Before, During & After Pregnancy: Supporting Your Body Through Every Stage of Motherhood

Pregnancy changes your body — but your need for care does not begin at conception or end after birth.

Most of the attention, understandably, goes to the middle bit. There is a whole industry built around the nine months, and almost nothing built around the woman who had tight hips and a grumbling lower back for two years beforehand, or the woman who is now six weeks postnatal, feeding at 3am in a position no physiotherapist would ever recommend, and has not thought about her own body since the day she went into labour.

This piece is about all three stages, and about what soft tissue therapy can honestly offer at each one.

What actually changes, and why it hurts

Pregnancy places progressively different demands on the body. Body weight increases, posture adapts around it, and the centre of gravity shifts forward. Ligaments become more flexible. The growing uterus changes the load through the abdomen, pelvis and lower back. None of this is a fault or a failure — it is the body doing exactly what it is supposed to do — but the muscles have to work differently to manage it, and that is where the discomfort tends to come from.

Back pain is particularly common during pregnancy. Both NHS guidance and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists list massage among the approaches that may help with comfort and relaxation. It is not presented as a cure, and neither will we present it that way.

Pelvic girdle pain

Pregnancy-related pelvic girdle pain deserves its own mention because it is common, it is often dismissed, and it can be genuinely miserable. It can affect the lower back, hips, pubic region and thighs. For some women it makes walking, climbing stairs, getting dressed or turning over in bed uncomfortable — the ordinary things nobody expects to have to think about.

Where pelvic girdle pain is suspected, appropriate assessment is important. That usually means your midwife, GP or a women’s health physiotherapist. Massage can sit alongside that care and help with the surrounding muscular tension and comfort, but it should complement medical or physiotherapy input, not replace it. If you come to us with that picture, we will say so.

What the evidence actually supports

Research into manual therapy during pregnancy has found improvements in pregnancy-related back and pelvic pain compared with usual care or relaxation alone. That is worth knowing. It is also worth being straight about the limits: the evidence is not strong enough to claim massage will cure these conditions, and anyone telling you otherwise is selling something.

That honest position happens to describe exactly what we do anyway. The realistic aims are helping manage muscular tension, easing discomfort, and supporting comfortable movement while your body adapts — not fixing pregnancy, which does not need fixing.

There is a wellbeing side too. Research has associated massage during pregnancy with reductions in self-reported anxiety and low mood, although the quality of the available evidence varies, and massage is not a treatment for anxiety or depression. What we can say without hedging is that lowering physical tension and having a proper hour to switch off, with someone whose only job for that hour is you, matters to a great many of the women who come in.

Before pregnancy: the body you are starting from

We are not going to make claims about fertility, and we would be sceptical of anyone who does. What we will say is this: pregnancy asks something new of a body that already has a history.

Most women arrive at pregnancy with something already going on — tight hips from years at a desk, a lower back that grumbles after a long week, restricted movement through the thoracic spine, muscular tension built up from work, running, the gym, lifting or just ordinary life in London. Pregnancy does not clear that slate. It adds to it.

This is where being treated by a Level 5 Sports Massage and Soft Tissue Remedial Therapist earns its keep, because treatment can be built around your movement, your muscular tension, your lifestyle and your goals rather than waiting for something to become painful enough to force the issue. Whether that means sports and deep tissue massage, work on tight hips or attention to a lower back that has been complaining for years, it is the same principle: assess first, then treat what is actually there.

Pregnancy may ask something new of your body, but looking after it does not have to start on day one of pregnancy.

During pregnancy: treatment that changes as you do

As pregnancy progresses, the physical demands change — and they keep changing. The lower back, hips, glutes and legs take on additional loading. The upper back, neck and shoulders often pick up tension of their own, particularly later on and particularly once sleep gets difficult. Swollen, heavy legs are common. Sleep positions that worked at 14 weeks stop working entirely.

Which is the whole point: treatment should not be identical at 14 weeks and at 34 weeks. If it is, it is a routine rather than a treatment.

Who you will see

At Range and Restore, Mateja Bracko-Mounti and Alison Isherwood are BTEC Level 5 Sports Massage and Soft Tissue Remedial Therapists who are also trained in pregnancy massage. That combination is the part worth paying attention to.

It means you are not simply booking a generic relaxing massage with the word “pregnancy” in front of it. It means a therapist who understands soft tissue, movement and muscular loading, applying that knowledge with pregnancy-specific training — so treatment is individualised and appropriately adapted to your stage of pregnancy, your symptoms, your comfort and what you actually want out of the session.

How treatment is adapted

Positioning, pressure and technique all shift as pregnancy advances. Side-lying positioning with cushion support is commonly recommended as pregnancy progresses, with semi-reclined positioning where appropriate. Pressure is adjusted to your preference, not to a house standard, and your therapist checks in as the session goes on rather than assuming.

Depending on what the consultation and your symptoms point to, treatment may help with:

• Muscular tension and general aches
• Lower-back, hip and glute tension
• Upper-back, neck and shoulder tension
• Maintaining comfortable movement as loading changes
• Relaxation and reducing physical stress
• Feeling physically supported while your body changes week to week

Every pregnancy is different, so every session starts with consultation and appropriate screening — your stage, how you have been, and anything your midwife or GP has flagged. Where something falls outside our scope, we refer back to your midwife, GP, obstetric team or physiotherapist. That is not a caveat bolted on at the end; it is part of doing the job properly. Our pregnancy massage service page covers the practical detail, including the 60-minute session at £85.

After pregnancy: looking after Mum, not just the baby

Once the baby arrives, attention shifts — completely and understandably — to the newborn. Every appointment, every conversation, every visitor is about the baby.

Meanwhile Mum’s body has just been through pregnancy and birth, and then walks straight into another physically demanding period with no transition at all.

Feeding positions held for forty minutes at a time. Carrying. Lifting a car seat in and out. Picking a baby up thirty times a day. Holding them predominantly on one side, because that is the side that works. Pushing a pram up Junction Road. Interrupted sleep for months. Sitting hunched at 3am in the one position in which the baby will actually settle.

All of that builds completely new patterns of muscular tension — usually through the upper back, neck, shoulders and one-sided through the hips and lower back. It is not a pregnancy problem any more. It is a different problem, and it deserves treating as one.

Once it is appropriate to receive treatment following birth — and with medical clearance where required, particularly after surgery, complications or significant ongoing symptoms — the focus can move gradually towards helping you feel comfortable in your own body again.

And then the goal changes again, because it should. Maybe you want to manage longer walks without your back tightening. Then the gym. Then running. Then sport, or the thing you did before that you have not done since. Or maybe you simply want to pick your baby up without your shoulders and back protesting every single time. There is no single definition of recovery here, and we are not going to impose one on you.

The Range and Restore difference

Plenty of places offer pregnancy massage as a spa treatment. That has its place, and if a relaxing hour is genuinely all you want, there is nothing wrong with it.

What we do is different in one specific way: your treatment changes as your body changes.

One session might be mostly lower-back and hip tension. The next might be almost entirely upper back and shoulders. Later in pregnancy, positioning and techniques may need adapting again. After birth, the demands are different from anything that came before, and treatment changes with them. Rather than a one-off pregnancy massage, this can be ongoing, individualised soft tissue care through each stage.

And because Mateja and Alison are Level 5 Sports Massage and Soft Tissue Remedial Therapists as well as being trained in pregnancy massage, they can keep working with you well beyond pregnancy — into your return to normal activity, work, exercise and sport. You do not have to start again with a new therapist who does not know your body.

When massage is not the right first step

Good remedial therapy is not about trying to treat everything. A large part of it is recognising when somebody needs to be somewhere else.

Please speak to your midwife, GP, obstetric team or maternity triage before booking — or instead of booking — if you have any of the following:

• New, severe or unexplained pain
• Any bleeding
• Fever, or feeling generally unwell
• Symptoms that could indicate a blood clot, such as pain, swelling, redness or heat in one leg, or breathlessness and chest pain
• Significant pelvic pain, or pelvic girdle pain that has not been assessed
• Reduced fetal movements, or any pregnancy complication you have been told to monitor
• Anything at all your midwife or GP has asked you to keep an eye on

If you are in your first trimester, or you have any pregnancy complications, check with your midwife or GP before booking. If you are unsure whether treatment is right for you at this stage, get in touch and we will give you a straight answer, including if that answer is not yet.

Pregnancy and postnatal massage in Archway, Islington and North London

Range and Restore is at 130 Junction Road, Archway, London N19 5LB — two minutes from Archway tube on the Northern Line, with step-free access from the station and buses from across North London. Clients come to us from Islington, Holloway, Tufnell Park, Highgate, Crouch End, Finsbury Park and Kentish Town — N19, N7, N6, N4, N8, N1, NW1 and NW5.

If you have been searching for pregnancy massage in North London, prenatal massage near you, or postnatal massage in Archway or Islington, this is the kind of care we are set up to provide: assessment-led, adapted to your stage, and delivered by therapists who will tell you honestly when something needs your midwife or GP instead.