Tag Archives: post partum

Mommy Brain, it exists and it’s a super power!

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Happy Monday Tribe!

I hope you all had a wonderful weekend!.  Last week we talked about the importance of the tongue and it’s mobility effecting the brain.  If you missed it, don’t forget to catch the replay here:

https://www.drrachelhamel.com/blog-post/the-tongues-effect-on-your-brain/

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This week we are going to be talking about MOMMY BRAIN.

First of all, it’s probably best to chat about what mommy brain is, and if it exists right?

Many women who are pregnant claim that they feel like there are lots of things happening in their brains that they don’t understand.  Their memories get foggy so it’s hard to carry on a conversation or remember whether or not they put the an ingredient in the recipe.

Some researchers say there is no such thing as mommy brain, but still there are others and many women that would say otherwise.  The American Psychological Association concluded that 50-80% of women reported decreased concentration and memory while being pregnant.

However, we have learned that this isn’t necessarily a bad thing.  Some researchers are saying that these symptoms actually are changes in the brain that may end up making the woman smarter and better equipped to keep her child healthy and safe. WHAT?!
This flood of reproductive hormones may actually prepare the brain for demands of being a mother.
This makes her more sensitive and a more effective caregiver, less irritated by stress and more in tune with the needs of a newborn.

Another doctor says this is why mothers can hear the babies stir, while the fathers are fast asleep. Also, when the fetus moves inside the womb of the mother, it can raise her heart rate and skin conductivity, all signs of an emotional response.  Meaning the mother will be better able to bond with her infant even before its born!

The placenta is a sac like membrane that is created to help feed and nourish the growing baby from the mother.  But fetal cells can also enter the mother’s bloodstream through the same means.  This could influence the changing of the brain preparing her for the needs and love of the infant. 

What about the actual brain size?

They have found through MRI scans that a woman’s brain may physically shrink 3-5% during the third trimester of pregnancy! 
BUT, the shrinking is not just a loss of brain cells as we might think, it’s actual do to changes in cellular metabolism that happen.  Brain circuits are being restructured to prepare for more connections that will be needed.  And some areas of the brain even grow larger when others are smaller.

After about 6 months postpartum, the brain goes back to its original size (the body is so cool), but with a better circuit system.  Women who’ve never had children don’t have this, meaning they aren’t as resistant to stress or enhanced memory and cognition (stinks for me).

But to the mother going through that change, that’s where the fogginess comes from .  It’s like a construction zone.  But once the infant is born, and those changes start to become organized, the brain is actually MORE efficient and focused.  

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Here’s another interesting change in the brain.  When a woman is early in her pregnancy, her sense of smell changes right?  She’s more aware of odors.  This is because it is a protective mechanism.  It makes her more sensitive to the smell of food that may be bad for her and her child.  It also makes her actually like the smells given off by her baby, part of the bonding process guided by the brain.

Other areas of the brain also change and grow after motherhood.  The hypothalamus, PFC and amygdala, the motivation and reward centers grow.  This highly motivates the mother to care for her child and makes her feel that sense of reward with interactions from the child. These areas of the brain are also crucial for planning and foresight, something that’s needed to anticipate the child’s needs “maternal instinct”.

The brain fog can also come from the fact that the brain is changing priorities.  Mother’s have better memories about things related to their infant.  Its important for them to remember what is really important and needed for them to remember at that time.

In the workplace this could also be a benefit!  More efficient, perceptive, motivated and empathetic.  No wonder there are so many mom entrepreneurs, as we know a lot of trade jobs are actually going out and will go out in the coming years.

So that being said, it seems there IS such thing as a mommy brain.  But it actually happens for a reason as we’ve seen and actually makes them more of a SUPERHERO!, benefitting her for her entire life.  A little fogginess may results in a new level of focus and attention.

Since the need is GREAT for your brain during this time in particular, it’s important that your brain is healthy to be able to create these new circuits. 

This means women should think BEFORE going into pregnancy different, and take care of themselves differently as well as during and post partum.  The demand is high for brain use, this means more focus needs to be put on enhancing it.  Just like how I talk about in children the biggest growth of their brain is 0-2 years old so we need to make sure we allow it to grow most effectively.

How do I prepare, or what should I do to enhance my brain for mommy brain?

1.  Get cranial care.  If there’s pressure on the brain, it will be less likely to be able to process new information when it can’t even handle it’s current load. We said the hypothalamus, PFC and amygdala all grow, so we need to be able to give them that space to do so. Craniopathy care helps dramatically take the stress off the brain, decrease inflammation and allow WAY less fogginess.

2. Proper nutrition.  Since your using a LOT of brain power you need to feed the brain.  Lots of good fats are needed, and supplementation is critical.  Supplement with a high grade OMEGA supplement is always warranted pre during and post partum.(not all supplements are created equal remember, some could be TOXIC, so please consult me before taking if you haven’t already).  Additionally, looking at the exact vitamin and mineral needs are also important.  This requires specific testing, as a one size fits all prenatal vitamin just doesn’t cut it anymore.

3.  Exercise.  Exercise helps the brain make more NRF2.  This enhances the brain function, reduces stress, builds stamina.  Just don’t get exhausted or breathless as that depletes oxygen from you and baby. Lots of hydration.  Being pregnant isn’t an illness, you can still exercise and need to.  Just don’t overdue it.

4. Watch cell phone use.  Exposing fetuses to cell phone radiation does in fact affect their behavior as adults, and changes brain structure for both.

5. Get plenty of rest.  Can’t sleep?  Thats what I’m here for!  Cranial care helps tremendously with sleep, and taking away the aches and pains that come with a growing child.

If you neglect these practices, you might find that you may be more foggy, or not recuperate as quickly after baby.  Your brain can only do what it can do!  If you enhance it, think of how amazing it would be after?!

OIL OF THE WEEK

ON the spotlight this week is Balance!  Because what mom doesn’t need more of that?!

Created with the purpose of grounding emotions, doTERRA Balance is formulated with emotionally beneficial essential oils that work together to create a sense of calmness and well-being. doTERRA Balance essential oil blend has a variety of uses and benefits that can be obtained both aromatically and topically. When applied to the skin or diffused, doTERRA Balance can ease anxious feelings and create a soothing and calming environment—encouraging strong relaxation. The aroma of doTERRA Balance is sweet and woody and is the perfect fragrance for promoting feelings of balance and tranquility. Infused with Spruce, Ho Wood, Blue Tansy, Blue Chamomile, and Frankincense essential oils, doTERRA Balance is the perfect blend for stabilizing emotions.

doTERRA Balance Uses and Benefits

  1. Relaxing your body begins with the mind. Help your body relax by focusing on your emotions first. Use doTERRA Balance essential oil blend to help ground your emotions so that your whole body can feel completely at ease when you need it most. This emotionally balancing blend is a great oil to use during meditation or yoga practices.
  2. Start your day off right by putting a little doTERRA Balance into your step. After you wake up, apply one to two drops of doTERRA Balance to the bottom of your feet. This will help promote feelings of calmness and tranquility throughout the day. doTERRA Balance can also be applied to your feet throughout the day to help lessen feelings of stress.
  3. If a road trip is in your future, make sure to bring some doTERRA Balance. For those long hours of driving in a full car, diffusing doTERRA Balance will help create a calming and soothing environment. Once you experience the serene feelings of doTERRA Balance, you’ll wonder how you ever took long road trips without it.
  4. doTERRA Balance is one of the essential oils used in the AromaTouch® technique. doTERRA Balance essential oil blend is important to the AromaTouch experience because it helps produce emotional harmony and relaxation. Experience the enriching benefits of doTERRA Balance during an AromaTouch Hand Massage by either applying it to your own hands or having someone else perform the hand massage. The AromaTouch Hand Massage can also be performed on a grandparent to help them feel relaxed and calm.
  5. If you experience occasional feelings of anxiousness, apply doTERRA Balance to your wrists and neck. The topical application of doTERRA Balance essential oil blend will help ease anxious feelings when they arise.
  6. One of the main benefits of doTERRA Balance is its ability to evoke feelings of tranquility. When you feel overwhelmed emotionally, take a step back and give yourself the peace your mind needs. Diffuse doTERRA Balance or apply doTERRA Balance topically to create an environment of tranquility so that you can press forward feeling emotionally balanced and ready to take on the tasks ahead of you.
  7. Do you find yourself with little time to sit back and let your mind relax? For an emotionally grounding experience in a short amount of time, apply one or two drops of doTERRA Balance to your hands and cup them over your nose, breathing in deeply. The same results can be felt by simply uncapping the doTERRA Balance essential oil blend bottle and breathing deeply with the bottle of doTERRA Balance held a couple of inches from the nose.
  8. Before you go to bed, apply doTERRA Balance to the bottoms of your feet. This calming and soothing blend will encourage a restful night’s sleep.
  9. Promote a whole body relaxation by including doTERRA Balance in your bath. doTERRA Balance will help relax the body and provide a comforting and soothing experience. For those moments when you just need time to relax and recharge, add a couple drops of doTERRA Balance with some Epsom salts to your bath water. You will love how easily it evokes feelings of balance and tranquility.
  10. doTERRA Balance is a powerful blend of CPTG® oils designed to promote harmony in the mind and body and help balance emotions. When you have stressful events or meetings, make sure to use doTERRA Balance so that you can experience a sense of stability and relaxation during situations that are prone to anxious and stressful feelings.
  • Spruce Leaf
  • Ho Wood Leaf
  • Frankincense Resin
  • Blue Tansy Flower
  • Blue Chamomile Flower
  • Fractionated Coconut Oil

That is all for now,

 

Have a happy and healthy Week!!

Dr. Hamel

How Chiropractic BOOSTS Fertility (Men & Women)

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How Chiropractic Boosts Fertility ( Men & Women)

Happy Monday Everyone!  Continuing on this week about Fertility, We are going to be diving in to each section of last week’s blog.  Natural options as to how we can BOOST fertility in men AND women.

In last week’s blog, we chatted about how Nervous System Health can boost fertility, and why it is part of my 120 day Fertility Program.But why is this so important, and how does Chiropractic help with this?!

I’m SOO Glad you asked! 🙂

Let’s do a little anatomy review here first:

The brain controls every function of our body.  It does so by sending “signals” to the rest of your body to control functions.  
Here is an example:
Your brain sends signals through nerves that go specifically to your heart, to signal it to beat.The same thing happens in your hormone regulation.

There is a gland in your brain called the pituitary gland….

(not my picture)

This gland sends signals to: for women, the ovaries, and men the testes.  (It also sends signals to other organs, but for the sake of this topic we will talk about this).

This gland sits in a bone in the head called the sphenoid bone.  Its like a little saddle that holds this gland in place.

However, this bone, the sphenoid is pretty much the center of all cranial bone movement.

This is a view from the inside of the skull (looking in)

(not my picture)

 

Because of it’s location, any slight disruption in the movement can cause pressure into the pituitary gland.

What disrupts it?

A few things can cause disruption within the movement of this bone:

1. Birth.  The birth process itself can put pressure on certain areas of the head, that aren’t “normal” .  Sometimes the body is able to adapt, and the bones will naturally move into their correct place, other times (for most of us), they need guiding to get back into their original position.  This is where craniopathy care comes in.

2.  Any head trauma.  Hitting your head as a child, concussions, even just rocking the head back and forth disrupts the movement.

3.  Clenching of the teeth.  Do you clench your teeth?  DO you know you clench your teeth?  A good majority of my patients had NO idea they were clenchers.  Even their dentists never told them or didn’t know.  Clenching is a sign that there is dysfunction in the cranial system and inflammation.  The more you clench the more stress on the cranial system and on that delicate pituitary gland.

4.  Emotional trauma.  This can cause disruption within the flow of these bones as well.  The cranial system is intricately connected to the emotional system.  Usually one affects the other.

5. Low back/pelvis injuries.  Since the body is connected low back injuries affect the upper regions as well and can make the body going into compensatory patterns, which put the cranial bones in abnormal positions.

So… If there is disruption, then the SIGNAL from the pituitary won’t get effectively to the sex organs, because the connection is poor.  It’s like someone tripped the breaker switch.

The same goes for nerves that actually stimulate the sex organs.  

The lumbar spine, which is your LOW BACK, has nerves that come directly out of the discs and canals in the vertebrae.  These nerves control the function of the organs.

(not my picture)

 

So if the nerve coming out of that vertebrae in the low back is not functioning properly, the organs that are innervated by that region will not function well either. 

How do the nerves in the low back get compromised?

In chiropractic we call it a “subluxation”, meaning the movement within that joint is not proper, which then affects the nerves. The abnormal movement makes the signaling compromised.
Some examples of how they get compromised:

-improper postures
-injuries
-stress
-sitting too much
-daily activities
-clenching
-pelvic floor dysfunction

These are all examples of what makes that low back area get dysfunctional.

In my practice, I have seen hormone cases where they have taken everything in the book for fertility.  And it’s just as simple as actually getting the nerves functioning through craniopathy specific chiropractic that makes the difference.

You see, you can give all the supplements in the world, but if the nerve signal isn’t getting to the organ, or your brain is inflamed, fertility will not be optimal.  The supplements you take probably won’t be as affective either.

Get the nervous system functioning first, and then fill in the gaps nutritionally and emotionally.

This is why chiropractic is #1 in my 120 day fertility program.

Heal the brain and nervous system, and see what the body can do!

This goes for men too.  When signaling isn’t proper, your sex organs and hormone regulation won’t be as great either, which means the genetics you are making for your child won’t be optimal either…

You didn’t know you can change your genes to create the healthiest baby?!  That’s for another day….

That is all for now.
Wishing you all a happy and healthy week.
Dr. Hamel

Loving yourself through the postpartum phase

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Happy Monday everyone!  And happy memorial day to all those who have or are currently serving.  We truly appreciate the sacrifices you have and will continue to make every day.  
We wouldn’t be where we are without you!!

As we finish up the month of may, we conclude our topics on postpartum healing.. I hope you’ve enjoyed this month and shared with those that need this information!! Trust me, many women need to hear a lot of these things!  I’d like to finish up today briefly on how you can love yourself through this stage in life.  If you want more information about post partum care, I highly recommend you read the book The Fourth Trimester by Kimberly Johnson.  

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As we’ve gone through different aspects of post partum healing this month through nutrition, body work, ect.. it’s also extremely important to mention balancing the emotional part.  You have become a mother after all, and for some women although it is such a beautiful empowering event, for some it can be scary and hard to navigate the changes that take place in her body.  As well as relationship dynamics changing after.

I think a big part of this healing journey starts with just being in tune with your body.  For some, even before birth, being not in tune with your body was a norm.  However, once you give birth, what you may have ignored earlier now come to the surface, which is actually a good thing.  You now have the chance to choose to take care of your body in a different way.  Afterall, you only have one body, so if we love it, rather than judge it, we only stand in the way of our happiness.

Although probably one of the most difficult things is to love yourself and your body when it has been through a major change, and is constantly changing.  However, as women, I believe this is one of the most worthwhile processes we can give to ourselves.  

It’s important through this phase to not look at the ever present social media world, of women who seem to just bounce back after having children, and are deemed “superwoman”.  Although some women do bounce back quickly, we also aren’t all created equal.  Alot depends on the health of the women before pregnancy, and the steps taken during the healing period.   It could also come from help she’s had, or genetics.

A big step in healing this part is not “comparing ourselves to who you used to be before pregnancy and giving birth.” The healing process is a slow and steady one, and knowing this and giving yourself patience and kindness through it will serve you so much better in the long run, as well as fully healing post partum. 

After all, the mind and emotions are a HUGE part of healing for anyone, post partum or not.  The goal is to have a long term vision of where you would like to be, rather than trying to surge full force into something you think will be good to get back into shape after birth.

A part of this is also not judging the body on how it looks after birth, but appreciating all that it just went through!  The process is an amazing one, and when we look back at it, women have pretty extraordinary bodies.  

I often find many of my women patients also get very overwhelmed when they don’t get enough help post partum.  It’s OKAY and downright a must to have help during this time.  You need rest to fully recover, and when you get help your mind can be at ease and focus on the needs of your newborn.

-Set a plan before birth about who can help you. Make meals, do laundry, ect..  Set goals with your partner as well about who will do things, or about how your body will change BEFORE it actually does.  Communicating is key to be able to strengthen your relationship through this phase, and to let it grow and blossom.

Truth of the matter is.. you’re all superwomen!  Appreciate and know that.  Not to someone else’s standards but to the miracle of life you have accomplished.  And remember, “where you are right now is not where you will be forever! “

Tapping into the emotional part of healing is not always wanted, but it is needed.  I know that once a baby is born, the focus can be entirely on their well being, while mom goes by the wayside.  Put yourself first.  Know that by doing that you will be able to take care of them better!  And of course, if you need additional emotional support there are always more options for you.  

I love treating postpartum women in my office because I get to tell them they DON’T have to live with the pains and aches and leaks they think are normal.  Incorporating specific bodywork care, emotional work and nutritional recommendations can really make such a huge difference in a women’s health for the rest of her life.

So, what are you waiting for??

On the Spotlight this week, is DoTerra’s Balance.

doTERRA Balance Product Description
Created with the purpose of grounding emotions, doTERRA Balance is formulated with emotionally beneficial essential oils that work together to create a sense of calmness and well-being. doTERRA Balance essential oil blend has a variety of uses and benefits that can be obtained both aromatically and topically. When applied to the skin or diffused, doTERRA Balance can ease anxious feelings and create a soothing and calming environment—encouraging strong relaxation. The aroma of doTERRA Balance is sweet and woody and is the perfect fragrance for promoting feelings of balance and tranquility. Infused with Spruce, Ho Wood, Blue Tansy, Blue Chamomile, and Frankincense essential oils, doTERRA Balance is the perfect blend for stabilizing emotions.

doTERRA Balance Uses and Benefits

  1. Relaxing your body begins with the mind. Help your body relax by focusing on your emotions first. Use doTERRA Balance essential oil blend to help ground your emotions so that your whole body can feel completely at ease when you need it most. This emotionally balancing blend is a great oil to use during meditation or yoga practices.
  2. Start your day off right by putting a little doTERRA Balance into your step. After you wake up, apply one to two drops of doTERRA Balance to the bottom of your feet. This will help promote feelings of calmness and tranquility throughout the day. doTERRA Balance can also be applied to your feet throughout the day to help lessen feelings of stress.
  3. If a road trip is in your future, make sure to bring some doTERRA Balance. For those long hours of driving in a full car, diffusing doTERRA Balance will help create a calming and soothing environment. Once you experience the serene feelings of doTERRA Balance, you’ll wonder how you ever took long road trips without it.
  4. doTERRA Balance is one of the essential oils used in the AromaTouch® technique. doTERRA Balance essential oil blend is important to the AromaTouch experience because it helps produce emotional harmony and relaxation. Experience the enriching benefits of doTERRA Balance during an AromaTouch Hand Massage by either applying it to your own hands or having someone else perform the hand massage. The AromaTouch Hand Massage can also be performed on a grandparent to help them feel relaxed and calm.
  5. If you experience occasional feelings of anxiousness, apply doTERRA Balance to your wrists and neck. The topical application of doTERRA Balance essential oil blend will help ease anxious feelings when they arise.
  6. One of the main benefits of doTERRA Balance is its ability to evoke feelings of tranquility. When you feel overwhelmed emotionally, take a step back and give yourself the peace your mind needs. Diffuse doTERRA Balance or apply doTERRA Balance topically to create an environment of tranquility so that you can press forward feeling emotionally balanced and ready to take on the tasks ahead of you.
  7. Do you find yourself with little time to sit back and let your mind relax? For an emotionally grounding experience in a short amount of time, apply one or two drops of doTERRA Balance to your hands and cup them over your nose, breathing in deeply. The same results can be felt by simply uncapping the doTERRA Balance essential oil blend bottle and breathing deeply with the bottle of doTERRA Balance held a couple of inches from the nose.
  8. Before you go to bed, apply doTERRA Balance to the bottoms of your feet. This calming and soothing blend will encourage a restful night’s sleep.
  9. Promote a whole body relaxation by including doTERRA Balance in your bath. doTERRA Balance will help relax the body and provide a comforting and soothing experience. For those moments when you just need time to relax and recharge, add a couple drops of doTERRA Balance with some Epsom salts to your bath water. You will love how easily it evokes feelings of balance and tranquility.
  10. doTERRA Balance is a powerful blend of CPTG® oils designed to promote harmony in the mind and body and help balance emotions. When you have stressful events or meetings, make sure to use doTERRA Balance so that you can experience a sense of stability and relaxation during situations that are prone to anxious and stressful feelings.

Oils that Blend Well with doTERRA Balance 
doTERRA Balance blends well with Frankincense, Bergamot, Peppermint, Coriander, doTERRA Forgive®, Citrus Bliss®, and Wintergreen essential oils for diffusion.

Key Ingredients

  • Spruce Leaf
  • Ho Wood Leaf
  • Frankincense Resin
  • Blue Tansy Flower
  • Blue Chamomile Flower
  • Fractionated Coconut Oil

Post-Partum Health, TMJ and Domains of Pelvic Health

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Happy Monday everyone! I hope you all enjoyed last month’s topics revolving around detoxing!  This month we are changing gears and talking all about Post partum health, since it is one of the most overlooked things I see in my practice with women’s care. We will be diving into many aspects of what this entails, but to start this week we will go over specifically what happens with the pelvic floor, its relationship to the jaw, and how to keep it healthy post birth.

Let start first with what is the pelvic floor?  The pelvic floor is a multitiered group of interweaving muscles that surround the lower openings of your body, and also serve as a shelf for your reproductive and digestive organs.

 
The first tier, makes sure sex and elimination are working optimally.  This group is important for birth, because the baby’s head stretches them considerably, and if they are too taut or don’t have enough time to adjust, they may not soften enough and may tear when your baby emerges.

The second tier, these make sure your organs stay in place.  When this tier gets strained or pulled, the organs start to slip below where they are meant to be, which causes sensations of heaviness and fullness.  

Almost all women who come in for care, are sure their pelvic floor is not strong enough, however most come in the middle between women who could use more support and those who need to let go and relax….

Horseback rider, runner, yoga practitioner, pilates or barre method junkie?  You’ll most likely have a very strong and tight pelvic floor…
While those that maybe aren’t as active, will have a weak pelvic floor.

——

How does the jaw come in?  Well in a popular book from a midwife of birth, Ina May says “open mouth, open cervix”.  This means relaxing the jaw to relax the pelvic floor.  Because of receptors in the jaw and the sacroiliac joint, they speak to one another as our centers of balance.

That meaning, if you are a clencher, or have jaw dsyfunction, you pelvis will not relax and heal.  And vice versa, if you have a pelvic injury ( like birth, or car accident, or yoga, or weight lifting), your jaw will not heal.  Clenching the jaw and tensing muscles are sympathetic nervous system fight responses.  Imagine a dog growling and defending its territory.
There’s many things you can do to relax the TMJ joint, but I find a lot of the work is temporary unless you actually fix the dysfunction in the joint, which will then allow the receptors and muscles to relax.  How do you fix the dysfunction?  
With advanced craniopathy and dentistry. 

——

During pregnancy, your uterus is stretched to more than five times its normal size, your organs were squeezed to the sides, and perineal skin stretched.  C-Section, you had at least 4 layers skin, connective tissue, muscle and organ cut through.  Anesthetic?  It takes time to leave your system, and then theres a dramatic flood or surging and dropping and rebalancing of hormones after birth. 

All across the board, there is agreement that women should spend the first 15 days after giving birth in total repose.  This allows for restoration at the deepest levels.  Pelvic fibers can reknit themselves and heal, internal organs can recalibrate and settle.  This means you will need help!  But the first step is just REST.

According to Kimberly Johnson, postpartum care expert, when it comes to pelvic health, there are 4 domains that hold the key to our healing.  You may feel great in 3 of the areas, but the one your haven’t considered could be the root cause of whatever your symptom is.  The four domains include Biomechanics, Biochemistry, Emotions and Scar Tissue.

1. Biomechanics.
Or posture and flexibility.  How you stand affects the position of your pelvic floor.  Pregnancy will usually exaggerate posture tendencies that you already once had.  When the spine has its natural curve, your pelvic organs have a little shelf on your pubic bones.  Large curve in your low back?  Your uterus may get pushed onto your bladder.  Tucking in your pelvis and flattening your buttocks, the bladder and uterus lose their shelf of support and this can contribute to pelvic floor dysfunction like prolapse and incontinence.
Some of this is genetic, but other parts can be helped through specific bodywork care, like what I provide in my office.  Pelvic sprains are huge after birth and need proper rehab.

2. Biochemistry.  
Or the internal environment of your body.  Mostly influence by diet and nutrition, but also by exposure to pollutants and what you take into your body through food, and how the food is absorbed.  Hydrated?  Is blood moving?  Anesthesia?  We will go more into the diet of postpartum women in another blog.

Biochemistry also includes hormones.  After delivering the placenta, there is a steep drop in progesterone and estrogen as the body shifts toward healing and break mild production.  Your ovaries now have to take over, and if you have hormonal imbalance prior, it will not just go back into regulation.  Proper hormonal testing is usually needed to see where levels are at. 

3. Emotions.
These play a huge role in healing most tangibly when women have had either preexisting trauma or birth trauma itself.  Women can use words like broken, damaged or even eviscerated to describe how they feel.  Because the injuries aren’t visible on the outside, they remain untreated but not unfelt.  Or maybe there’s shame seeking help or care for these injuries.  After all, you’re supposed to be a superhero after birth?  Or you don’t want to tell your partner so they won’t see you as damaged.  Disentangeling the emotion from the physical injury is often a key piece of healing, and is why working only with the biomechanics isn’t always effective.  I use NET in my office and refer for other work that is needed.

4. Scar tissue.
Fascia is the wrapping of the body.  Think of an orange, and peeling the rind off, the white layer underneath is symbolic of our fascia.  Cutting each layer of the orange you see how it is all connected as well.  If you remove our skin we are wrapped in a sheet of connective tissue.  These layers need to slide over each other.  Muscle “knots” are often wadded up fascia that is not sliding.  This tissue is made up of 7 kinds of fiber.  Over 80% of women come through childbirth with some kind of scar tissue in their pelvis.  You can also have preexisting scar tissue from gynecological procedures, surgeries, miscarriages, endometriosis, sexual abuse or abortion.  

A couple of ways I like to deal with scar tissue is using fascial tools for the outside of the body.  I used instrument assisted soft tissue work in my office, and also recommend using something like the fascia blaster at home all throughout the body and pelvic region.  Keep in mind the tissue works best when heated up as far as breaking up the scars.  If the scar is internal, you can soak an organic tampon in organic castor oil and place it inside for 20 minutes.  Then work internally after taking it out relaxing the tissue.  (pelvic floor specialists are better for this).  

Next week we will go into some of the medical realities, that happen post birth such as incontinence, diastasis, tearing and prolapse.