Exercises to Prepare for Labor and Delivery | Prenatal Chiropractor in West Omaha, NE
Hey there. I’m Dr. Jeremiah Sample from Family First Chiropractic. And I’m here today to talk to you about things that we can do to help prepare for the labor and delivery when you’re pregnant.
Now, exercise is very important throughout the entire process of your pregnancy, beyond just not only getting your spine checked by a chiropractor to make sure that you don’t have any actual subluxations that have caused nervous system pressure affecting you and the baby. This also helps prepare the musculature and your joints for the eventual delivery and then postpartum of having your child.
Deep Squat Exercise
So the first thing we’re gonna go over is what we call a deep squat. Now understand that, when you’re first starting out, in the beginning trimester, it’s important to exercise right away. The more you make it a habit, the more continuous it is, the easier it will be due later when conditions change, and you go from not even realizing that your brain into a change in your body style, which will modify all the exercises. So initially, with your deep squats, you want to make nose in line with the toes, right, knees pointing forward, you’ll want them bending in, so you always want to make sure they stay out right and utilizing the large muscles of your legs and your glutes. An easy way to do that to ensure that you’re staying on your heels for it is just slightly raised up your big toe. Okay, because I squat down to keep my big toe raised up, it’s going to force me to drive through my heels back up towards the ceiling, always keeping the chest up, driving up right now. Once you get to the later trimesters, and stability might become an issue or you’re having more trouble moving and it’s more common for you have pain, use something to hold on to. All right, this is a chair, or even a counter, the bleacher squats made sure each time you drive down to the heels and back up. Do you know if you’re doing this properly, good thing to think about is thinking about sitting down on the toilet. I mean, it’s the most basic way I can explain it, is make sure you’re shooting your hips back far enough that utilizing the right muscles, and backup.
Exercise for Quadriceps
The next exercise we’re going to talk about is the quadricep, cat and cow. All right. So as we get down, what we’re gonna do is we’re going to be utilizing this to hydrate the discs of our lumbar spine or thoracic spine. And to keep those joints moving freely and relax the musculature surrounding them. You started off in all fours, making your hands underneath your shoulders, knees underneath your hips, right. And when we breathe in, we’re gonna drop that belly down as far down as we can, and bringing our head towards our tailbone. Right on the breath out or the exhale. We had all the way in. Rounding that back, think about bringing your belly button toward your spine and cooling your spine the opposite direction. Repeating these 10 times each way during this will not only hydrate those discs, but will help strengthen the low back and make it easier when it comes time for the delivery and the labor itself. Next we’re gonna go to is something do help lengthen the pelvic floor muscles and to relax those muscles of the low back and in the pelvic area, which with the relaxing that you’re getting the extra hormones will start to do naturally anyways. But this will help with it. We call this child’s pose, you start in the same position with your legs underneath you. And what you’re gonna do is you’re gonna fold forward, okay, early in the pregnancy, it’s gonna look a lot different when you can actually fold forward and go more towards the ground with your body and relax in this position, anywhere between 10 to 15 seconds, or 10 to 15 breaths right. As you do this, it’s going to lengthen these muscles going to stretch the muscles of the pelvic floor then making the delivery itself easier.
Exercising Your Hip Flexors
Another exercise that we like to do and to show is what we call the pigeon stretch. Now this is a personal favorite of some of the ladies that work here at the office that have had children before helps workout the hip flexors. The muscles a little back again and helps keep you flexible throughout with that canes is having a leg in front of you and stretching into it. So as I do this, I can really feel that and that hip. Alright, I feel worse attaching the muscles low back and these are going to be very important come time for the delivery the labor itself. Now this will be a modified version for later on in the pregnancy when getting down into this position is maybe not quite as easy as it was before. Alright, so you can either do less than that or this time. We can utilize a chair sitting as far up in the front edge How to Fold a leg over top and we just fold into that leg in this manner will stretch those same muscles not quite as deep as before, but it’d be much more comfortable now that our bodies changed.
For any questions that you might have or more information concerning pregnancy exercises you can do to help with your own delivery or that of a loved one. Please comment below and we will reach out to you. Thank you!
