About 5 months into my pregnancy I started jolting awake with searing night leg cramps. Extremely physically active throughout my 9 months, I knew it was not due to idleness, nor a lack of potassium and/or calcium as I am nutritionally hip to that. Pregnancy research does not indicate what creates the leg spasms that typically begin around the second trimester. It could be the extra weight carried puts pressure on the leg muscles, or the expanding uterus compressing blood vessels that move blood through the legs back to the heart. The interesting thing to me is the difference between how the Western world approaches pregnancy care compared to the rest of the world.
As a certified massage therapist, I studied pregnancy massage that clearly points out many contraindicated points to avoid. The fear is that if pressed too deeply, one can induce labor before it is time. A series of these points to avoid literally surround the feet and lower leg! Gasp! What’s a girl to do to relieve leg pain, move to Europe? Maybe, or maybe just adapt to a European mindset. Overseas, pregnancy massage always includes leg and foot massage because they know it helps women with this exact issue. After many years of bathing in the fear infused waters of Americas massage therapists, I realized that what almost every woman wanted, was exactly what I was taught not to administer. How can that be?
So I began to offer my clients the option from an educated decision. That said, still to this day if someone is high risk pregnancy or carrying multiples I tend to honor the contraindicative points and stay away from deep work in those areas. In my experience, baby comes when baby is ready. The “points” are there to assist in labor, and may help both mother and child with the transitions to bring baby into this world. Needless to say, when it was my turn to decide, I dove in to relieving my leg spasms in multiple ways.
I loved getting pregnancy massages though no one really administered what I really wanted, so I had to find it on my own. Yoga Tune Up® Therapy Balls to the rescue! Following a series of leg and foot therapy ball work, I also frequently did Sitting Seza With A Strap (included below and on the 5 Minute Quick Fix for Feet and Ankles) as well as calf stretches. This work alleviated my leg cramps completely!
Read our “Pregnant women have no fear” article.
Watch our Free Hip Fix Video.
Read about abdominal exercises for pregnant women.
Tiffany, thanks for breaking the silence on this issue. Every woman’s needs are different, and every baby growing inside its mother will cause specific changes as well. Your courage to speak out about this topic is so necessary and so desperately needed by women whose circulation is being impacted by their pregnancy. Our culturally indoctrinated body fears come from so much mis-information. More blogs like this PLEASE!!!
Fantastically educative thanks, I reckon your audience might want a great deal more items of this nature continue the great content.
this is so helpful for pregnant women on bed rest!
Thank you for this post! I have a new pregnant client and have not been pregnant myself so this is very helpful. I find this YTU pose that stretches the feet and ankles to be so challenging and so rewarding at the same time. I am trying to do it more often to increase the flexion in my toes and strength of my ankles. Before YTU, I had not considered strapping my ankles, though instructed to draw the ankles together. This seems like the most affective method for healthy ankle strengthening.