Massage, Pregnancy, and "Issues"

Adam and Lilith never found peace together; for when he wished to lie with her, she took offence at the recumbent posture he demanded. 'Why must I lie beneath you?' she asked. 'I also was made from dust, and am therefore your equal.' Because Adam tried to compel her obedience by force, [read: rape her] Lilith, in a rage, uttered the magic name of God, rose into the air and left him. from The Lilith Myth

Lilith has long been a symbol for women's rebellion-- and in some myths, she is a goddess, in some, a demon. She certainly troubles patriarchal religion's insistence on women being subordinate and accepting of that position.

Most pregnant women suffer from sciatica in some degree. This is when the baby & growing uterus put pressure on the sciatic nerve-- in the leg/hip area-- and this causes pain, numbness, tingling, etc. I've had some problem with it since very early in my pregnancy, even before there was much substantial "showing." Since you can't sleep flat on your back, and are supposed to "elevate" one hip slightly, and therefore sleeping on one side or another is basically what I have to do, the sciatica really does effect my ability to sleep comfortably, too. This makes me cranky, tired, less interested in things like exercise (because of said cranky-tiredness.)

When I talked to one of my doctors a while ago about the sciatica, (I see a variety-- sometimes I see the main guy, sometimes a resident), he said "well, there's not much you can do. If it got really bad, we'd send you to a physical therapist." After that visit, I got to thinking about massage therapy, and I went and had my first ever massage. You pay more for a prenatal massage-- at the place where I go, it's 15 dollars extra, making it a total of 65 bucks for an hour of massage (not including the tip). So that's pretty expensive-- a luxury item, right?

Well, I assumed, having never had a massage before, that it would be nice, but not really all that helpful with my sciatica. This is a pregnancy pain, and generally it seems the common refrain about it is "well, you're pregnant, you ought to expect discomfort, and live with it. Don't be a whiner."

I was mostly prepared to do this till I got to realize that actually, the massage really really helped me feel a lot better. And not just for a the short term day or so after. For at least two weeks after my massage, my sciatica does not bother me. I've had three massages now since February, and each time it has helped. Just before each one, I can feel my back muscles tensing up; I get many more Braxton-Hicks contractions, and I have more trouble with things like getting up from lying down, walking comfortably, etc. Massage helps all of these things, and I feel less constantly tired when I've had a massage.

So it stands to reason that prenatal massage is a pretty good idea. Why do women have to "suffer through it?" There are all kinds of therapies that one could get that could help with the general pains of pregnancy, and while I have no scientific data to back this up (not from not trying-- I looked this up in MEDLINE and couldn't get quick access to the two or three articles that looked promising on maybe telling me more), I still think that anything that makes pregnant mom feel better physically, without resorting to extreme measures (drugs, eating too much, etc) has got to be good for both mother and baby. The sheer drop in the amount of Braxton Hicks contractions is my biggest argument for this-- if I'm not sitting there getting all stressed and worried that my babies are coming early and this is the start of preterm labor, then there will be fewer calls to the doctor, fewer potential pointless visits to the doctor's office (which cost money, after all.) Less stress in general is definitely better for pregnant moms & babies.

So what's the point of this whole long rant? You would think that insurance might cover at least part of massage therapy. You would think that doctors would actually recommend it. No on both "you would thinks". My doctor did not mention that massage might help-- I made the leap myself from "possible physical therapy if it gets bad" to "while it's not so bad, maybe a massage will help." According to the one article that I did manage to read, people spend millions of dollars a year on "alternative therapies" and most of them are not covered by insurance. Well I get that. Insurance is not actually there to help us, really, and they don't want to spend more money. It's not cost effective to cover every little fad that comes up in medicine.

But if it's something non-invasive, something that really does help, don't you think there ought to be a push to use it? How many women do you know who can afford to get 65 dollars an hour prenatal massages? It's NOT going to be very many. This is the reason why I did some research-- it's not exactly cheap and we wouldn't mind getting some "help" paying for it.

And here is the other thing-- if you need "occupational therapy" insurance covers it. This would be something long term. Pain management because you had no choice, and your pain was long term and affected the daily quality of your life. But if you just get a massage for your short-term complaints, you're out of luck. People actually even seem to act like I'm some sort of nut case for even asking about it. As though I'm trying to pull some scam and am being unreasonable. I'm a persistent person, and I also have access to research methods that other people don't. I think this is an advocacy issue, and dammit, if I were in a healthcare related field, I would say this is a study dying to be performed. How much health benefit does the occasional prenatal massage have on babies & moms? Does it potentially decrease costs of "conventional" medicine, does it decrease office visits, decrease stress, possibly even decrease things like preterm delivery? All of those things really ought to be looked into. Why do I think it's not being done?

Because it's only something that women suffer from. And men still generally rule the roost when it comes to medical things. Yes, there are lots of women in medicine, but an awful lot of them are used to the status quo and might as well be men for all they pay attention to the differences between the sexes on certain medical things. It's all in your head is something that many women with gynecological pain complaints have gotten from both male & female doctors.

Most of the articles I found had to do with massage helping cut down on episiotomy, and some with easing depression during pregnancy, and some with pain management during labor. But very few studies have apparently been done on pain management for DURING pregnancy. It's very much "Eve, thou hast sinned and must suffer" in my humble opinion.

It really pisses me off. Not just for me, because I can justify going in every two weeks or so for a few months and paying the 65 bucks for several weeks of better sleep, less pain, less stress & worry. But women without the income my husband's war-monger job provide us? Ah, just quit yer whinin'. You're knocked up, what did you expect? It's the wages of sin, dear. It's what pregnant women have been suffering from forever.

Why? Why should women continue to face pain if there is a reasonable way of helping it? When insurance pays for f'ckin Viagra, even for non-medical reasons, then there's certainly some kind of f'ckin conspiracy here. Where are the feminist researchers in medicine? Damnit? If any medical students who are searching for a great advocacy project for their research ever read this, I tell you, somebody ought to study this. I wish I had the abilities; all I can do is survey what more scientific minds than mine have said. And unfortunately, an awful lot of those minds seem to be occupied elsewhere.

Eve, thou hast sinned. Great. So where the heck is Lilith? I need her input on this one.