Podcast

It’s a question I’ve heard time and time again, “Is massage safe during pregnancy”? There is so much that happens during pregnancy, both inside and on the outside of the body, and there are things that aren’t safe during pregnancy, that would normally be safe.  Is massage one of those things?  What about massage during the first trimester?  There’s a lot of conflicting and also incorrect information out there surrounding these questions.Read along as I break down the myths and spill the truth. Hi and welcome to the hormonal mama podcast. I am your host Cara Drescher. Today on the show, I wanted to dispel the myth that you can’t get a massage during pregnancy. It’s a really common myth, and I want to break down why it’s a myth, and why it actually is safe. So, stick with me and I’ll tell you all about it. It’s a really common myth that you can’t get a massage when you’re pregnant. But the more common myth is that you can’t get a massage during your first trimester. I’ve heard this my entire career. I’ve been a massage therapist for over 18 years, and since the day I started school, I’ve heard this common story that it is unsafe in the first trimester to get a massage. “Pregnant women can’t get massage in the first trimester it is absolutely unsafe.” “You’re going to cause a miscarriage.” “You’re going to do this, you’re going to do that.” “Do not touch women in the first trimester.” That’s what I’ve heard from everybody. I’ve heard it from massage therapy instructors, I’ve heard it from customers, I’ve heard it from massage therapists. I’ve heard it from anyone and everyone, and it’s simply not true. Let me break down for you why this is a myth. Is pregnancy a little complicated? Well, yeah! You don’t have to have a high risk pregnancy in order to have a complicated pregnancy. Pregnancy is difficult. If you listen to any of my episodes or read my blog, then you’ve heard me talk a bit about hormonal changes. That’s one of the big things. You have all these hormones racing through your body going up and down and up and down. It’s like a roller coaster… all the time. I think that’s the part that everybody gets. I mean, you’re pregnant and your hormones are going nuts trying to maintain this pregnancy. Trying to keep the baby healthy, trying to keep you healthy, trying to do this, trying to do that. What people don’t always think about is all the other things that happened during pregnancy. A lot of changes happen in the body, it’s not just that your body is growing another human which I mean, it is, and that’s probably the biggest thing about pregnancy and where this myth comes from. It’s hard to explain, so let me sort of back up a little bit and talk about miscarriage which is a very difficult topic. I, myself went through a miscarriage in my pregnancy with my twins. They had a triplet sibling, and I miscarried that third baby. Even though my experience was very different than many women; every woman who has experienced a miscarriage experiences it differently. So I can’t speak for everyone, but it’s very important to understand that the vast majority of miscarriages occurr during the first trimester. More than that, the vast majority of miscarriages occur for no apparent reason. There’s no clinical or medical explanation in many cases. I’d say in most cases, there’s no real explanation as to why you miscarried. This can be extremely difficult to understand and process, emotionally. I can relate on the infertility side because I went through years of infertility. A lot of women go through infertility. What a lot of people don’t really understand, is that recurring miscarriages are a type of infertility, and going through miscarriages whether it’s one or four, or 12, it is devastating at any time. And not only that, it’s devastating whether you lost the baby in the first two weeks, or at 20 weeks. Losing that pregnancy is a very big deal. I’m talking about it because this relates 100% to this myth that it’s not safe in the first trimester. Now, the reason why this myth really started was because of the concern that the vast majority of miscarriages that occur, occur in the first trimester. But taking into account what I said a before about how usually there’s no medical explanation for it. The other part of that, is that there’s not much that’s going to cause a miscarriage. So, the myth is sort of rooted in the fear that massage is going to cause the miscarriage. That was the impression I was under for the vast majority of my career, until I took a prenatal massage course in 2008. This was the very first prenatal massage course that I ever took, and it was a continuing education course. It was taught by a really well known continuing education provider in prenatal massage. One of the very first things she said was, “It’s perfectly safe to give a massage in the first trimester”. This blew my mind! I spent the first six years of my career believing that this wasn’t safe and that something that I did could potentially cause a miscarriage for someone else. So, I stuck to that rule. First trimester of pregnancy? Nope, not gonna touch you. Nope not gonna happen. When I took this course and she broke it down for us, I realized I didn’t know enough about pregnancy and I didn’t know enough about miscarriages. I’ve taken a lot of prenatal & postpartum continuing education courses in massage therapy over the years. I started teaching prenatal massage and advanced prenatal massage because I felt like so many massage therapists were being misinformed, which in turn is misinforming the public and that’s not fair. It’s not anyone’s fault, it’s just the circumstances.