Prenatal Care & Birth Preparation

Pregnancy is a transformative experience that impacts the entire body. 

Hormonal influences, postural changes, and changes at the pelvic girdle can lead to some common challenges. Optimizing pelvic function can help ease pain, help you move with more comfort, and help prepare your body for childbirth.

Why Professional Care Matters

Pregnancy leads to unique challenges in the body, so working with providers with advanced and specialized training in perinatal health is important. While challenges like pelvic girdle pain, sciatica, pubic joint pain, low back pain, constipation and leakage are common problems during pregnancy, they are not problems people simply have to live with!

Our Expert Physical Therapists Are Here to Help

At SPH, we always aim to treat the whole person. We start with a comprehensive examination to determine what is happening around the body and within the pelvis that may be contributing to the problems you are experiencing. This can include evaluating your spinal mobility, movement and range of motion, posture and alignment, and much more!

Treatment Typically Includes

  • Specific exercises aiming to improve strength and optimize coordination for the pelvic floor muscles and the structures around the pelvis.

  • Strategies to improve your core stability and postural control.

  • Exercise to retrain abdominal function and prevent or minimal abdominal wall separation (diastasis rectus abdominis).

  • Manual therapies if needed, including myofascial release, and/or dry needling to help improve muscle length and sensitivity around the pelvis.

  • Education to build strategies to optimize your bowel and bladder habits.

  • Postural retraining and specific strategies to improve your body mechanics and movement.

  • Vaginal or cesarean birth preparation with specific exercises and strategies

  • Much more ~ customized to you and what we identify together in your first visit and examination.

We also have the capacity to utilize tools and modalities like surface-EMG biofeedback if needed for your program. Additionally, we often help individuals fit stability belts, supportive leggings and other devices to aid in their function. 

Birth Preparation

We also work with people to help optimize pelvic health, function and mobility in preparation for birth. Our wellness sessions focus on: 

Improving strength and mobility around the low back and pelvis

Optimizing abdominal wall and deep core muscle function to reduce diastasis rectus abdominis and other musculoskeletal challenges

Improving pelvic floor muscle mobility and flexibility to reduce tearing with vaginal birth

Improving abdominal wall and thoracic mobility to optimize cesarean birth

Strategies for breathing and pelvic floor lengthening to promote optimal labor and birth

And much more!

More Resources For Navigating Pregnancy

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Thanks to Dr. Reale’s treatment and support, my second labor and delivery went much, much differently! Dr. Reale goes above and beyond for her patients, and I am so grateful she was a part of my pregnancy and postpartum care team.