Perinatal

After delivering your baby, your body is again changing at a rapid pace as it adapts to this new state: the center of mass has moved back, the stretched abdominal and pelvic floor muscles are shortening, and the ribs are dropping. As the body heals and shifts, there are additional new biomechanical stressors your body must adapt to as a new parent; bear in mind that the influences of hormones on the laxity of ligaments and stability of muscles and joints are still in play in this period, particularly when breastfeeding.

Since you are carrying your newborn in your arms and feeding them, instead of the strain being predominantly in the low back and pelvis as it was during pregnancy, there is now new strain in the arms, upper back, and neck. The posture of holding your baby in your arms activates the muscles in the front of the arms and in the chest which rounds the upper back: clinically, new moms often experience more upper back pain and neck pain with headaches than they used to because of this postural strain.

Another new physical stress in this period lands in the wrists and thumb from the repetitions picking your baby up. The increase in load on the hands and forearms from holding, carrying, diapering, bathing, and dressing your baby, can lead to pain and restriction in the wrist; as the baby gets older and has better head control, when you pick them up under their arms, the tendency is to deviate the wrists to the pinky side. This leads to stretching of the tendons that come into the thumb and lead to the injury commonly referred to as ‘Mom thumb.’