CBS4’s Nicole Pence is one busy mom. She’s the mother of twin boys and is pregnant with her third child. It’s no wonder she has back pain.
“My boys are ten months old. I’m constantly picking one of them up and so I’m bending over, picking them up and I’m using the muscles in my back and exerting them, over exerting them in this case.”
During her first pregnancy, Nicole was directed to Matt Bauer, D.C., at Apex Therapy, by her OB/GYN.
“When you really look at pregnancy as a whole, what you’re trying to do is create some balance through the pelvis,” says Bauer. “They don’t realize how weak they get or how inefficient they are when they move. So a lot of those things are hidden.”
A visit typically starts with an evaluation. Bauer checks for weaknesses, and spots several right away in Nicole’s hamstrings, inner thighs and glutes, as she walks. She also lies on her back while he checks her legs. An adjustment usually follows.
“He gives me an adjustment. So what people understand about chiropractic care, it’s the popping of the spine, the moving,” says Nicole. “And for me, it’s all about hip alignment because when you’re pregnant, your hips actually go out, to be able to birth the baby.”
According to the American Pregnancy Association website, establishing pelvic balance and alignment is another reason to obtain chiropractic care during pregnancy. When the pelvis is misaligned it may reduce the amount of room available for the developing baby.
For Nicole, and up to 60 percent of Bauer’s practice, it’s about diminishing back pain while a woman is pregnant. Right now the pain is centered more in the upper part of Nicole’s body, where she hunches. Bauer has her see a personal trainer during a visit to stretch and retrain muscles she is overexerting.
“I get her out of overusing the traps in her neck. I want her to use her entire back for support,” says Bauer.
The appointment doesn’t end with the personal trainer. Following stretches and some strengthening exercises on a Pilate’s reformer, Nicole gets a focused massage, in the part of her back that is giving her pain.
“It comes down to how do we strengthen her? To change her patterns of how she moves, how she walks,” says Bauer. “It’s about identifying the weaknesses, treating them and strengthening her body for her comfort and the baby’s. It really comes down to finding the inefficiencies and how they move and what they do that they don’t realize are common cheats. That’s what we call them here. And when you identify them, usually you can correct those with different exercises or different tissue work to really get the muscle to do what it’s supposed to do on a day to day basis. That’s when the pain can be alleviated.”
For more on chiropractic care for mother’s to be click here.
