They help reduce stress and anxiety levels during pregnancy.
Motherhood is an important process in a woman’s life but pregnancy has physical consequences on your body. During the gestation of a new life, you may experience numerous changes that cause certain discomforts. So prenatal massages are a solution to alleviate these physical ailments. It can be performed during pregnancy or after delivery.
Medical research has found evidence of the benefits of prenatal massage therapy.
This type of therapy helps to reduce anxiety, reduce symptoms of depression, relieve muscle and joint pain, and improve birth outcomes and newborn health.
Here are some of the benefits of prenatal massage for pregnant women’s bodies.
1. Relieving swelling
During pregnancy, women retain more water than usual. This extra water tends to accumulate in the lower parts of the body, especially if it is hot or you have been standing for a long time. The pressure of your growing belly can also affect the blood flow in your legs. So your feet, legs and hands begin to swell during pregnancy.
Massage serves to stimulate the soft tissue, moving the extra fluid and reducing swelling making the pregnant woman’s body feel better.
2. Reducing lower back pain
It is common for women to experience low back pain in the early stages of pregnancy, as the ligaments of the body naturally soften and stretch to prepare for childbirth. This can put stress on the joints in the lower back and pelvis.
Prenatal massage improves lower back pain, including sciatic nerve pain, by addressing tight muscles in the affected area. Prenatal massage increases blood flow and helps release the tension that pregnancy can naturally cause.
3. Improve sleep
Prenatal massage relaxes the nervous system and releases feel-good hormones, allowing you to sleep better. Pregnant women tend to feel increasingly vulnerable during pregnancy, and often feel protective and worried about their unborn baby. Recovering the quality of sleep helps relieve these tensions.
4. Conditioning the body for childbirth
Prenatal massage can help you have an easier delivery, not only because it can reduce your overall stress level but also because of how well it can keep your muscles toned and relaxed before labor begins.
5. Bringing awareness to pain naturally
Prenatal massage offers a natural, safe, drug-free alternative to pain relief. The increased blood flow to your tissues and the relaxation your body will experience during and after a session can significantly alleviate many of the common discomforts of pregnancy.
6. Managing Stress
Pregnancy can be stressful for a woman. These massages decrease anxiety and stress levels.
7. Improving blood circulation
One of the benefits of massage is that it improves circulation, reduces edema, reduces muscle tension and improves oxygen flow to the muscles and soft tissues.
8. Reduced depression
A study revealed that pregnant women who received massage therapy for 20 minutes a week recorded a drop in depression levels.
9. Decreased sciatic nerve pain
Massage relieves sciatic nerve pain in late pregnancy, as the uterus rests on the muscles of the pelvic floor and lower back…
10. Benefits for the baby.
Research showed that newborns born to mothers who received massage were less likely to be born prematurely and less likely to be born with low birth weight . In addition, the newborns of mothers in the massage group showed lower cortisol levels, which will be born a calmer child.
Recommendations for prenatal massages
It is advised that from the beginning of pregnancy until approximately the 28th week, you should go at least once a month. From the 28th to the 36th week, you should go at least once every two weeks. While during the 36th week until delivery, you should go at least once a week.
At Salon Deauville we have professional massage therapists who will help you during this special period of women towards motherhood.