In this video, I’m going to give some tips on how to sit and stand correctly during pregnancy. Many women don’t know how to manage their posture or their spine while they’re pregnant, and as a result, this increases the likelihood of them having back pain, neck pain, and other musculoskeletal-related issues. In this video today, I’m going to show you exactly how it’s done.
Hi there, I’m Dr. Mario from Vitality Chiropractic, and for over a quarter of a century, we’ve helped tens of thousands of people improve their spinal health naturally through chiropractic care, and that includes pregnant moms. Now, let’s start with how to sit properly. It’s important that when you’re pregnant, you sit up straight with your shoulders back, just like your parents used to tell you when you were much younger. This will help you maintain good posture and decrease a lot of the stress on your spine, pelvis, and the lower part of your body.
Here are a few tips that are going to help you out with that in particular. The first thing to avoid is to actually not sit for long periods, and if you must sit at work, it’s important that you get up and move around as often as you can, ideally every 30 minutes. I wouldn’t leave it for more than an hour. Hop up from your seat, have a short and brief walk around, grab a drink, go to the toilet, just get up out of the chair.
The second is to make sure that you’re using a chair that supports your back and is properly fitted to you. Now is not the time for using a cheap or unsupportive chair or to be lounging around with terrible posture. Your body’s going through enough changes as it is without adding extra stresses to it.
The third thing is to minimize sitting with crossed legs. When you are sitting, what you want to be able to do is make sure that you’re balancing your weight across your pelvis. You know, when you put one leg over the other, you put uneven stress through your hips, through your SI joints, which is starting to loosen up because your pelvis has to flare for a pregnancy to make room for your baby. You want to keep your pelvis balanced on the chair that you’re sitting on.
The fourth thing is when sitting down and getting up from a seated position, it’s important not to round your back and lean forward, but to use your legs to drive it up. You know, you don’t want to be sort of falling forwards off the chair. You want to just stand straight up. If the chair has armrests, use those armrests for support. You’re taking stress off the low back, you’re giving your legs, your knees, your hips, your ankles a little bit of support in getting up from a seated position.
Now onto how we can go about standing correctly during pregnancy. Just like when you’re sitting, it’s important that you stand tall and straight. This will help you avoid strain on the lower part of your back, pelvis, knees, and ankles. Here are some tips that will help you out with that as well. So, be sure when you are standing that you have your feet kind of shoulder-width apart. Make sure that the weight is evenly distributed between both legs, and you’re not standing on one leg or the other. If you’re going to do that, make sure you change weight regularly. Better to have it evenly on both sides. Feel the weight through your feet. You don’t want to be standing on your toes or on your heels or on the outside or inside. You want to have the weight evenly distributed right over your foot, left and right at the same time. Next thing is to make sure that you keep your knees loose. Sometimes during pregnancy, there can be a tendency to want to lock your knees. Your body’s carrying that extra weight, so loose knees will just ensure they’re aligned nicely over your ankles, and it leaves you that sort of flexibility where you’re not going to strain anything.
The next thing is to try tucking your tailbone in and under your body. This is called a pelvic tilt. What it can do is, simply, just with the later stage of pregnancies as you get heavier in the belly, your center of gravity will start to shift forward and the lumbar curve will start to push forward towards your belly button as well. Tucking your pelvis underneath can help try to flatten that out. It helps to engage your lower abdominal core muscles as well, and it’s going to keep everything a little bit more in alignment between basically your ears and your ankles, putting a lot less strain through your lower back.
And another tip is to make sure that you’re wearing comfortable, supportive shoes. The good news is there are lots of really great-looking comfortable shoes that you can buy. Most importantly, you want to avoid anything like high heels. They look great, they’re fantastic, but they do put a lot of extra strain, and they tend to accentuate the lumbar curve, which is going to happen automatically and naturally as you become more gravid and further into your pregnancy.
Now, pregnancy is meant to be a lovely time for the mom and the baby, and these tips hopefully will give you some help in reducing any stress, pain, and discomfort that you might be having. Look, if you’re still having issues and you need help, we’d love to help. Please don’t suffer in silence.