A new life to nurture

You’ve welcomed your baby into the world and spent the first week adjusting to life as a mother, caring, feeding, and attending to your newborn’s every need. But what about your own body? In order to effectively care for your child, you need to be in a state of balance, physically, emotionally and mentally. In the immediate period after giving birth, you lose about 12 pounds between the weight of the baby, the placenta, blood and amniotic fluid. You will continue to lose weight as you urinate more frequently- this is your body expelling the excess water retained by your cells during pregnancy.

Even then, your belly is not going to shrink on its own! Your abdominal muscles remain stretched out and many women complain that they still look pregnant. A final consideration (some might say primary) is your spine: levels of the hormone relaxin can remain elevated for weeks and even months after pregnancy, which means that your pelvic ligaments are not going to tighten, and instability will still exist at the base of your spine. This is often a cause for the aches and pains of pregnancy to persist even after birth.

Who is attending to your every need as a new mother?

On top of a destabilized spine, you are now carrying a child, which is an awkward and potentially traumatizing weight for your spine to bear. To prevent the spinal dysfunction of pregnancy sticking with you long-term, we need to be proactive about realigning the spine and taking care of those abdominal muscles. At our office in Houston, we provide new mothers with spinal adjustments to restore spinal alignment, alleviate nerve impingement and improve range of motion.

From this vantage point, you are able to exercise more effectively, shrinking your belly and reestablishing support for the spine, especially in the lower back. This is an action plan that has proved effective for a multitude of new mothers at our clinic in Houston. If you are interested in finding out more about how chiropractic can benefit your body post-partum, give our office a call to schedule an appointment today.