Your Changing Body: Adjusting to Postpartum Life

Welcoming a new life to the world…

…is a whirlwind of joy and adaptation. As your newborn opens its eyes to the waking world, your body is going through its own transition. A woman loses up to 12 pounds after delivery, including the weight of the child, the placenta (about 1 pound), amniotic fluid and a few pounds of blood. In the following days, you can expect to lose more weight as you urinate frequently to rid your body of the excess water retained by cells during pregnancy.

But most women won’t see their bellies shrink significantly until they start exercising. This is because abdominal muscles are stretched to their absolute maximum. So while your body is shedding fluid at a rapid rate, you won’t look like you’ve lost much weight at all! And what of your spine, a structure that suffered so much during the last 9 months? Well the conditions that caused spinal pain and dysfunction are still present, and you will need to be proactive in your postpartum months to prevent the pain from lingering or becoming something longer term. Here’s our action plan:

Balance is the key to postpartum life!

We are talking mental, physical and emotional balance. As chiropractors, we are only qualified to work on one of those: the physical side of things. That being said, by increasing your physical well-being, we can have a knock on effect on your mental and emotional health. At our office in Ramsey, we focus on helping new mothers restore spinal alignment through spinal adjustment. This helps: reduce nerve impingement and associated pain, and improve range of motion in the spinal joints.

The next step is to start reintroducing exercise, to flatten your abdominal muscles and restore stability at the base of the spine. We help women tackle the postpartum period by establishing pelvic and spinal balance- the foundation that sets will help you feel better and approach your recovery in a more energized, positive manner. If you are interested in finding out more, give our office in Ramsey a call to schedule an appointment today!