Postpartum wrist & hand pain: yoga can help

This one is another doozy that new parents are often unprepared for in terms of bodily discomfort. We often don’t think about the fact that holding baby for an extended period of time can cause forearm tightness and compression in wrist joints. The combination of these two things can lead to inflammation of the tendons running through the carpal tunnel and out to the hands and fingers. As a result, folks often have debilitating wrist, hand and finger pain that is hard to manage because they can’t stop holding their babies, so it is difficult to mitigate the inflammation. Especially with new parents who may not feel completely at ease holding their new baby, there is a tendency to want to curl in and hold the baby extra tight. What often happens is they curl their hands in and around the head or the baby’s bottom creating extra pressure on the wrist joint.

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Many pregnant folks also develop carpal tunnel and other wrist irritation in the 3rd trimester of their pregnancy due to fluid retention in the body and are then often more prone to wrist and hand pain postpartum.
 
Tips for Wrist & Hand Pain

• This is an opportunity for you to evaluate how you hold your baby. As much as possible hold baby’s bottom with a flat hand that is turned away from baby. It’s a little more awkward and can feel a little less snuggly but will help mitigate the wrist compression common when holding baby.
• Wearing baby will help take the load of wrists and hands.Find a baby wearing device that works for you and baby (there’s so many out there, sometimes you'll need to try a few) and you can use it when trying to get baby to sleep or if baby doesn’t like to be put down once asleep.
• If the pain gets worse when sleeping you may be curling your wrists during asleep. You can often benefit from wearing wrist guards at night.
• Check with your care provider about managing inflammation with ibuprofen, turmeric and ice.

 
Yoga for Wrist & Hand Pain

• Give the wrists a break in hands and knees positions:
  • Hands and knees: they can be on their fists or offer a bolster or two blocks on the medium height underneath forearms.
  • Plank pose: on the forearms.
  • Downward dog: offer dolphin pose. Or have them fold up the edge of the front of their mat so there is a little ledge, they can place the middle of the palm at the ledge with the fingers and upper palm on the floor. This can release compression in the wrists in downward dog.
• Limit the amount of plank poses and chatargunas in your practice. Both of these poses can be irritating to problem areas in the postpartum body.
• Do wrist and hand stretches daily, particularly at the end of your yoga class after you've done things that might have irritate this area.