10 Benefits of PT for Expectant Mothers
What if you could train for a healthier pregnancy and smoother postpartum recovery, just like you’d train for a race or a big event? Most people don’t think of physical therapy as part of pregnancy care, but it can play a major role in preventing complications, managing pain, and preparing your body for birth and beyond. Here are 10 benefits of PT for expectant mothers and how physical therapy supports mamas-to-be every step of the way:
1. Eliminates and Reduces Pain
Due to the hormonal changes and physical changes your body is going through during pregnancy and postpartum, various types of strain are placed on your body frame, ligaments, and muscles that can cause consistent pain throughout the lower back, hips, and even into the middle back and neck. Education and specific mobility with a focus on stabilization can be extremely beneficial in helping to manage and reduce symptoms.
2. Decreases Pelvic Pain and Dysfunction
Whether it is your first pregnancy or your fifth, pelvic floor pain and dysfunction are a very important aspect of the pregnancy and postpartum journey in helping you feel better. Understanding why you have pain, how to perform techniques to manage and reduce pelvic floor pain, as well as either strengthening or release techniques to help reduce any type of incontinence you might be experiencing during pregnancy or postpartum.
3. Increases and Maintains Strength
During pregnancy, your body creates and releases a hormone called relaxin, which makes your joints and ligaments more flexible. This increased flexibility puts more strain on your body tissues, which is why building a good strength base can be extremely helpful to be able to take care of yourself, your new baby, and or other children, and reduce the risk of injury or muscle/joint pain for yourself.
4. Heals Diastasis Recti
About 100% of pregnancies result in a Diastasis Recti, or a separation in your abdominal muscles, due to the growth of the abdomen during pregnancy. In Physical Therapy, before delivery and after, we can help educate you in ways to help manage your abdominal pressure to reduce strain through the rectus abdominus muscle while also improving activation of the deep core musculature. This emphasis on deep core activation will help build strong base stability to all of the muscles under the ab separation to allow for healing to occur.
5. Improves Body Mechanics
The stronger you are throughout your body’s range of motion will make everything easier, including improved posture and awareness of how your body moves and likes to move to encourage good alignment with bending, reaching, and lifting. All of that can seem so easy and trivial but these everyday tasks can get extremely challenging throughout the trimesters of pregnancy and into the 4th trimester postpartum.
6. Prevent Injuries
Strengthening and mobility work throughout pregnancy will help your body learn to manage the increased weight gain that occurs during pregnancy. Even though weight gain is a very normal and healthy, expected aspect of pregnancy, the added weight does act as a stress on your body frame and the tissues that support it. The stronger you are with focused education on improved body awareness will help your body better manage those stresses.
7. Keeps Expecting Mothers Active
While staying active during the first trimester might not always seem like a doable task, activity would be something to consider as your energy levels return and any potential nausea/vomiting reduces as you enter into your 2nd and 3rd trimesters with approval from your OBGYN. Many studies show some correlation in the reduction of preeclampsia, Caesarian delivery, reduction in gestational diabetes risk, and improved mental health/reduction of postpartum depression in mothers. Activity can also be beneficial to the baby with indications of improved health and development of the baby.
8. Reduces Pregnancy-Related Complications
Physical therapy during pregnancy can be beneficial in reducing a variety of pregnancy-related complications. PT can help reduce complications such as helping to reduce pain and discomfort from the aches of pregnancy and improve breathing and circulation, prevent or help manage gestational complications like gestational diabetes, hypertension, urinary incontinence. In addition, PT can help prepare the body for labor and reduce feelings of depression or anxiety through exercise.
9. Improves Labor and Delivery
A combination of guided strengthening, cardiovascular activity, and pelvic floor therapy during pregnancy can help you get through the labor and delivery process. Increased cardiovascular health can help during the long and tiring delivery process. Muscular strength can also assist during various labor positions and with the delivery process. Pelvic floor-based education and guidance can help you understand the importance of relaxing the pelvic floor to allow for a potentially easier delivery.
10. Improves sleep
One of the many complaints that limits sleep in pregnant women is back pain or hip pain. A lot of pain in these two regions is likely due to weakness. Guided strengthening in weaker areas can help to reduce these pains, allowing for less waking due to pain and overall a more restful night’s sleep.
Pregnancy is a marathon, not a sprint, and I truly believe we should train for it. It is not an easy task growing a human, whether it be the mental and emotional toll it takes on the mother, the unpleasant side effects from hormonal changes, or the pain and body changes that come with it. We might not be able to fully manage the hormone-based symptoms or take away all our anxiety about growing and raising a human, but the one thing we can do and control is to prepare ourselves and our bodies for the event. Our team is skilled at caring for expectant mothers and women beginning their 4th trimester/the postpartum period.
Schedule your appointment today with one of our trained Women’s Health Therapists.