You are in good hands with me.
I have 25+ years of experience doing prenatal massage, and I am currently the Prenatal Massage instructor at The Colorado School of Healing Arts.
Pregnancy is a time of many new changes, some wonderful and some less welcome. Pre-Natal massage provides a way to relax, increase your energy, and alleviate discomfort during pregnancy. The safe and caring touch of massage can help you experience your changing body in a positive, accepting, and powerful way. Massage also provides a space to focus on you and your concerns at a time when so much of your attention is focused on the baby to come.
What is Pre-Natal/Postpartum Massage?
It is a specialized type of bodywork that focuses on the changing needs of the woman in her childbearing year, through pregnancy and the often neglected "fourth trimester" of postpartum.
Pregnancy massage addresses each woman's transformation individually. As your therapist, I combine my expansive knowledge of integrative massage with my in-depth understanding of the physiology of pregnancy.
How can Pre-Natal/Postpartum Massage help me?
It can help with many of the discomforts you experience as your body changes during pregnancy. Massage can:
* Relieve pain in your muscles and joints
* Reduce excess fluid retention
* Ease constipation, gas, and heartburn
* Help with pregnancy related carpal tunnel and sciatic nerve issues
* Assist with shorter, easier labor and shortened maternity hospital stays
Is Pre-Natal Massage for everyone?
Massage is safe, healthy, and enjoyable during a normal pregnancy. However, because massage is not appropriate for some conditions, I will want to know about your pregnancy. If you are having any problems or complications with your pregnancy, then I may request approval from your health care provider before proceeding with any bodywork.
What can I expect in a session?
I will talk to you about your general health, the progression of your pregnancy, and what you would like to focus on during your session. You will undress in private. During your massage you will be comfortably supported with pillows and therapeutic body support wedges. In the second and third trimester you will receive your massage in the side-lying and semi-reclining positions to ensure maximum comfort and safety.
You will be covered with a comfortable draping except for the part of the body being massaged. I will use a gentle aromatherapy blend to further enhance the experience. If your sense of smell is sensitive, you may request an unscented oil. It is fine to interrupt your session if you need to use the restroom.
Feel free to ask any questions you may have about massage in general or your session in particular. This is your time to enjoy, either in pleasant conversation or in luxuriant silence.
What about postpartum massage, and how soon after giving birth can I receive one?
The course I took for Pre-Natal massage was called, "Bodywork for the Childbearing Year", and they taught the physiology of pregnancy as a year long process. A woman undergoes the most changes to her body in the three months after giving birth. Postpartum massage relaxes muscles, increases circulation, and lowers stress hormones. How soon after giving birth you can receive a massage is a personal decision. I can adjust my work to where you are and how you are feeling in your body. Only you can know when you feel ready for a postpartum massage.
Does your table have a hole in the middle, or do you have one of those bolsters that lets a pregnant client lie face-down?
I cringe whenever I see a table with a cut out for Pre-Natal massage. Whenever most people imagine massage, they imagine someone face down on a table. This is a good position for many people, but it is not required to give a full body massage. For a pregnant woman, it's a great example of terrible design. You take a part of the body, which happens to contain a fetus, and let it hang down, tugging on the muscles most compromised by the changes in pregnancy. As a lagniappe, it makes it harder to breathe.
One of the first statements that my instructors made in my prenatal class was, "We do not recommend positioning a pregnant client in the face-down position. Period." There are bolsters designed specifically for this. I do not have one. I've had the chance to try different models out, and my primary complaint is that they break the flow of a session. Repositioning a client during a massage is a dance. You want to make it as fluid as possible. Repositioning a pregnant client with a face-down bolster is clunky, sometimes requiring that your client get off the table with a sheet wrapped around her, watch you rearrange equipment, and get back on the table. Sound relaxing? Most clients didn't think so.
We use the semi-reclining and side-lying position in a prenatal massage. The side-lying position allows access to the hip joint that the face-down position does not, and neither position causes your sinuses to block (or worse, drain). In Atlanta, the allergy capital of the US, I often used the side-lying position for non-pregnant clients so that they could breathe easier during allergy season.
Do I have to go to someone who is certified in Pre-Natal massage?
Every licensed massage therapist is trained to keep pregnant women safe. At my alma mater, The Atlanta School of Massage, we took an introductory course called "Pregnancy and Positioning", which taught us how to position pregnant women throughout a session, and what to do, as well as what not do, to keep them safe. It was a three hour class. We took many three hour introductory classes in order to know what we wanted to study after graduating from our foundational course.
I actually decided to get a certification in Prenatal Massage because pregnant women flocked to me at the spa where I was working and I wanted to feel more competent. (I'll let you decide whether that was fate or coincidence).
I know that I was like many massage therapists in that I didn't believe I was sufficiently trained to work with pregnant women, so my work was tentative. I worried that they were so delicate.
After studying Bodywork for The Childbearing Year with Somatic Learning Associates in La Jolla, CA, I felt properly educated and experienced to work with POWERFUL women who were creating and nurturing new life in their bodies.
Twenty-five + years later, helping women during this amazing time is still one of my favorite things in the world.
In the yoga studio where my practice was housed in Atlanta, I worked on the owner during her sole pregnancy. Her son is now a proud graduate of Georgia Tech.
Time Flies!
Pre-Natal/Postpartum Massage is $115/60 minutes and $165/90 minutes. A series of Pre-Natal/Postpartum massages is $400 for four hours.
Gift certificates are available for Pre-Natal/Postpartum Massage.
