Prenatal Massage

Prenatal Massage in Boca Raton, FL

Prenatal massage is a type of therapeutic massage to help you to ease pregnancy pains and prepare your body for an upcoming, successful birth. Boca Raton pregnancy massage therapy enhances muscle tone, improves circulation, relieves stress and physical fatigue, and helps remedy many of the common discomforts associated with pregnancy. Prenatal massages are a natural, safe and drug-free option for managing pain and stress during pregnancy.

At Shadowood Chiropractic Center, we customize each prenatal massage session to address your unique needs and preferences. Massage is performed by having you lie on your side propped up with pillows or using a specially-designed maternity cushioning system. Our goal is to offer you, as an expectant mother, a soothing, relaxing and revitalizing experience.

Benefits of Prenatal Massage

During pregnancy, your body changes shape to accommodate your growing baby. Physiological and hormonal changes include a protruding abdomen, increased back curvature, pelvic changes and postural adjustments. As the uterus expands to accommodate your growing fetus, your body’s joints naturally loosen to accommodate this growth. Pressure from the baby’s head and increased body weight can cause pain in the lower back, groin area and thighs. Many women experience sciatica pain, lower backaches, shoulder and neck pain, as well as headaches.

Pregnancy massage therapy alleviates stress on weight-bearing joints and the musculoskeletal system caused by these physiological changes. This helps to reduce back and neck pain while supporting women’s health.

Benefits of massage therapy during pregnancy can:

Help with Hormone Regulation

In the past 10 years, studies have shown hormone levels linked with stress and relaxation are substantially altered when women have massage therapy introduced in their prenatal care. And, this results in improved cardiovascular health and mood regulation.

Women who received these massages bi-weekly for just five weeks showed a reduction in hormones like cortisol and norepinephrine (hormones linked with stress) and an increase in serotonin and dopamine levels (there’s a link between low levels of these hormones and depression).

These hormone level changes also resulted in fewer complications during birth as well as fewer newborn complication incidences like low birth weight. The studies suggest strongly there are newborn and maternal health benefits when women receive prenatal massage during prenatal care.

Help With Good Posture and Muscle Tone

Prenatal massage helps in adjusting to a changing alignment the baby’s increasing weight causes and maintaining good posture. Massage:

  • Increases flexibility and muscle tone
  • Relieves pains and aches
  • Reduces muscle spasms and cramps
  • Enhances your ability to carry the extra weight

Provide a Safe Alternative to Medication

Prenatal massage provides a safe, natural and drug-free alternative to medication for pain relief. This is especially beneficial since you’re often limited in the medication you can take while pregnant for the sake of your unborn baby.

Improve Nerve Pain

You may experience sciatic nerve pain during late pregnancy as your uterus sits on your pelvic floor and lower back muscles. The pressure of your uterus spreads tension to your lower and upper leg muscles, causing them to swell and place pressure on the neighboring nerves.

Prenatal massage therapy helps release this tension on neighboring muscles, thereby addressing the inflamed nerves. You may experience a substantial reduction in your sciatic nerve pain through massage while you’re pregnant.

Reduce Discomfort

When pregnant, you may experience a throbbing head, agitated nerves and aching back which is typical of pregnant women. Massage:

  • Releases muscle tension
  • Reduces swelling
  • Encourages your body to release endorphins (natural pain-relieving chemicals)

So, massage is an efficient, drug-free way of quieting aches.

Reduce Swelling

A heavy uterus often causes increased pressure on blood vessels and reduced circulation which leads to edema or joint swelling during pregnancy. Prenatal massage helps stimulate your soft tissues, thereby reducing the fluid collection in your swollen joints. This also helps improve the tissue waste removal your body’s lymph system carries.

Contribute to Better Sleep

While newborns often keep their parents up at night, you may be experiencing interrupted sleep even before your baby is born. Massage helps reduce discomfort and stress and thereby promotes better sleep quality.

Why Women Should Seek a Chiropractor During Pregnancy

There aren’t any known chiropractic care contraindications during pregnancy. All chiropractors have the training to work with pregnant women. Most chiropractors invest in women’s fertility and pregnancy wellness and this has become routine care in their practice.

Some chiropractors even take a special interest in both prenatal and postnatal care and grab extra training. They’ve trained properly to work with women who are pregnant and might even use tables that can adjust to the body of a pregnant woman. They’ll also use techniques and methods that avoid adding any unnecessary pressure on women’s abdomen.

While you’re pregnant, you go through a few endocrinological and physiological changes which occur to prepare for creating your developing baby’s environment. When your pelvis is out of alignment, it can the available space amount for your developing baby. When your growing baby’s regular movements are obstructed, it’s referred to as intrauterine constraint and this can cause birth defects.

A misaligned pelvis can cause another complication during delivery. When your pelvis is misaligned, it could make it difficult for your baby to move into the proper position needed for birth, which is head down, rear-facing. This could affect your ability to have a noninvasive, natural birth. Balancing out the pelvis could lower the risk of your baby being born in a posterior or breech position. If your baby is born in a non-optimal birth position, it could cause a more complicated, longer delivery.

If you receive chiropractic care while pregnant, it could provide you with several benefits, including:

  • Controlling your nausea symptoms
  • Maintaining a healthier pregnancy
  • Preventing the potential for a C-section
  • Relieving your neck, back or joint pain
  • Reducing your labor and delivery time

All expectant mothers should check with their primary care physician prior to scheduling a pregnancy massage therapy appointment. Depending on an individual’s wellness needs, prenatal massages may not be recommended.

Book Your Prenatal Massage at Shadowood Chiropractic Center

Your prenatal massage can relax, soothe and revitalize you. In addition, during your session, our massage therapist can demonstrate self-massage techniques and stretching exercises to use in between treatment sessions.

In general, we recommend weekly appointments in the third trimester as the body experiences the greatest physical discomfort and prepares for childbirth. If you have specific pain management or wellness concerns, our massage therapist is happy to address these during treatment.

Call (561) 488-4000 or complete our online appointment form to book your prenatal massage at Shadowood Chiropractic Center.

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