A Life Postpartum

Can someone tell me why we are all so excited to talk about all things pregnancy but then when the baby is here we just. stop. talking…? I mean, yeah, I get the excitement of it all is great, but this woman JUST destroyed herself carrying the baby then delivering the baby. This is when things get interesting for a biomechanical nerd. There are so many changes that take place throughout pregnancy that can affect someone for the rest of their lives if not addressed properly. 

First off, we have the dreaded diastasis recti (AKA DRA). There’s an important reason why this happens in pregnant women. You’ve got to make room for that baby while they are growing, so what else is going to happen but separation of your abdominal muscles? It’s worse in some versus others, but there are ways of fixing it without surgery. When someone has DRA that hints at me they have significantly compromised core, so we want to address this separation and improve the core quickly following delivery, because I would hate for a woman to be picking their baby up then throw out their back. It’s happened before, and trust me it ain’t pretty. We use different functional exercises to do this in our practice based on functional progressions that each and every one of us go through at different points in our development. We literally bring it back to the basics...so if you see me rolling around on the floor, I’m working on my core, I promise ;)

Then we have the ever-so forgotten, but one of the most important muscles: The Diaphragm. This is the one that brings air into your lungs and gives you life. But we all forget about it because if we can’t see it, then we don’t care about it, right? This is one that is hard to use while you are pregnant, but the exercises to work it out can be done almost immediately following almost any kind of labor. 

Pierce has been into the postpartum game for a while now, but like with most things in our life, I’m a little later to the party. So, we are pivoting our focus to being the most well-informed postpartum team San Antonio has seen. That doesn’t mean we won’t be here for your prenatal moms and any of you on your conception journey, because we ARE. We just want to also be the ones there when the dust settles. 

Since we all locked ourselves up in 2020, I’ve been on a mission to learn more about the biomechanical changes, how to address them and help my patients be stronger than before. I’ve sat through hours of education on it and plan to do more this year and next. 

So consider this our official announcement: tell your diastasis recti, your diaphragms and your cores we are coming for them. Are you a freshly minted mom who wants to start rehabbing her core? Give us a call, we’d be happy to help :)

Breech Babies: The Nitty Gritty Details

When I first started this practice, I always wondered why moms always waited until the last minute to reach out to me with a breech baby. Then I asked my friends who are midwives and OB/Gyns and they told me they don’t diagnose breech babies until 33 weeks. Cool. 

You see, when a baby is small and still pretty mobile, there is no reason to be concerned about them being in the right or wrong position. There are many factors as to why they may not be positioned correctly. It could be prior trauma, previous surgeries, multiple pregnancies, poor pelvic and lumbar bony and muscular function, and some freak accidents in between. 

As a chiropractor, I have been trained to evaluate the function of joints and soft tissues in the bony. As a Webster Certified chiropractor, I have been trained to zero in on the muscles, ligaments and joints that are found in the lumbar spine and pelvis. 

The Webster Technique looks is synonymous with the round ligament of the uterus, but it addresses (or at least should address) so much more than that. The round ligament is basically like an anchor for the uterus to the pelvis. It is one of the few ligaments that has muscular fibers within it in the human body, that’s why you can have a direct effect on it. Often pregnant women will feel round ligament pain when they sneeze, cough or laugh. You will feel it on the outside of the bottom of your belly. It is only ever felt in pregnant women, though it’s present in women all of the time. Another ligament that lives in the same area is the broad ligament of the uterus. Chiropractors who use the Webster Technique will also affect this ligament, but it isn’t thought of as frequently as the round ligament. 

But remember how I said the Webster Technique should address more than just the round ligament? 

Your chiropractor should be looking at how your low back and pelvis and how they are moving and functioning and if they are hyper- or hypo-mobile and then addressing the dysfunction via an adjustment, however that may be. Another important structure for a chiropractor to look at is the musculature. The psoas, the lumbar spine erectors and the muscles of the core are important for encouraging proper fetal positioning. 

If your chiropractor is trying to help your baby get into the right position and they are only addressing one of these elements, get yourself a new chiropractor who does. I can’t tell you how many moms I see who called because they were seeing a pregnancy and pediatric chiropractor during this pregnancy or a previous pregnancy with a breech baby and they saw me and had no idea what i was doing because their other chiropractor didn’t do what I was doing (which is more, from what I am told by the patient, than their other provider). 

Look at the ICPA’s website to find a Webster Certified Chiropractor in your area, but if you are local to San Antonio and would like to schedule with me to address whatever is going on in your pregnancy, low back pain, neck pain, breech presentation, just let me know...I’ve seen it all :) 

If you feel like I am a good fit for you, my number is (210) 323-2163, we can chat and get you on the schedule.

The Big Three: Muscles in Spasm During Pregnancy

PREGNANT WOMEN LISTEN UP!

Your muscles will inevitably go into spasm. Which ones they will be I don’t know, but I am willing to bet it will be one of The Big Three or all of them. These muscles all are intimately related to pelvic and low back stability. You have your lumbar spine erector spinae, your iliopsoas and the piriformis. 

The erector spinae muscles lay on either side of the spine and go from the low back all the way up into the neck. They’re a group of muscles including the iliocostalis, longissimus, and spinalis (try saying those three times fast). The names don’t really matter as long as we know what they are meant to do and why they aren’t working properly for you. So, normally these muscles are meant to only be spinal stabilizers and are only meant to keep you standing upright (and sometimes will help with rotation of the spine)...but guess what. During pregnancy you’re putting a lot on these guys, but don’t worry, it’s not your fault, it’s just the nature of the beast. Your center of gravity gets thrown off and these muscles wind up becoming strength muscles just trying to properly keep you from collapsing forward. Fun stuff, eh? 

Outside of being a fun word to try and say for the first time, the iliopsoas is your primary hip flexor and is responsible for bringing your knee to your chest. Sometimes it can be in such a spasm it is seen on x-ray. We don’t need to X-ray you though to know yours is in spasm, don’t you worry mama. The reason yours is going into spasm gets back to the whol center of gravity being thrown off again, however this is more related to your pelvic center of gravity. Your pelvis goes into what has been coined ‘Lower Crossed Syndrome’ by people smarter than me. Basically your pelvis tilts forward to accommodate a growing baby and indicates spasm in some muscles and weakness in others, in this case, we are talking about the iliopsoas. 

The piriformis is such a tiny muscle but is the biggest pain in the butt. This muscle is responsible for causing sciatic-like symptoms in many people, whether they are pregnant or not. Without having any kind of trauma in pregnancy, I just assume this is the culprit if a patient comes in complaining of numbness/burning/tingling going down their leg. It is responsible for external rotation of the hips (opening your leg up). In pregnancy it acts as a sacral stabilizer and is just trying to keep your pelvis glued together, because let’s face it, your ligaments are drunk on Relaxin. 

We have a video about how you can stretch these muscles out available to our followers on Facebook and Youtube. If you’re experiencing low back spasms and are pregnant (or not) these are pretty easy and reliable stretches to help while you wait to get into see us.

Give us a call at (210) 323-2163 to get on the schedule, we are always happy to help you have a comfortable pregnancy :)