Maternity care is led by your midwife, GP or obstetrician, and they should know you are attending here. What we treat is the musculoskeletal pain that comes with a body changing quickly — added load at the front, ligaments that soften, a centre of gravity that moves monthly, and a pelvis that has to accommodate all of it.
Low back pain. The commonest, and it responds to positioning and load advice as much as to treatment.
Pelvic girdle pain. Felt at the front of the pelvis or over the tailbone, and worth naming because it has specific management: how you get in and out of a car, not standing on one leg to dress, limiting continuous walking, and a pelvic health physiotherapist, which is the right referral and one we make routinely.
Rib pain in the third trimester and wrist pain from fluid retention, which often turns out to be carpal tunnel symptoms and improves after birth.
Advice that works in the second trimester often stops working in the third, so plans get revised rather than repeated. Treatment is side-lying with support from the second trimester, never prone, and sessions are shorter.
Any pain with bleeding, contractions before term, fever, severe headache or one-sided calf swelling goes to your maternity service, not to us. We are in Lane Cove at 2 Austin Street, opposite the library, and also at Freshwater on the Northern Beaches.
