Back Pain Caused by Childbirth

January 10, 2021

Pregnancy is usually a wonderful time in a woman’s life but it can also bring about many issues not least, back pain.

 

In our practice we routinely see women with chronic back pain. Usually it is an incident like, a fall, slip in wet weather, picking something off the floor etc. that would have triggered it. As we treat the problem and this acute pain starts to resolve itself, it often becomes clear that there are older and deeper strains affecting our backs and posture.

 

Once it’s uncovered, one of the most common things we find is that the root cause of women’s low back pain often comes from stresses and strains from pregnancies and deliveries. Over the years our bodies often compensate for these restrictions and imbalances, but if left untreated they can go on to cause years of misery, pain, discomfort and fatigue.

 

Usually these issues can be resolved and our backs will begin to function normally again but sometimes our bodies need more help, not just at that time of acute pain. As the years go by, we should have confidence in our backs and our body’s ability to heal itself so that we can feel better and stronger. Ultimately, the goal is to regain our flexibility and realign our muscles, ligaments as well as our joints. Osteopathy can be a fantastic method to support women’s return to much better health and improved well-being.

 

Emotionally, some of the clues that might start waving flags for extra attention from Osteopaths, would be whether you were stressed going into the pregnancy or indeed if you were up to “high do”, suffered shock or emotional upset at any points around the conception, pregnancy or early years. It’s not the end of the world, but accounting for these challenges and evaluating if your nervous system is still carrying the memories of trauma from this time, will make it easier for us to resolve your physical strains.

 

Physically, there can be after-effects from carrying bigger babes, difficulties at the point of delivery, which might lead to epidural injections and/or being induced can all be strains on our abilities to equalise the pressure changes our bodies have been through and let our backs heal. We can recover from these issues but sometimes we require a bit more help, therapy and rehab to reclaim our bodies beautiful!

 

These are just a few examples, there are many more and when we question our patients more deeply about their back pain, they will instinctively know the events, moments and issues when they “got stuck” and how they never felt quite the same again. This might be the pregnancy which they never quite bounced back from or the delivery which left them feeling so wiped that they have since struggled to recover. As Osteopaths, these are the places we need to trace things back to so that we can help you uncover your body’s resources to get stronger, be more able and fit for life!

 

It’s never too late to resolve issues from the times in our lives when we were really challenged and pushed to our limits. There’s no shame in admitting that we deserve our backs to be better, it often isn’t “an age thing” or the fact that we had kids. It’s because our bodies went through a massive hormonal, physical, emotional and even spiritual shift. With a little bit of extra help and understanding, we can get our backs back on track!

Isla Brown B.Sc. (Ost.)

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