If you’re pregnant or are considering becoming pregnant, congratulations! You’re at the start of an exciting time of life full of many changes and new experiences. While the pace of your life quickens, we want to encourage you to take a few moments to reflect on your health goals.
While pregnancy is a natural state, it is far from the status quo for your body. During pregnancy, your body prepares accommodations for your baby before you begin working on their nursery. Organs move out of the way, sometimes creating bothersome side effects such as heartburn and shortness of breath. Blood volume increases by as much as 45% to fuel their first growth, and a host of biochemical changes create shifts in energy, mood, and sleep patterns.
Although we have many tools in our pregnancy arsenal, we’d like to give you an overview of the Webster Technique. This is an internationally known technique to help with pregnancy and labor. In our practice, Dr. Laura Graber and Dr. Hanna Wadsworth are Webster-certified and eagerly anticipate helping you with your prenatal and labor needs.
What Is the Webster Technique?
The Webster Technique is a well-researched method for enhancing health for you and your child. This approach works to correct misalignments of the hips and lower spine, which interfere with healthy functioning during pregnancy, labor, and delivery.
Webster-focused interventions at our practice add a specialty sacral analysis to our detailed health assessment. The sacrum is the portion of the spine that connects to the pelvis, so it directly impacts how you feel and function during pregnancy, labor, and delivery.
Unfortunately, the sacrum is under even more stress than usual during pregnancy. This is due to shifts in how your weight is distributed and hormonal changes. The hormone relaxin, for example, loosens the interosseous sacroiliac ligament that connects the sacrum with the iliac or upper portion of the hip bone. This makes it much easier for the sacrum to go out of proper alignment.
Keeping the sacrum properly aligned maximizes your stability to help you cope with shifting weight distribution. It also helps keep the nerves that send growth and health-related messages throughout your body and your baby’s body in excellent working condition.
Why Should I Consider Webster Technique Chiropractic?
While the overarching principles behind the Webster Technique sound impressive, they aren’t the only reasons you should consider this valuable addition to your prenatal regimen. Pregnancy-related changes influence every single system in your body. While you might know to expect morning sickness, low back pain, and swollen angles, you might not know that hip pain is the second most common complaint pregnant women bring to us.
Adjustments using the Webster protocol focus on creating and sustaining optimal pelvic alignment. This gives your baby as much room as possible to emerge from the birth canal during labor safely. It also gives your nerves the space they need for optimal function, providing solid impulses for the powerful contractions that launch your baby’s start in this world.
Webster interventions also help your baby grow well during pregnancy. More room inside of your uterus means that they can move as much as possible to get valuable exercise and early soccer skills development. Since the benefits of gentle movement begin early, they can maximize their circulation to get the necessary nutrients, including oxygen, for optimal organ, limb, and neurological system development.
What Are Some Benefits of the Webster Technique?
Since the Webster Technique sets your body up to support your pregnancy more successfully, it has a number of benefits for your health. Pregnancy-related changes can cause a litany of symptoms. Fortunately, a recent research study revealed that the Webster Technique can boost “satisfaction with social roles,” and reduce issues including:
- Fatigue
- Pain interference with life activities
- Sleep disturbance
Even though making pregnancy more comfortable for you is a goal, labor pain is an even greater concern for many of our patients. Labor is excruciatingly painful and it’s no mystery why: you need to push a baby who weighs an average of seven pounds and is an average of 19.5 inches long through your birth canal. This requires extremely strong and very painful uterine contractions. Your baby also exerts tremendous pressure on your cervix, which causes even more pain.
When your sacrum is properly aligned using the Webster Technique, your pelvic nerves maximize your contractions and pushing power. Proper nerve function also helps regulate how your body processes pain signals so you don’t feel any additional pain from nerve dysfunction.
Another factor that can help minimize labor pain is having a shorter labor. Webster adjustments encourage your baby to move so that their head is pointed downward. This is known as the Vertex presentation, and it is the position that optimizes nerve function, so contractions are steadier, stronger, and more effective. We’ve had reports of labor lasting as few as five hours with the Webster Technique.
Even though pain relief medications, including epidural, spinal, and pudendal blocks, have gained tremendous popularity in recent years, they still have potential side effects. One of the most significant of these side effects is slowing your baby’s heart rate. If you’ve ever been in labor or have heard much about it, you know that the baby’s heart rate is monitored electronically because medical professionals must take action immediately if the heart rate deviates from a safe range.
The Webster Technique helps minimize your pain without compromising your and your baby’s health. Remember, any medication that gets into your system also gets into theirs. Avoiding or using minimal medication during labor can help you reduce or prevent their side effects.
How Does a Chiropractor Become Webster Certified?
Since the Webster technique is highly specialized, it requires additional training beyond the traditional chiropractic medical school. The International Chiropractic Pediatric Association, or ICPA, was founded by Dr. Larry Webster, the creator of the Webster Technique. Dr. Webster is one of the most beloved persons in our profession, as his motivation for developing his technique was watching to help his daughter Lucinda and other women experience easier, less painful labor.
Webster certification is only obtainable by a Doctor of Chiropractic medicine. This advanced practice credential requires the completion of an extensive continuing education course on the technique and its supportive interventions.
This certification also requires successful completion of the Webster Proficiency Exam. This is a rigorous three-part examination. Prospective Webster practitioners must pass a written test and sign a detailed principles and practice agreement binding them to a high professional standard. They must also demonstrate their skills to the credentialing board through a hands-on practical skills examination. Students can take the course and the exam, but can only be credentialed once they have earned a Doctor of Chiropractic Medicine degree. You can learn more about the ICPA’s Webster training and licensing requirements at their online home.
How Can I Set My Child Up for a Healthy Life?
The easy answer to this question is to give them a healthy start. While the Webster Technique helps provide an optimal in-utero and labor experience, the benefits don’t stop there. In fact, many of the good results we get from this technique occur after your baby is born.
We enjoy providing Webster-based care for our patients because it helps expectant mothers recover sooner and more successfully from labor. When you’re fueled by an optimally functioning neurological system, your thinking is clearer to make the best choices for your child. You also have the energy to follow through with any lifestyle choice recommendations we have for you and your growing family.
The Webster Technique also helps families experience better health by setting the stage for a lifetime of healthy choices. When your baby is born into an environment where their health is the priority, then making excellent care choices becomes a habit. So does partnering with us to seek health advice and assistance you can use.
Pregnancy Care You Can Trust
Whether you’re expecting your fifth child or planning to become pregnant next year, we hope that we’ve inspired you to consider the possibilities for you and your child. We invite you to partner with us to improve your health and set the stage for a lifetime of health for your child. Please drop us a line or give us a call at (303) 455-2225 to start expecting even greater days ahead.