Pain In The A**

I founded my company, Essentially Birth, back in 2019 and, if you have been following me since then, you will know that my mission has been to offer a pregnancy massage service that specialises in preparing your body for birth.

This calling came from years and years of working with labouring mamas and observing that those mamas whose babies were found moving through the birth canal in certain positions were more likely to have interventions in labour; more epidurals, more forceps births, more caesarean sections.

I witnessed many mothers being told that "the baby was never going to come" without x,y or z because of their position in labour. There's a lot more to this part of the story than baby positioning and a major part of the issue is that the extra time these mamas and babies might need to sort themselves out simply isn't granted or the simple adjustments that might help in the earlier parts of the labours aren't taught to midwives routinely. 

Caesarean sections and instrumental births, though increasingly normalised in today's birth culture, have major implications on the mother and her baby and by extension on the entire family. A caesarean section will impact every future sibling, too, and babies born by caesarean are more prone to respiratory tract infections, asthma, dermatitis and obesity. This impacts society as whole by impacting on cost spent on (so-called) healthcare, but importantly it impacts people individually.

Because I know this, I have spent my entire career committed to helping those women who truly want it have spontaneous physiological births. I am also committed to helping those women who have caesarean sections for whatever reason mitigate the potential effects through curating a nurturing postpartum recovery. 

Initially I focused on baby's positions because that's what midwives and obstetricians focus on. I went on a mission to learn more about the baby's journey through the pelvis and I discovered that my midwifery training didn't even begin to capture the intricacies of this incredible process. I also found that baby positioning is secondary to what is happening in a woman's body. Babies take up the space they have available to them and their ability to complete their rotation through the birth canal has a lot to do with the elasticity of your soft tissues.

This (and my growing disillusionment with conventional midwifery captured in this blog) inspired me to purchase a massage table and the most incredible positioning system for pregnant mamas and get back to my roots as an aromatherapist and body worker.

I haven't looked back!

My initial stream of clients came to me because their babies were "not in an optimal position" (usually back to back) and the pre-massage consultation always included (and still does) a discussion about what that means. I ask questions like:

"Do you think your baby's position is the same all day?"

"What position were you in when you were told this?"

"Where do you feel your baby's movement?"

...and so on.

I then explain that the baby's position at any one time doesn't matter anywhere near as much as the baby's freedom to move through the pelvis. The baby wants to bring the chin to the chest and spiral through your soft tissues.

The question is how can we achieve strong, balanced and yielding pelvic tissues. Regular massages are part of the puzzle and movement is the other, which is why my offerings now include a course for parents to be called Born Through Yoga. Born Through Yoga is a Movement For Birth course and due to demand Tara, the Yogi Doula, and I have added a date in March. This time, because our clients have asked for it, we have added a Nurturing Newborns element to our workshops and we cannot wait to teach it! 

I have a question for you, though:

Are you wondering yet why this blog post is titled "Pain In The Ass"?

Good! That means you are paying attention.

Here's the answer:

One day I accidentally helped one of my clients relieve her hip pain in just one session.

She had come to me for help with baby positioning and her left hip was really sore.

The thing is that she hadn't told me that her hip pain had gone but instead (and this is AMAZING) she told other people. In fact, I didn't meet her again until her next pregnancy.

In my early days with Essentially Birth my booking system was not very sophisticated, I only learned to ask you your history BEFORE you come and see me from experience. And so one other day this client walked in telling me that I had helped her friend with hip pain and she asked me to help her, too.

This was back in 2019 and my typical client then really was the mama who wanted help with a back to back baby, so being asked to help with sore hips specifically came entirely out of the blue. 

I'll admit that at this point this was a new premise for my massage sessions. It's amusing to me now that it hadn't occurred to me until then that women would come to me with complaints of hip or low back pain. As a midwife I knew how common they are and treating them is second nature to me now. 

I have learnt which types of tension patterns cause which types of  pain since those early days of offering pregnancy massage but ultimately massaging the hips for a smooth passage of the baby is very similar to massaging them to alleviate pain. I was excited to hear that my massage had helped someone so much and I wanted to try and help this woman, too. So, I invited her up onto my couch, got her positioned in a neutral spine, stacked hips and shoulders and put my hands on. I followed her body to where it was drawing me and did my work. After the session I asked her to please text me to let me know how she was the next day and lo and behold, her hips got better, too. 

I think back with such compassion for  myself at this stage of my learning. Now I understand much better the connection between pain and restrictions in your pelvic diaphragm that could potentially impact your baby's passage through. These days I am very confident in claiming that I will most likely make a big difference to your pain if not alleviate it entirely for weeks after one to three sessions. 

Hip pain, back pain, rib pain, heartburn, pubic pain, "lightning crutch", back pain, you name it, all of those symptoms that I learned as a student midwife were "normal ailments of pregnancy" are actually not at all normal. They may be common, but they are not normal and, most importantly, they are closely related to how easily your baby will move through your birth canal. 

By addressing your pain with a body work and movement strategy you are tending to core alignment. Did you know, for instance, that your pelvic floor is part of your core musculature? Did you know that many of us have restrictions in our pelvic floors, mainly our posterior pelvic floors, the part closest to the tailbone. Incidentally this is where your baby does its rotation to be born. If you are tighter on one side than the other, this can lead to an unfavourable tilting of the baby's head and I have come to the conclusion that it would be much more helpful to show you how to maintain balance and a kind of fluid softness in those muscles than observing your baby's position and then instilling an idea that a momentary finding of a baby's position is problematic. 

In may ways I feel that those women with a pain in the butt are blessed because they get to explore the dynamics in their bodies. Every single woman - pregnant or not - will benefit from figuring out her posture and tension patterns. Aligning your ribcage above your pelvis, getting yourself out of the habit of tail tucking and butt clenching and working on switched on glutes and mobility in your respiratory and pelvic diaphragms will not only give your baby the best chance of moving through the pelvis smoothly and swiftly but it will also help with keeping your pelvic organs from prolapsing in later life, so it's a win/win.

The mothers I have witnessed throughout the last year in focusing on pelvic balance and functional movement with a dedicated and structured plan all had swift births. Two of them were first time mums and both of their labours lasted less than eight hours. It does involve a willingness to dedicate some time each day to breathing and movement but it can be done. It helps immensely if you understand how birth works in your body and how it is observed and "monitored" in conventional maternity care. It'll also help if you have a solid birth partner or maybe even a doula to hold and support you and your birth partner through the unknown of labour and birth.

There's more to this than just the physical preparation, though. You may not always be aware of it, but you have a physical body, an emotional body and an energetic body, too, so does everyone else. How you nurture your body, the food you eat, how and how much you move and your breath all impact not only your physical body but by extension your emotions. The entire thing works visa versa as well, cultivating a habit of a clean mind, will inevitably impact your body and this is where it gets interesting.

I posted a post on Instagram last week about hip pain, speaking to the fact that the hips are known among body workers as our emotional junk drawers. I am certain it is where the expression "Pain In the Ass" originates in the first place (in case you'd like to know: my hips got sore the night I submitted my tax return and I don't believe this to be coincidental 😜).

In fascia therapy restriction in the hips is associated with fear of moving forward.

One of my clients this week told me that after reading my post on Instagram, she thought that the fact that her hips had gotten sore again after weeks of ease was not only because circumstances dictated that she couldn't come to see me for her weekly massage, but also to the fact that birth was getting closer and she was scared. This opened up a very beneficial conversation about the kind of plan she might need to alleviate those fears. After the conversation we did some fascia release on her hips and she thanked me saying that the whole session had been so helpful. 

If your hips are sore pause for an emotional check-in. Pregnancy is a time where we are moving straight into the unknown. 

How will I cope with labour?

Will the baby be okay?

Will I be a good mum?

How will we afford the cut in income?

How will my relationships change?

There are so many questions and the worries could well be stored in the hips. I like to incorporate the essential oils of orange and ylang-ylang when women see me with hip pain. These oils are oils to support the sacral chakra which is directly connected to the hips - chakras are  the main energy centres of your body. Although they have been known for centuries, they are situated around major nerve plexuses. The sacral chakra is associated with the lumbar plexus of nerves which controls reproductive organs and the lower digestive system. The sacral chakra governs emotions, sexuality, and creativity and supporting it helps your.parasympathetic nervous system and promotes rest, healthy functioning of your reproductive system (hint: important for pregnancy, birth and postpartum), helps digestion and fosters your sense of connection with others.

To support your sacral chakra, especially if your hip pain keeps coming back after your sessions with me, try a colour meditation - envisage the colour orange radiating in your pelvis, and if affirmations are your thing, you could try the affirmation "I am life force" as you imagine the orange light in your pelvis. 

I also recommend that you start working on getting your glutes to wake up and fire well. Whilst pregnancy isn't necessarily a time to build strength in a big way, addressing weaknesses in a functional way is a major part of the puzzle.

What do you make of all of this? Have you got hip pain? What has worked for you? Would you dedicate twenty minutes to half an hour every day to preparing for birth and getting rid of that Pain In The Ass?

Send me an email to [email protected] and let me know.