Pelvic Strength & Stability
I often see women start experiencing pain toward the second half of pregnancy, and they think they’re just doomed to this inevitable fate. But as I’m sure you’re already guessing, I’m going to tell you that’s wrong. Here’s what’s going on:
There’s for sure truth to the fact that there’s less stability in your pelvis during pregnancy. So that feeling of instability, weakness, need to waddle…all are within a realm of “to be expected” because of a hormone you release called relaxin. It makes all your joints loosey goosey, which is what you want for birth, but isn’t great for joint stability through pregnancy. One might think, “Oh, so this hormone ramps up as we get closer to birth, right?” Wrong. You actually get a HUGE surge of it early in pregnancy and it just stays high all throughout! The reason that it doesn’t really lead to feelings of instability until later on is because the limits of your pelvic stability start to get really tested when baby gets much heavier.
A big source of pain in your pelvis is a result of what your body does to try to compensate for this ligament instability. When your ligaments aren’t adequately supporting joint stability, your muscles will begin to hyper-recruit in order to make up for what your ligaments aren’t currently able to do. Short term, that would be fine. But when that compensation can last weeks, and sometimes months, that causes a lot of muscle fatigue and pain. For many of us who struggle with these pains, our pelvic muscles don’t have the strength that they need in order to compensate for the ligament weakness for an extended period of time.
So what can we do to combat that?
First, we will never have a stable pelvis if it isn’t first in good alignment with proper nerve communication. So make sure you put yourself in touch with a prenatal chiropractor (like me!) for that! But let’s talk about creating true strength with exercises you can do on your own.
One of the most important ways to combat this instability is by creating true strength in the muscles that support our pelvic girdle! Lucky for you, I’ve created a video demonstrating some of my favorite ones!
As always, these guidelines are based on the average pregnant mama, and may not be the right fit for everyone! If they are causing you discomfort, there’s no shame in the game of needing to back off of it and find an alternative! You can always consult with your prenatal provider to help give you more specific guidance!
Starting out, you can do 3 sets of 3 reps on each side for each of these exercises. I’d like for you to work up to doing 3 sets of 10 reps on each side, and doing that a couple times a day.