Massage During Pregnancy

Pregnancy is a time of physical and emotional transformation. Besides the obvious physical changes, the myriad emotions a pregnant woman experiences can often leave her feeling confused, overwhelmed, stressed or anxious. With so much attention focused on the arrival of the baby, moms-to-be often overlook the importance of nurturing their physical and emotional needs. Massage therapy is a safe, effective way to nurture mom and baby through a very special time.


Massage can be effective in relieving many of the common physical complaints experienced during pregnancy. Morning sickness, joint and muscle pain, headaches, constipation, heartburn, leg cramps and fluid retention are some of the classic complaints that can be alleviated through massage.

It is estimated that nearly 80% of all pregnant women experience morning sickness. It is extremely common during the first trimester of pregnancy and can range from a very mild moment of queasiness to recurrent vomiting. Acupressure can be safely and effectively used to alleviate the feeling of nausea. This technique can be learned and then used anytime nausea occurs.

Other common complaints during pregnancy are joint pain and muscle soreness. This is largely due to the added and redistributed weight. With the added weight concentrated in the abdominal area, a woman’s center of gravity shifts, and it results in postural changes that impact the hip and low back area. It is also common for pregnant moms to experience joint pain in other areas, especially in the knees and feet. Massage helps to alleviate these aches and pains by gently stretching and releasing tight muscles. It also enhances circulation and the delivery of oxygen and blood to the affected areas.

Constipation, gas and heartburn are also inconveniences that pregnant moms often contend with. The relaxation effect of massage stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system, which translates into increased digestion and intestinal movement.

Massage can also help alleviate leg cramps, headaches and excess swelling. The movement of blood, lymph and metabolic wastes is stimulated by massage and is put back into circulation where it can be eliminated by the body.

Stress plays a significant role in how a pregnancy progresses as well as the birth itself. If a mother perceives a situation as being stressful, her body reacts by releasing stress hormones, which cross the placenta. A 1999 study done at the University of Kentucky College of Medicine in Lexington indicated that the fetal heart rates of stressed mothers remained higher longer, suggesting a heightened reaction to stress. Continued exposure to stressful situations during pregnancy has been shown to negatively impact birth weight and may lead to pre-eclampsia and pre-term labor. Studies also show that when pregnant women receive massage, the urinary output of stress hormone levels decrease. Massage has an overall calming effect on mother and baby.

Overall emotional health of pregnant mothers is extremely important. Some mothers may experience anxiety during pregnancy. Maternal anxiety and depression during this time has been shown to have negative postnatal impacts. These feelings in new mothers are often associated with feeding problems, and mothers perceive their babies as being fussy and more demanding. According to a study done by the Touch Research Institute, women who received massage while pregnant reported reduced anxiety, improved mood and better sleep patterns.

Traditional oriental therapies such as Shiatsu and Acupressure can also be very effective in use throughout pregnancy, childbirth and during the postpartum period as well. These therapies are based on Traditional Chinese Medicine theory and influence the energy meridians (pathways) in the body. It is believed that when the body's energy (chi) is blocked or imbalanced in some way, pain and disease results. A massage practitioner who employs Shiatsu or Acupressure techniques helps to restore energetic balance in the body, thereby alleviating physical as well as emotional discomforts. The practitioner should have advanced training in these modalities for use during pregnancy.

Massage therapy can be an integral component of pregnancy and childbirth. Research has shown us that pregnant moms who receive massage have fewer physical complaints, suffer from less pain during labor, give birth to calmer babies, and experience less postpartum depression. Massage can be a safe and effective method of treatment for the many emotional and physical issues surrounding pregnancy. It will undoubtedly contribute to mom experiencing a happier and healthier pregnancy. It is also a priceless gift for the baby to come!


References:

Elaine Stillerman, L.M.T., Touch for Happier, Healthier Pregnancies, Massage Magazine, September/October 2000.

Field, T., Ph.D.; et al., Pregnant Women Benefit From Massage Therapy, Journal of Psychosomatic Obstetrics and Gynecology, Vol. 20, March 1999

{Originally posted on CharlotteMommies}


 

Pregnancy sex is safe

You can tell Valentine's Day is just around the corner because headlines are ablaze with news that sex during pregnancy is safe (that is, if you were previously worried about getting it on before) so basically you can shag until your heart is content without fear of going into early labour.

The news comes from some Canadian doctors who published their study in the Canadian Medical Association Journal. My guess is that they basically have done a review of earlier studies (although I can't find a citation for their article anywhere)....

sex during pregnancy is still taboo to talk about as I found when I was writing an article for Cosmo Pregnancy about sex back in 2008. It seemed really strange for me at the time considering that maternity lingerie, for instance, was making its mark in the maternity market and we had already been exposed to the idea that pregnancy is sexy via celebs. I was supposed to interview women about their pregnant sex lives and let me tell you, it was hard to find women who were willing to talk and have their photos taken for the article.

Anyway, were you/are you worried about doing the deed while pregnant?

Couples sue doctors for failing to diagnose Down's Syndrome

Two couples in Victoria are suing their doctors for failing to diagnose Down's Syndrome antenatally. They argue that they are suffering 'psychiatric injury' and would have liked to have had the opportunity to terminate their pregnancies had they known about the diagnosis.

This is tricky. At the moment, we live in a time of unprecedented access to foetuses through technology. We are able to 'see' foetuses as early as a few weeks into a pregnancy, doctors can perform surgery on them and there are a slew of prenatal tests that can tell women if their foetuses have chronic ilnesses. Many women who participate in a medical model assume that doctors and technology are fail safe options when it comes to monitoring a pregnancy. But what happens when biomedicine gets it wrong? Or in this case a doctor may have failed to pick up Down's Syndrome? Is it fair that a couple can sue the doctor? Technology has become so sophisticated that we often forget that it is a person that actually has to diagnose and analyse tests results. Who's at fault here? The doctor for allegedly missing the diagnosis or the couples for getting pregnant 'alter in life' when the risk of having a child with Down's increases? What do you think?

P.Rad, in the news again

Paula Radcliffe just ran the Jane Tomlinson 10k and while she ran 15 minutes slower than her world record time, the 7 months pregnant elite runner looked the picture of relaxation as she strode to the finish line with her 3 year old daughter, Isla. Old P.Rad has been coming under a bit of fire lately, considering her training regimens have been the subject of public discussion as there are many folks who are still a bit freaked out by pregnant women running right up until they give birth.

The Telegraph, however, recently published Paula's 'Day on a Plate' listing what out what she eats by the hour:

"7.45am Fresh lemon juice and coffee (decaf because I'm pregnant), and a bowl of porridge with water instead of milk as I'm a bit lactose-intolerant.

8.30am Drop off my daughter at school then do my first run. Normally, I do 10 to 23 miles, but while I'm pregnant I stick to eight miles. I trained all through my first pregnancy, and was running the day before I gave birth!

10.30am A big brunch – cereals with soya milk and fruit – then weights in the gym.

12pm Half an avocado and a tin of salmon. Sleep for a few hours.

5.30pm Toast with Marmite or honey and a banana. More running, but a shorter route.

7pm Nibble on almonds while I stretch.

7.30pm I try to eat within half an hour of training. My husband makes pasta with vegetables. Fruit and soya yogurt afterwards. I love to eat adventurously, but before a marathon it's simple brown rice or grilled chicken."

While I'm no dietician, I wonder how ethical it is to publish the diet of an elite athlete in a mainstream newspaper considering lots of women might take this as 'advice'.

What do you think of Paula's diet?

Stop whining and 'man' up

Oh dear...it appears that men are getting a little sensitive about being 'overworked and underappreciated' for not being recognised enough for all of the hard work their doing in the domestic realm. A recent article from The Age suggests that male partners and husbands are feeling angry because they too are just as overworked as women. The article cites that a 2006 study into how Australians used their time found that men spent a combined average (over seven days) of 11.44 hours per day performing professional, childcare and domestic tasks. And women? They came in at a combined average of 11.35 hours - nine minutes less than the men.

Now, I may get slammed for this (or maybe not?) but I have to say, that I really can't feel too badly for men on this front. Whilst I think it is brilliant that men are stepping up and sharing in the domestic load with their female partners, the truth is that no one should get a gold star for cleaning the bathroom. The only reason women have been banging on about having their work recognised for so long is because WOMEN, for the bulk of human history, have been doing the caring and cleaning work for the family almost exclusively. It is only recently (I mean broadly, since the early 20th century) that women have had real opportunities to be in the paid workforce.

So what if men are doing are feeling overworked? SO THEY SHOULD.

Truth is (at least according to a new study), most men are lying about their 'work' in the household. According to an article in Slate:

"Social psychologists call this aspirational lying—the unconscious shading of the truth to make us appear smarter, more generous, and closer to the person we want to be."What you want leads to what you do. If you say you're doing more, it really is a measure of the societal change," said Ellen Galinsky, president of the Families and Work Institute. "If it were not OK to be doing things with your kids and to be nurturing them— not just bringing in the money—you might lie in the other direction."

Pregnancy is almost never recognised as 'work' in itself. Ask any gal who's had kids and she will tell you that the work begins at conception and doesn't end until the kids go off to university (and even then, statistically, lots of kids are living with their parents until well into their 30s...yikes). Even without children, I still struggle with my partner when it comes to sharing the domestic load. Inevitably, I always end up doing more and I can't imagine what it would be like (and honestly, I worry about it) when we do have kids. I really struggle with this as a feminist.

Now that educated middle-class women are reaping more of the benefits of feminist movements and greater access to the paid workforce, I hardly think the time is ripe for men to 'blame' women for their achievements. I don't think any woman needs to feel guilty if the tides are turning in her favour.

Seriously, guys, if you're partner carried your child for 9 months, the least you can do is man up and do 9 more minutes a week of cleaning. Yeah, that's right. MAN UP (besides, you're probably lying about it anyway *snigger*)

IVF mothers should not be allowed to have abortions according to one British doc

According to a recent article in the Daily Mail (Daily Fail, if you ask me), "an average of 80 abortions are carried out in England and Wales every year on IVF babies." The author, Mohamed Menabawey, is a consultant infertility specialist at the London Bridge Fertility Centre and he is apparently appalled that women who have IVF abort the foetuses that they do not want to carry. According to Menabawey, if you are desperate enough to go through the pain and effort to conceive through IVF you should be thankful that you have any foetuses at all. 'Aborting' , according to this fertility doctor, is wrong and 'social abortion' (his term, not mine) is much different to 'medical abortion' (where physical abnormality is involved).

OMG this makes me so angry!

If Menabawey is a medical doctor, I find it extremely troubling that he would moralise about the personal choices of his patients in a national newspaper. I have no problem with doctors not agreeing with abortion but I do have a problem with forcing their own beliefs on patients. Under the Hippocratic Oath, doctors agree to do no harm to their patients. Encouraging women to keep foetuses that they do not wish to carry through into a full-term pregnancy or moralising about how these women are 'bad' is harmful and frankly, if a woman chooses to go through IVF and then changes her mind in the end, THAT IS HER CHOICE.

It is stunning that in 2010 we still have highly educated professionals placing limitations on choice. Whether a women chooses to terminate a pregnancy for 'social' or 'medical' reasons is NOT the doctor's concern. Menabawey seems to suggest that his IVF patients are 'bad' women for not consulting him before choosing to terminate an IVF pregnancy!

Thumbs down, no hugs.

Reflections on blogging and the world of mothers

Every wonder how I got into this whole blogging thing? I recently wrote a reflective piece on being a feminist, blogger and pregnancy researcher for Third Space:

"The mass media is a world without footnotes, where a phone call to an 'expert' constitutes 'research' and where using academic language is your death sentence..."

Intrigued? Read on and lend me your thoughts.

Pregnancy = no housework. Hooray?

A new study suggests that when women do 'boring' tasks like housework,
they are 25% more likely to give birth prematurely.

Apparently, such 'mindless' chores raise their level of stress hormones.

Maybe we can see this as a great way for women to heap all of their
undeserved housework on their partners.

Or maybe this suggests that it is problematic for women to be active
during their pregnancy and that they are too fragile to move around and do
things.

Or maybe it just means that foetuses are feminists and trying to save mum
from menial labour?

Keep the egg timers in the kitchen

As if there aren't enough women in their mid-late 30s with a biological clock the size of Big Ben....

And now we have something called the 'egg timer', a simple blood test provided by IVF Australia that will allow women to know just how fast their biological clocks are ticking....for $65 you can find out how many eggs you have left...

"I think this is a big step forward," medical director of IVF Australia, Assistant Professor Peter Illingworth, told The Sunday Mail.

"For a woman who is facing decisions about how active they should get about chasing her fertility in one way or another, it's information about what the future may hold for her.

"For a 30-year-old woman, it gives her an idea of whether she's at risk of having an early menopause or she's got plenty of time to carry on and have a baby."

I'm not impressed..or at least I'm of two minds about this. For women who have been struggling with infertility, knowing exactly what kind of situation you are facing in trying to get pregnant can be extremely useful. What worries me is that this sort of 'fertility alarm' only contributes to the cautionary tales fed to women at increasingly earlier ages about having children (which perhaps coincidentally comes at a time when more women are being educated and are working in the paid workforce than any other time in history).

Researchers say that this test relieves women of the 'anguish' of 'uncertainty'. Yet, isn't this what reproduction is fundamentally about? Lots of social commentators have been banging on about how this tests gives women 'choices'. Well, as you all know, 'choice' for me, is a big yay. But, on the other hand, what kind of 'choice' is this really? You either get pregnant because you are 'running out of time' or you have to live with the knowledge that your clock is ticking sooner than you may be ready to shut it off. I think it's a loaded 'choice' and puts a lot of pressure on women who are already feeling it without having a test tell them they are getting older.

WTF?

So it comes to my attention that Lionsgate Films has acquired the films rights to the classic pregnancy guide, What To Expect When You're Expecting. I don't know about you, but I think this is very strange and wonder if anyone at Lionsgate has even looked at the book. It's basically a list of everything you shouldn't do during pregnancy, replete with long lists of ways in which a woman can potentially kill her foetus.

Alli Shearmur, Lionsgate president of motion picture production, said:“‘What to Expect When You’re Expecting’ is a brand that knows no boundaries, and millions of readers can attest to the warmth, wisdom and humor of its voice.”

Uh, humour? Warmth? Are we talking about the same book? I think Heidi Murkoff relishes in scaring women into thinking that even looking at certain foods will result in the termination of their pregnancy.

Thumbs down.

Too many ultrasounds

A recent Canadian study suggests that women with uncomplicated pregnancies are having too many ultrasounds. According to the study, out of 1.4 million cases of pregnancies studied from 1996 to 2007, 37 percent of the pregnant women were having three or more ultrasounds. 20 percent of women were having more than four tests.

How many ultrasounds have you had in a single pregnancy?

Worrying trend: social inductions

Western Bulldog Brian Lake* has requested that his wife be induced 2 weeks before her due date so that he can 'focus on the finals'.

Since when did it become acceptable for football to trump the birth of your first child? And why on earth would his wife agree to such a preposterous and unnecessarily risky request?

When women are induced, there are given pitocin which is a synthetic form of oxytocin, the hormone that kicks off labour. With induction, there is no gradual build up with contractions become increasingly stronger and more frequent over an extended period of time. Induction essentially sticks women right into the second stage of labour so contractions are strong straight away. Some studies have shown that induction is linked caesareans because when you don't have a gradual build up to get your body used to being in pain, women often will have an epidural because the contractions are so strong straight away. As a result, for some women labour is slowed with the epidural, they can't push as effectively, the baby can become distressed and then needs to be born surgically. There are also considerable risks with induction including brain damage to the baby as a result of lack of oxygen if contractions are too strong or too frequent.

In my mind, unless induction is medically necessary, I can't conceive of how one could justify putting the lives of loved ones at risk. When Adam Gilchrist's** son Harrison had complications after being deprived of oxygen in his induced birth before the 2002 Boxing Day Test, he wondered if the induction was partly to blame. "Looking back, it seems stupid that I got myself into that position. I should have just walked away from cricket for the critical week or weeks, however long it took," Gilchrist wrote in his autobiography True Colours.

What is really worrying is that that having high profile people in the community participate in these sorts of things, it sets a precedent by which it becomes increasingly acceptable to have interventions in birth unnecessarily.

I am befuddled that his wife's obstetrician would consent to doing this. Considering we now live in an age in which patients have power as paying consumers of medicine, is an obstetrician breaching their duty of care to the patient by ceding to the patient's wishes for a scheduled birth (and of course the same argument can be made with regard to elective caesarean)?

BIRTH IS SUPPOSED TO TAKE TIME, DAMN IT!

*this is an Australian rules football player for those of you who are outside of Oz
**Australian cricket player

Bumpaholics Anonymous

Hello, My name is the The Baby Bump Project and I'm a Bumpaholic.

It wasn't long before a new annoying term about pregnancy would enter the cultural zeitgeist.
'Bumpaholic' is the concoction of Women's Health magazine (US) in which they discuss women who love being pregnant. Apparently, some women love being pregnant so much that they are having babies strictly for their own narcissistic pleasure: they crave the adoration from other people and feel more 'liberated' (don't even get me started on how much I hate the way that this term is misused) by their pregnancy curves.

Aside from the fact that 'bumpaholic' is a nauseating term, I would have to say that I wholeheartedly dispute the perception that the reason for a rising birth rate is because women love being pregnant so much. First of all, I think most women would agree that if you work full-time as a stay-at-home-mum or in paid employment, having lots of children is not easy unless you have money to burn on hired help. Secondly, I get super annoyed by 'I love being pregnant because I can eat anything I want' myth that is continuously perpetuated when it is so ridiculously clear that today, eating 'anything you want' in pregnancy is a cultural/medical no-no. In light of moral panics about obesity, I think you can ask any woman and she will tell you that the days of 'eating for two' are well and truly over. As I found in my own research, the majority of women I interviewed felt 'fat' at every stage of pregnancy and post-birth and while these women by no means 'hated' being pregnant, they certainly were not eating whatever they could get their hands on. Pregnancy was far from 'liberating' when it came to body image.

I think it's kind of odd to say that women are having more babies because they are obsessed with being pregnant rather than making the quite reasonable assumption that a woman is having more than one child because...she likes children? or loves being a mum? Feel free to correct me, but pregnancy isn't a walk in the park. I think that while many women do enjoy pregnancy, many other women merely look at pregnancy as just a hurdle to overcome for the sake of the really precious outcome. I mean seriously, why would women give birth at all considering the pain that often accompanies it? Clearly, the end utterly and completely justifies the means!

Does this mean we need a new 12 step program? I can see it now: Bumpaholics Anonymous.

Swiney

Preggos: Beware the swine!*

SWINEY!

Seriously, is anyone out there wearing a mask in public? Considering there are 'stylish maternity sickness vomit bags', why hasn't some bright spark started making pregnancy specific swiney masks with pictures of little foetuses covering their mouths?

*Yes, I know swiney is deadly for pregnant women in some cases. But it's Friday, and I'm having a bit of fun.

Discover 'pink or blue' with a 10 minute test

Man. Everyday I think of look for things to write about for this blog, I think to myself that pregnancy is getting way too complicated.

Not only can you now find out if you are pregnant about 2 minutes after conception, have 3D ultrasounds set to lullaby music and wear organic cotton birthing wraps during labour, thanks to the brains trust at Intelligender, now you don't even have to wait to find out the sex of your future child at the second trimester ultrasound.

The Intelligender Gender Prediction Test (US$34.95) claims that you can know the 'gender' of your fetus within 10 minutes as early as 6 weeks after your first missed period through a simple urine test.

Firstly, the name of the test is actually incorrect. Sex and gender are two different things. Sex is a biological category* (male or female) and gender refers to the social constructed characteristics that make us male or female (masculinity or femininity). The company has clearly confused these definitions purposely as a way to sell women on the idea of the test as being a "fun, affordable way to discover pink or blue."

The fact that the test even exists says alot about the developed world: not only can we not wait to 'see' our foetuses until they are born given the preponderance of entertainment ultrasounds, now, as the company claims, women 'need' this test because it "bridges the curiosity gap between conception and sonogram." Seriously, since when have women been unable to wait 16-18 weeks?! Considering pregnancy is 40 weeks, 18 weeks seems like a drop in the water.

If this isn't a worrying example of immediate gratification of needs, I don't know what is. What concerns me the most about this product is 1) that if women are testing for 'gender' at 6 weeks, how will this early knowledge affect those women who have pregnancies that end in miscarriage? It seems like this might be another way that women can feel even more devastated and disappointed if their pregnancy ends in loss. 2) What awful things can happen in terms of sex-selective abortions? The fact that this product is not going to be available in India or China suggests that there is already an existing undercurrent of worry about how the product might be misused. In fact, this only gives people more, legal and socially sanctioned opportunities to abort 'undesirable' girl foetuses.

Of the gender test, I say FAIL.

*not according to Judith Butler, but that's another more complicated story.

Birth on Fifth

Incredible footage from a surveillance camera of a 33 week pregnant woman giving birth in an SUV in Fifth Avenue yesterday. She nearly made it to Mt. Sinai hospital until the baby started crowning about a block away. She went delivered one baby across from Central Park after a cavalcade of doctors and nurses came out to help her. Turns out she was pregnant with twins so they got her inside just before baby number 2 was born.

Nancy O'Dell: you make me want to hurl

I was avoiding writing about Nancy O'Dell's (co-anchor of Access Hollywood) new pregnancy tome, Full of Life Mom-to-Mom Tips I Wish Someone Had Told Me When I Was Pregnant, because I think in general, she warrants as little thought as possible. I keep reading articles about her press tour for the book and it has now caused me to want to rant. Since when does being a celebrity qualify you to be an author? Seriously. Just because you had a baby, doesn't mean you need to write a book about it.

Le baby bumps and le smoking = le modern motherhood

Who would have thought pregnancy would feature in the fashion pages of the April edition of French Vogue?

In a send-up of contemporary motherhood, editor Caroline Roitfeld chose uber-thin model Lily Donaldson to wear a pregnancy bump, smoke cigarettes and lounge around in Chanel.

A response to the latest cog in the First Reponse fertility machine

As if women needed another reminder that fertility is kind of like a loaf of bread: if you leave it too long it all goes a bit mouldy and horrible.

Welcome to the latest in pharmaceutical fertility propaganda. First Response, the queen of pregnancy testing in the US and abroad, has just released the Easy Read Ovulation Kit

The purpose of the kit, according to the manufacturer is that it allows you to 'get pregnant sooner' by detecting your LH (luteinising hormone) surges or when you are ovulating. According to First Response, the new product now completes an entire 'system' devoted to reproduction. The new print ads feature all three First Response products, asking “Am I ...” followed by “fertile?” “ovulating?” and “pregnant?” to highlight each test.

Kim Hahn of Conceive magazine said, "They’re going to help a category that is underserved and increase the dialogue about reproduction and women’s fertility health". I totally disagree. This is just another reminder that women should be taking notice of their fertility and if they don't they will start to 'dry up' and only reinforce the idea that if women remain childless they are less valued as women.

On the other hand, as Karen Hammond, a gynecologist, told the NYT, the new test is not an unequivocal indication of fertility. "“If somebody 37 or older has their F.S.H. test come back normal, they’re still their age,” Ms. Hammond said. “It bothers me a bit that these older women might get a false sense of security by getting a normal reading and they’d put off their childbearing because they have a false sense of security.”

Hmm. This is pretty horrible too. False sense of secturity. In essence, she is reinforcing the same horrible claim about being fit enough for motherhood but couched in medical language. It's sort of like she's saying that 'older' women get lulled into thinking that pregnancy is always possible and then SNAP! one day your ovaries become completely useless. In fact, the packaging on the test actually says, “Are You Able to Get Pregnant?*” with an asterisk leading to miniscule type stating that the product will not really answer that question: “This test detects F.S.H. This test does not detect all fertility issues.”

Seriously, how is that supposed to make a woman feel? Are you able to get pregnant? Well, what if the answer is no. First Reponse wants to make sure that women have all of their fertility answers, yet, their own disclaimer tells women directly that the test isn't really a sure thing. What about a male fertility test? Why is it that the viability of sperm seems to be totally left out of the fertility equation? Why aren't more men running out to the chemist to test the quality of their sperm?

Don't drink lagers in Sussex while pregnant

We have seen the future and it is not good:

Caroline Williams, 23 week pregnant, was ordered out of a Sussex pub after bar staff noticed she had drunk a pint of lager and her friend attempted to purchase her one more half pint. Williams said, “I was on a rare night out with some friends. I had a pint of lager and a friend offered to get me another half that was going to be my limit." Her friend was refused service and the whole group was asked to leave the pub.

The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists says there is no evidence that a couple of units, equivalent to a pint of beer, once or twice a week will harm a baby.

Read more: Mum-to-be ordered out of pub