Treating and Preventing Common Postpartum Musculoskeletal Injuries: A Biomechanical Approach to Moving with Your Baby

Treating and Preventing Common Postpartum Musculoskeletal Injuries:

A Biomechanical Approach to Moving with Your Baby

Background
I have always held an immense fascination and awe for the natural processes of pregnancy, childbirth, and mothering. The female body has the amazing ability to undergo significant changes to support life in the womb and bring that life to the outside world. I therefore naturally became interested in pelvic floor physical therapy upon listening to our first lecture on the topic in our Musculoskeletal 1 course. I further educated myself on this topic by attending advanced courses through the Herman and Wallace Pelvic Rehabilitation Institute. I had my first clinical education experience in pelvic health my 2nd year and will have another clinical education experience in pelvic health in my 3rd year. Furthermore, I myself am currently an expectant mother. As my body is going through the natural changes necessary to nurture my baby in the womb and in the outside world, I have become quite interested in postpartum care of women. This project has evolved out of my own interests, my current experiences as an expectant mother, and discussions with pelvic floor clinicians about postpartum pelvic physical therapy care.

 

Statement of Need
My project has specifically sprouted from the directly-stated needs of pelvic floor physical therapists. Over the past several months, I have talked with pelvic floor physical therapists on patient education needs they have in their settings. When asked what topics they spend the most time educating patients on and need better education materials for, they responded with this topic – how to move with your baby. They expressed that women commonly develop postpartum musculoskeletal injuries due to the dramatic shift in daily physical responsibilities, changes occurring in the postpartum female body, and the added weight of a little human they move around with all day. The most common injuries were stated to be coccyx pain, upper-back/thoracic pain, and diastasis rectus abdominus. These pelvic PTs expressed that mothers often are not educated on best ways to perform their new ADLs (changing diapers, carrying car seat to and fro, lifting baby out of crib, carrying baby, getting up from floor with baby, nursing baby, etc.) to prevent musculoskeletal injury. Therefore, my education materials are aimed at helping this population by providing recommendations on how to perform these tasks to avoid injury.

 

Purpose
The purpose of this project is to 1) review the current literature regarding common postpartum musculoskeletal injuries and their interventions and to 2) create patient education materials for postpartum women to avoid these injuries.

 

Products

For physical therapists, I wrote an academic paper providing an in-depth analysis of three common postpartum musculoskeletal injuries – coccydynia, diastasis recti abdominus, and thoracic pain. I provide a biomechanical and physiological explanation of why postpartum women are prone to these injuries and discuss the current research regarding interventions for these injuries. I also detail biomechanical recommendations on how to perform common baby caretaking tasks to avoid incurring these injuries.
Academic paper: Treating and Preventing Common Postpartum Musculoskeletal Injuries: A Biomechanical Approach to Moving with Your Baby

For patients, I developed an educational handout explaining recommendations on how to perform common baby caretaking tasks to avoid injury. I photographed a mother and her baby demonstrating these recommendations to provide a visual for patients. I also recorded video demonstrations of these recommendations that can be viewed on the public Instagram account @ergonomicmama.
Patient education handout: How to Perform Baby Caretaking Tasks to Avoid Injury

Video demonstrations of recommendations: Instagram @ergonomicmama https://www.instagram.com/ergonomicmama/

 

Evaluation Component
Throughout the project, I shared my progress with my primary advisor who helped me narrow my focus and fine-tune my products. I shared my patient education handout and demonstration videos with my expert clinicians and incorporated their feedback for improvement.

For gathering feedback on the educational materials from patients, I created a form that patients can complete after viewing the patient handout and demonstration videos.
Evaluation Form

 

Self-Assessment

At the early stages of this project, I wanted to create educational materials for prenatal exercise, childbirth ergonomics, postpartum return-to-sport, and baby caretaking task ergonomics. I received the feedback from my primary advisor and clinicians that I had far too wide a scope of material and that I needed to focus in on one of those topics. As the clinicians said they have the least educational material on baby caretaking task ergonomics, I went with that topic as the focus for my project. I learned so much in researching the biomechanics and interventions for the musculoskeletal injuries discussed in this project. I also learned how to instruct patients in these recommendations as I coached my mother and baby “models” in the recommendations to capture the photos and videos. I am proud that I have contributed education material that will fill a gap in resources for new mothers.

 

Acknowledgements

Dana McCarty, PT, DPT, for guidance and mentoring from this project’s early stages to its completion.

Abbie DeWitt, PT, DPT, WCS and Emma Shirley, DPT, for your project feedback and insight on what postpartum physical therapy patients commonly experience and what education materials would be useful to develop for this population.

Mama Stephanie and baby Davie, for being my lovely models for the handout photos and video demonstrations.

 

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