How to Give a Prenatal Massage

Video transcription

Hi I'm Gretchen Rivas with Relax to the Max Massage Therapy and today we are going to talk about how to give a prenatal massage. Whenever you are working with someone pregnant you want to make sure you have them in a semi-reclined position after the 22nd week of pregnancy and from 13 to 22 weeks if they are in the prone position face up you want to make sure you put a little bit of a pillow on that right side to make sure that the baby rolls off of the vena cava which is a very important vein in the body and you don't want to put any pressure on that. So what we are going to do today is just show some basic techniques on how to massage somebody that is pregnant so you just have them leaning up. You want to make sure that they're looking forward and they are not leaning so far back that they're looking at the ceiling. You can start this way and then massage their neck, their shoulders, the pec area and the chest gets really tight during pregnancy. Just drop your head over that way. The neck gets really tight a lot of times too so you can do it this way and massage the neck through here and when they are in this position you can also do some arm massage and you want to be careful when you are working with them over the arm because the hormone relaxing does relieve a lot of the strain and the ligaments and makes them really loose so you want to be really careful about that and just massage this area here, massage the arm and we should have done that from the other side. Then also when you are doing the leg you can do the legs totally from this position and you just work through here and you can get the hamstrings from this area here. You don't want to use any pointed specific deep pressure in her thigh area because pregnant women are especially prone to blood clots so you want to be careful about that and if you have any redness, ickeyness or swelling in the calf or in any particular part of the body but particularly the calves that could be a sign of a blood clot so if you see any signs of redness, acheyness, swelling, or shininess of the skin you do want them to go see their doctor, don't massage them in that case, massage the leg, give them a little bit of a foot massage and of course you do this a little bit longer than I'm demonstrating here because pregnant women definitely need a lot more time than this that I have spent on her. So after you are done working the legs and arms you want to turn her on her side and then work the back area and then you can work on the sacrum and the low back and the sides of the back and all the way up to her shoulders when she is in that side lying position and that is how you give a prenatal massage.