Ask Lynn: Open Birthing Pelvic Pattern

Thank you to everyone who has reached out with questions. I encourage you to ask away as I want to make sure any content I share is clear, so you feel confident using it in your practice. Today, I will be answering the following question I received about the Open Birthing Pattern:

“Can you see the Open Birthing Patterns even years after delivery?”

YES! The open birthing patterns can be seen in your older clients as well. When I first discovered these patterns, I was shocked to find them all in my aunt, who had a 47 year old son at the time. She has experienced a very traumatic birth all those years prior. I believe the more trauma one experiences in their birth, the more common it is to see these patterns stuck in the body.

I also had a woman in her 60s who had several births earlier in her life, and she was seeing me for pelvic floor dysfunction. Her pelvic floor muscles felt like cardboard, and they couldn’t contract and relax normally. It took so much effort just to get a little bit of a contraction out of her muscles. There was no immediate on/off of the contraction like with other normal muscle function.

When I corrected her sacrum from the sacral flexion pattern and brought her ischial bones more medially, there was an immediate improvement in her contraction ability. She had a quicker response time to contraction, and a stronger ability to contract and relax. It was like her muscles had been held on a stretch for all those years. But the good thing was the treatment of the bones back to their original position helped improve her muscle function, even after all those years. It’s never too late!!

My aunt was a different story, but I didn’t get to work with her long enough to make any changes. She had zero contraction ability of her muscles, and I only saw her twice with a long time in-between appointments and couldn’t fully address her trauma from the birth. If she lived closer, I’m unsure what would have been possible for her, but I believe it is never too late to heal.

To learn how to treat the open birthing pattern in the pelvis, please check out the Treating the Postpartum Pelvis online course.

Have a Question for Lynn?

Please reach out if you have any questions regarding the material you are learning. I am here to help support your learning journey. You can leave a question in the comments section below or post a question in our groups on Facebook or Instagram.

About the Author: Lynn Schulte is a Pelvic Health Therapist and the founder of the Institute for Birth Healing, a pelvic health continuing education organization that specializes in prenatal and postpartum care. For more information, go to https://instituteforbirthhealing.com