Three Tips to help Neck and Shoulder Pain in new Mums
Transcript
Hi everyone, Emily from POGO here. I had a client in this morning that had just had her third child, well six weeks ago and we were talking about neck and shoulder pain in new mums. So, whether you’re breast feeding or bottle feeding having neck and shoulder pain is not an uncommon thing and I just wanted to give you a few little tips to help kind of help strengthen the muscles, so a few tips and ideas that are going to help reduce that neck and shoulder pain because looking after a baby is hard enough in itself without all the pain on top of it.
My first tip is to, when you’re sitting and feeding, think about the support you have so no matter what chair you are in you really want to make sure you have some lumbar support. So, whether you have a rolled up towel or a cushion behind your back, that’s going to help support your lower back and help support your posture. Another thing to think about is not holding your baby the whole time. So having pillows or cushions underneath so you can rest your arms while feeding is just going to take that pressure off your neck and shoulders. Another thing some people don’t always know is you don’t always have to feed in a sitting position, so doing it in a side like position can be a nice way to mix it up and just give your neck and shoulders a break as well. My third tip is just to do some really easy scapula stabilising exercises so a quick and personal favourite one of mine would be with some band, have it wrapped around like a door knob or table leg, something like that. You want to stand up nice and tall, cross your straps over, thumbs up, squeezing your should blades back and down. You’re going to pull your elbows back and squeeze your shoulder blades together so this is just like a rhomboid lower trapezius exercise. When we do exercises for endurance you want to go with a lower weight and higher reps. So, you might start with about three rounds of fifteen reps and build up to twenty five or thirty and try to do that once or twice a day. It’s just going to help improve the strength in your shoulder blades, therefore improve the endurance then when you’re sitting and feeding your muscles do the work and that just takes off the pressure off your neck and shoulders. So if you’re having any problems with positioning or have any questions about what I said leave a little comment underneath, we’d love to hear from you and happy feeding.
Emily Georgopolous (APAM)
Physiotherapist
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