The importance of chiropractic care before, during and after pregnancy cannot be stressed enough.
Most pregnant women seek chiropractic care during the last trimester of pregnancy complaining of low back pain. Although chiropractic care can help them immensely, if they had started chiropractic care prior to get pregnant or at an earlier stage of pregnancy most of their symptoms could have been prevented or significantly reduced.
Research shows that one of the major reasons for low back pain during pregnancy and complications during labour is correlated to poor maternal musculoskeletal health and sedentary lifestyle.
Moreover, as full term nears, good maternal posture is found to lower the risk of intrauterine constraint and to encourage the fetus to take up an occiput anterior position at the start of labour.
How can good musculoskeletal health and maternal posture be secured? Answer: by adjusting the spine and restoring the normal biomechanics of movement! The evidence shows that chiropractic care decreases mean duration of labour by 24% in the first pregnancy and 39% in the subsequent pregnancies when compared to medical care.
It goes without saying that a faster delivery also greatly reduces the risk of complications and traumas to the newborn and his/her spine!
Finally, chiropractic care can assist and speed up recovery from the mechanical stresses of delivery to the mothers’ pelvic girdle and her body as a whole.