4 Reasons to Massage Your Womb After Pregnancy Loss Heartbreak
Oct 02, 2023If you’re here reading this, then please let me tell you how sorry I am for your loss. I know you must be searching for ways to heal, and you might not be finding a whole lot out there. So many women go through this, and yet our society sucks at providing support and resources. It’s one thing to deal with the heartache of your loss, it’s a whole other layer to be expected to do it in private and without any guidance.
I don’t have all the answers, that’s for sure. But after supporting many women after pregnancy loss, I can tell you that nurturing touch helps. So many of my clients have expressed to me feeling numb or cut off from their womb after a loss. Others have felt complete betrayal. I can remember one of my client’s lost her daughter at 24 weeks pregnant from a chromosomal complication, and felt so angry at her body. How would she ever be able to trust her body again? How could she ever feel at home again in a body that caused her so much anguish?
And yet she specifically searched me out for care, because she knew the talk therapy she was doing wasn’t cutting it for her. She knew that she needed tactile guidance to befriend her body again. After several bereavement massage sessions with me, spanning several weeks, she told me she felt nurtured back to feeling whole again, and was open to rebuilding the lost trust with her body. Within a month she became pregnant again and carried her baby boy to term, and had a beautiful birth.
There’s honestly not a huge difference between bereavement massage and postpartum massage. When you’ve experienced a loss, no matter how early on, your body IS postpartum! You can find a trusted therapist to massage your womb or you can absolutely do this yourself. Including massage over your womb is deeply nourishing and has 4 wonderful benefits you should know about:
- Releasing stored emotions. We all hold emotions in our tissues, and the pelvis holds more than other places. It’s the home of so many vital organs and systems, and the home for cultural shame, and past sexual or gynecological trauma. Even just placing your hands over your uterus, breathing deeply, and setting an intention to connect can bring up so many stored emotions. Feeling your feelings lightens the weight of the load you’re carrying.
- Rebuilding connection and trust. It’s hard to nurture or expect good things from a body you hate. Even if you’re not interested or ready to conceive again, you still want to maintain a positive relationship with the body you live in. Massage is a wonderful way to begin a practice of nurturing your womb. During this process of caring for the space that held your baby, you can work your way into finding forgiveness, love, trust and hope.
- Drawing your energy back to your center. Birth and loss are hugely expansive. It’s not just that your uterus stretched and grew, it’s that your whole energy field expanded to make space for your expected baby. It’s so helpful to begin to draw your energy and awareness back towards your midline. It reduces the sense of emptiness, and helps you be aware of the edges of your body, which is very calming for your nervous system. We call this proprioceptive awareness- knowing where your body is in space and time. Massage helps physically draw your energy back to your midline, and find the edges of your body after the great expansion of holding life.
- Promoting circulation and movement for hormonal balance or to prepare to conceive again. Movement is life. That’s one of the principles to understanding massage. Moving tissue releases stagnation, draws in fresh oxygenated blood, and helps all of your organs function and feel better. When you move your womb, you’re ensuring that scar tissue doesn’t restrict your uterus (from a D&C for example). You’re also stimulating your hormone production which is key to feeling better, and having healthy pain-free periods (once yours returns). It’s also key for preparing to conceive again, if and when you’re ready. If you’ve had repeat miscarriages or issues with scar tissue and want to conceive again, our Mercier Therapy care may be a great fit for you.
It’s normal to feel resistance to the idea of massaging your womb. I’m literally asking you to touch the space that may feel like the epicenter of your pain. I get that. It may be emotionally painful to do this. But the invitation is here nonetheless- and the benefits of gently going to your pain source and nurturing yourself back to wholeness is worth it.
Sending you my love as you heal.
With gratitude,
Sparrow
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