Chiropractic adjustment at 40 weeks pregnant. At HealthWorks Family Chiropractic. The image is of a pregnant silhouette with a red heart in her belly.

Can a chiropractor help during pregnancy?

Typically, pregnant women will seek out chiropractic care for a couple of reasons. One of the first reasons is all the stress on the body. While in most pregnancies it’s the lower back in some cases stress can affect the thoracic spine or even the neck. Everybody’s case is a little different.

The second reason why moms will seek out chiropractic care during pregnancy is to make sure that the body is well aligned for the birth process itself. Hip alignment and low back alignment are super important to make the birth process easier.

We’re going to check a few things that are particular to the needs of a growing baby and the way that it causes the belly and the pelvis to change. What we’ll do is check the psoas muscle. The psoas muscle runs between the front of the hip into the low back. If it’s out of balance, it can create some twerking in the pelvis that we don’t want while the baby and the uterus are trying to grow and we certainly don’t want that during the birthing process either. A tight psoas can cause pain in the front of the hip and lower back. Sometimes this can be confused with round ligament issues.  This is because the round ligament attaches to the uterus and it grows a lot, which can cause you to have round ligament pain. When the psoas gets tight, it pulls on the body so much that one arm will become shorter than the other. They’re both pretty easy to take care of. 

To learn more about the psoas muscle you can follow this link.  How Do You Release The Psoas Muscle?

Can you lay on your stomach at the chiropractic while pregnant?

We have these great pillows that have a really big hole in the middle that can accommodate
the growing baby. With most moms in pregnancy, we can comfortably use the lifts of the table. If someone is more sensitive, we might just use an instrument to adjust.

To watch the full video, click here.