When I was pregnant and trying to find some decent maternity clothes, I found myself wandering through Oak Park Mall in Overland Park wondering why there were so few choices.
If so many women become pregnant at some point during their lifetime, why weren’t more clothing shops offering clothes for us?
When you’re pregnant, the world seems to revolve around your pregnancy.
This is especially true for first-time moms. You download the pregnancy week-by-week calendar to see when your baby is the size of a grape and when she’ll be the size of a grapefruit. You take pictures of your growing belly and send them to your friends and family.
Your excitement grows in the second trimester as you start picking out furniture and a theme for your nursery.
But sometime during the third trimester most women start to experience back pain.
In fact, more than 80% of pregnant women experience back pain during pregnancy.
Back Pain During Pregnancy : Causes
Back pain during pregnancy usually occurs where your pelvis meets your spine in your low back area. This is your sacroiliac joint.
There are many possible causes, but here’s a list of the most-common:
Hormonal Changes
During your pregnancy, your body creates a hormone called relaxin. This hormone helps the ligaments in your pelvic area to relax and for your joints to become more flexible as you prepare for labor. Relaxin also causes the ligaments that support your spine to loosen, often leading to instability and pain.
Posture Changes
You’ve got a baby growing in the front of your body!
That would throw anyone’s center of gravity off.
No wonder it’s hard to walk without a bit of that ‘pregnancy waddle.’ When your center of gravity shifts, you gradually adjust the way you stand and move. Most women tend to lean backward, and this puts pressure on your lower back often resulting in back pain.
Weight Gain
Most women gain 25-25 pounds during a healthy pregnancy. Your spine must still support all of that extra weight, and since most of the extra weight is contained in the front of the body, the bones of your spine and joints in your low back are the most affected. They can easily become stretched and strained with all of that extra pressure, causing low back pain.
Poor Sleep Habits
Many women don’t realize that the way they sleep may actually be causing back pain during pregnancy.
Since sleeping on your back and stomach are out, pregnant women often struggle to get a good night’s sleep.
Even when you’re laying on your side, the weight of your growing baby can pull your stomach and shoulders down onto the bed, putting your neck and back in a compromised position.
If you wake up with neck pain, shoulder pain and lower back pain, consider making some changes to the way you sleep.
Place a pillow under your belly, another between your knees and one between your ankles. You may also consider purchasing a special pillow that offers support during pregnancy.
You might feel like a large bird building a pillow nest around yourself, but this will keep your spine aligned while you sleep and prevent some of your muscle aches and soreness.
Muscle Seperation
Your uterus expands during pregnancy as your baby grows. This causes your rectal abdominis muscles (abs) to separate. These muscles run from your rib cage down to your pubic bone.
Even after birth, many women still have a large gap between those two muscles, and this separation can make back pain even worse.
Stress
Emotional stress can cause back pain, headaches and neck pain. It can cause tension in the back that can result in back pain and even muscle spasms.
It’s important, especially during pregnancy, to be aware of the emotional triggers that are causing you stress and to maintain balance by incorporating stress-relieving stretches and periods of rest into your daily routine.
Treatment Options for Back Pain During Pregnancy
Chiropractic Treatment
Chiropractors specialize in treating back pain during pregnancy. As your baby grows, more pressure is placed on the joints and ligaments in you lower back. This can cause some of them to become locked up – no longer bending and moving as you bend and move. The nerves that exit the spine in the low back area can become pinched or irritated, causing back pain.
With specific, targeted chiropractic adjustments our Kansas City chiropractors apply gentle pulses to joints that are locked up or fixated. This restores motion, removes nerve irritation and can eliminate back pain.
Chiropractic treatment has the added benefit of ensuring that your hips are properly aligned. This can result in quicker labor and a greater chance for a natural birth experience.
Walking
Walking has been shown to increase joint mobility and even reduce and eliminate pain and swelling. Kansas City’s green, shady parks offer residents and visitors numerous opportunities to go for a walk. We’ve compiled a list of our favorite places to go for a walk in Kansas City.
Regular Stretching
Ironically, two of our favorite stretching exercises that can help alleviate back pain during pregnancy have a couple of animals in the title: Bird-Dog and the Cat-Cow.
Schedule a time each day or just before you head to bed and practice these stretches. Developing a regular habit of stretching during your entire pregnancy can help to keep pregnancy back pain at bay.
Fulk Chiropractic’s 12 Kansas City Chiropractors have worked closely with local OB’s, midwives and area medical doctors to provide Kansas City pregnant women with the most-effective, non-invasive and safest treatment possible for back pain during pregnancy.
Open 7 Days a Week and in-network with every insurance company in the KC area, they offer services to area patients when they need it, most.
Learn more about Fulk Chiropractic or schedule an appointment online.