Diet and Health FAQ

Tagged As: Pregnancy Massage

Question:
I went to get a massage last weekend and the massage therapist refused to massage me when she found out I was 10 weeks pregnant. She tried to explain what she'd been taught, and it basically sounded like she thought a massage could interfere with the placenta forming and/or attaching properly. She said she could massage me as soon as I hit the second trimester and we rescheduled. Personally I thought I'd rarely heard anything so idiotic, but I didn't push her. She wasn't going to do it and I could see I wasn't going to convince her. 1) First question: So, who is right here? Seems to me that if pregnancy was as fragile as she thinks it is there wouldn't be a lot of people in the world. I mean, if a massage can damage my placenta, how could I have a healthy pregnancy after a night of my 21 month old kicking my back, how could I get big hugs from my teddy bear husband, how could I carry my kids around or, well, lots of things? Pregnancy is hardly an automatic sentence of bed rest and no touching the pregnant lady all through the first trimester! 2) Second question. I've seen a few times now that massage therapists think that certain kinds of foot massage can send a pregnant woman into labor, including premature labor. Some won't rub feet at all as a result, and some claim to know how to rub feet without risking labor. Well, if this were actually true, why aren't there massage therapists advertising for pregnant women who are term to come on down and get sent into labor via a pleasant foot massage? Has anyone ever gotten this sort of massage? Has anyone got any evidence that this is real? I see a million posts on here about please G-d, help me go into labor NOW, I'm miserable, and I can't recall a single instance of a suggestion of massage. Spicy food, sex and castor oil, sure, but never massage. So, what gives?

Answer:
Sounds like she's being a big paranoid! I can't help ya about the early term massage, but my massage therapist told me about the foot thing when I was pregnant the very first time (when I knew I was miscarrying). I had a D&C pending, but hadn't scheduled it yet because my doctor wanted to see if nature would take its course and the tissue would come out on its own. So when Laura came over to massage me, we spoke about it, and she told me that there are theories about certain pressure points in the ankle that can trigger labor, and that she'd be happy to work on them, but that she didn't think it would do anything. And she is a true believer in all the systems in the body being connected, spirituality...massage...etc...and has brought me to tears on the table from the type of work she does (not because it's painful, but because she just changes the energy around - hard to explain). In any case, I'd like to see what others here have to say about it. I have another friend who did sensual massage for a while in her younger days and she had told me the same thing about having an early term massage...but she also told me that sex was dangerous early in pregnancy - which is not true as we all know (granted things are going normally)...so I didn't give it much validity. Yeah that sounds weird to me. Like you said, pregnant women do lots of things that could *damage* their bodies but their pregnancies are fine. Maybe the spa (or wherever you went) had a policy, and it wasn't the therapist's idea? I have heard that lower leg massage can cause DVT actually in pregnancy. I had a pedicure, including a lower leg massage, days before I had Lewis. It felt *wonderful*. I just had a massage last week, but I was ~15 weeks, so I don't know if that makes a difference. It was actually my first massage (I won it and it was about to expire). The therapist did say she wouldn't do a 'deep tissue massage' because I was pregnant, but would do a relaxation massage. It was nice. Oh, and she did do my feet a little, so she wasn't concerned about that.