Chances are you were attracted to this post because of the gripping title, but you may also be coming from our Cautions & Contraindications page. Either way I say good on you for trying to find out more about this non-issue issue that people like to make a controversy of. Spoiler alert: yes, it is completely safe. You can even make the argument that it is in fact beneficial to get massaged while pregnant (but that will be covered only minimally in this post).

When reading things like that previously linked contraindications list, you will invariably come across someone stating that pregnancy massage specifically within the first trimester is unsafe and can possibly cause a miscarriage (some even say that it is likely). It is also usually highlighted that the first trimester is especially prone to this.

There is a lot at play with those statements, and unfortunately I will not be able to dive deep into everything here, but I would like to focus on three things that likely factor in each time someone rattles that zinger off.

1. simply ignorant to the fact that miscarriages are (unfortunately) very common
2. assumes that the type of treatment is going to be nothing but intense / invasive elbow techniques – and probably solely focused around the abdomen to boot!
3. is trying to cover their ass – liability wise

I cannot stress enough that there is no proof whatsoever that massage has ever caused a miscarriage. You can go look for some right now if you want. Don’t worry, I will wait.

Now lets work backwards from that list, shall we:

#3)

Often I will see businesses or health care providers classifying massage on pregnant women as a general or full-body contraindication. Particularly though they will not allow pregnant women to be treated at all during their first trimester. This simply comes down to them trying to financially protect themselves in the event something does go wrong.

Sadly, this is purely a liability issue and is impacted by the first thing on that list. This fear of miscarriages is very real, but next let us go over the second part of the list.

#2)

Your body is already going through changes early on in your pregnancy, to be sure. The hormone relaxin is released almost immediately after conception. Relaxin will relax (shocker) the ligaments which makes your joints a bit more lax or moveable instead of tightly bound and stable. That in-turn will trigger a different process of your body that tries to protect you from this instability in your joints by tightening up your muscles around them. This back and forth will be a constant battle throughout the pregnancy.

The relaxin hormone peaks pretty quickly in the first trimester but remains until after birth. This is why massage is effective – at the same time common sense and care are taken to not be doing any overly vigorous techniques.

This is not just for pregnant women though; the same can be said for anyone. The only time I can think of that I “vigorously jostled” someones muscles it at a collegiate athletic event – where I was providing sports massage to tighten up muscles prior to the athletes competition. Why on earth would I or any other therapist be doing this for a pregnant woman? We wouldn’t.

To look a bit further into this: occasionally it is specified that techniques around the abdomen or low back are especially undesirable. The thought process here is that you will cause the placenta to become ruptured or detached. This ultimately can lead to a miscarriage. However what is often overlooked is that it usually takes a significant fall or something like a motor vehicle accident to cause this rupture. So unless a therapist is going elbow first with a running slam of a technique, I think this can be filed under overly cautious.

That being said, I personally do gentle work around the abdomen if a pregnant client asks for this. And with the low back I use a firm pressure, but simply don’t go directly straight down – this would just pancake that little bean and no doubt be fairly uncomfortable for mum.

Lets get to the main reason that I wanted to write this though – that number one reason on the list of three from earlier…

#1)

The reason most people will cite pregnancy massage as a general contraindication is that they say “the risk of miscarriage is high during this time”. But what this blanket statement hides is the fact that miscarriages have always been a regular occurrence in pregnancies.

Mother nature doesn’t care about your race, age, or location. The facts are that around the world you statistically have a 1 in 5 chance of miscarriage. This can increase to 1 in 4 from many other factors such as high BMI or your age.

It is hypothesized that miscarriages in general actually happen up to 85% of the time, with them simply happening before someone even realizes that they are pregnant. But lets try and forget that number because there obviously wouldn’t be any data to back it up. The 1 in 5 and 1 in 4 information you can find on your own, but I will break down some Canada specific data below.

What is interesting is that here in Canada that number is actually quite a bit less; it is 1 in 41. But 1 in 41 instances is still quite a large number in my opinion. Imagine if that number was instead applied to ‘every time you walked outside you had a 1 in 41 chance of being struck by a vehicle’. Even more peculiar though is that many Canada specific pregnancy awareness groups or pregnancy information organizations still use those larger numbers of 1 in 4 or 1 in 5.

Admittedly I was expecting to find the research to back up those larger numbers here too, but according to this Stats Canada article you can see that in 2005 the total reported pregnancies across Canada were 447,485. While the number of specific losses across Canada is 8,494.

What you can also see on that referenced article is that the number of live births (not including stillbirths) is at 342,176. By knowing the loss number versus the births number we can find out how many pregnancies were actually aborted Canada wide: 96,815.

Now by subtracting the abortions from total pregnancies (or really you could just add the fetal losses to the live births) you end up with 350,670 pregnancies Canada wide, and 8,494 of those ended in the fetus being lost. This is where the 1 in 41 came from (the actual number is 41.284 if you are skeptical).

Curiously, the Alberta specific instances of miscarriage happen more often at a 1 in 26 rate. You can also look at the numbers from 2005 broken down instead by age group here if you’d like to check that out. Another for-your-interest link is this Stats Canada article that shows the amount of pregnancies on a year by year basis from 2009 to 2013. Definitely more current, but it does not have the same information that the two previously referenced articles did.

Now you have some concrete evidence backed numbers and know that pregnancies end in miscarriage quite a lot, so now lets talk about what actually causes this. Often times Stress is mentioned as a cause but this is an old wives tale. There is no statistical correlation, however I can understand why it is easy to try and point blame like this.

As mentioned earlier: age and health are huge factors. As also given before: world wide there is data to support the number of miscarriages being 1 in 5 for healthy women between the ages of 20 to 30; but this number jumps up to a staggering 1 in 2 instances when looking at women 42 years of age and older.

As for ‘health’ it really comes down to proper management of conditions. Things like diabetes or thyroid issues constantly putting the body to extremes because of mismanagement or lack of education will increase the likely hood of miscarriage.

Blood based issues that result in blood clots can also cause recurrent miscarriages. There are also instances of abnormalities in the uterus or ovaries (which may seem obvious after just reading that), or infections like syphilis causing a pretty significant increase in the likelihood to miscarry.

Finally, the most evidence backed cause of miscarriage: poor lifestyle habits. The two main ones being tobacco and alcohol, but other things like drugs or too much caffeine also factor in as well. As far as caffeine goes, that is one of the newer additions to the list so there isn’t as much research for it as the rest. I figured that I would mention it anyway for y’all.

Notice how none of those things are massage related? You are no more likely to have a miscarriage after a massage (with a present and responsible therapist) than you are simply walking around your home. That made zero sense, right? Neither does saying that massage is unsafe for pregnant women!

It is my hope this post will bring awareness to the fact that people who say massage is harmful for pregnant women are just spreading lies, that capitalize on fear and sadness. It is really just an unfortunate situation all around, but I hope that you can recognize and know now that whether someone is in their first trimester or beyond there is zero evidence to show that massage in harmful. There is plenty of evidence to show that it is beneficial however, but I’ll save that for another time.