receive from chiropractic care during and after pregnancy. 

When to see a chiropractor
One area of improvement we have to address is when to start care and how often to receive care. I often find that non-chiropractic sources recommend starting care during pregnancy anywhere from 32-36 weeks. Usually that recommendation is in relation to a breech presentation because by 35-37 weeks you're really expecting baby to be in a head down position and time is running out to get that to change.
While it's great that they're recommending it at all, timing is everything! If I am seeing you for the first time at 35 weeks and you've got a hectic work schedule so you can't come in for another check for 2 more weeks, we have limited time to try to achieve balance. Additionally, providers are also generally only referring patients who are experiencing pain and/or having concerns of breech or transverse presentation of baby. So all of those factors together equal more pressure and stress on mom in a time when she should be winding down and preparing for the upcoming changes in her life. Many perinatal chiropractors will often recommend 2-3 visits per week in situations such as this, but I much prefer to see you more regularly throughout your entire pregnancy so we can try to avoid the discomfort and stress altogether. That also gives us the benefit of working toward pelvic balance and building the ability of your body to "hold" your adjustments better. I also give exercises to moms for general balance and also specific issues should they arise. It's just an unfortunate truth that seeing you in the final innings of your pregnancy limit what I'm able to do for you outside of adjusting. In a perfect world, though, I would be seeing women pre-conception so we could be working on achieving balance through unwinding years of subluxation, encouraging health in other areas of your lifestyle (specifically detoxification and diet), and then just supporting your pregnancy once the time comes. An added benefit to seeing you before you're ready to start trying to conceive is that I can also have x-rays done on you to make sure your adjustments are as accurate as possible because I can see exactly what's going on with your spine. 

The adjustment's purpose
The goal of every adjustment is to restore proper motion to the joints of the spine, thus allowing the brain to receive appropriate information from the body and then send accurate instruction back for how the body should function. Once motion and function are restored you're better able to make the changes in your posture and habits that support the overall position of the spine.
As a Webster Technique certified chiropractor I am actually not working with the position of the baby AT ALL. Crazy, right? My entire focus is on balancing the pelvis to give the baby adequate space to move into a more ideal position. I utilize a series of "leg-checks" where I look at the lengths of the legs in relation to one another and then make corrections based on what the checks tell me about the pelvic bones and sacrum. I also may address imbalances in various ligaments and muscles to allow for relaxation of those structures to support the adjustment.  Not only that, I analyze the rest of the spine to remove subluxations and improve the brain-to-body connection throughout. We don't often think about how every neural impulse from the brain is delivered to the body but if you consider how the brain tells the stomach to break down food into small particles, that can be hindered by improper motion in the spine or it can be facilitated by removing subluxations to allow for the best communication between your brain and stomach. A great resource to understanding subluxation and the adjustment can be found here: ​https://chiroshub.com/videos/introduction-to-chiropractic/

Pelvic balance
When I say we're trying to achieve pelvic balance, I'm talking about the relationship of your ilia, sacrum, uterus, and the muscles and ligaments that connect them all together. Even when not pregnant, your pelvic bones can become subluxated (slightly misaligned and/or not moving properly) and many people often have years of misalignment "built up" - not only in the pelvis but all throughout the spine. This happens in many ways, but we will focus on physical causes for sake of brevity. Through repetitive motion, poor posture, and imbalance in other structures our body adapts into these misalignments. Oversimplified, one side of the pelvis moves backward and the other side shifts forward all while the sacrum moves forward and/or back in relation to the two. Then the associated muscles and ligaments either get stretched or shortened and further contribute to imbalance. Normally the forward/back motion of the pelvic bones and rotation of the sacrum is what should happen while we move about but if we become stuck one way or the other throughout the many connections between the bones then we are now dealing with abnormal or even reduced motion in the pelvis as well as distortion of the bones in relation to one another. This can at least cause minor discomfort or it can at most affect how baby decides to position itself in the womb. Baby is not going to go where it isn't comfortable, and a tight psoas muscle for example can restrict baby's free space so they will move away from that area as they get bigger. Often times a baby will quickly move into a more ideal position once the pelvis is balanced. It is also important to note that when a mom comes in because she is concerned about her baby's positioning I make sure she knows that sometimes babies don't change their position for one reason or another and that's okay. We honor that, ultimately, baby knows what position they need to be in. An imbalanced pelvis also affects baby's journey through the pelvis so even when the baby's position is desirable, the labor could be longer or more difficult. If you think back to the paragraph above, when the brain can effectively communicate what needs to happen in the body it can control things appropriately. When you consider all of the processes that occur during labor it's plain to see why you would want to be well adjusted! Even as simple as the contractions of the uterus - if your brain can coordinate the contractions, labor can be more efficient.

Takeaway
At the end of the day, there are many reasons why a mom would seek chiropractic care during her pregnancy. From pain to baby's position, chiropractic care supports the function of the nervous system so your body can perform its best in one of life's biggest events! Get your next adjustment scheduled to get started on removing the dysfunction that leads to pain and dis-ease.

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