Pregnancy Condition Guide
Pelvic girdle pain can range from a nagging ache to shooting, debilitating pain that limits daily life. Webster Technique chiropractic care addresses the root instability so you can move more freely.
Pelvic girdle pain — often abbreviated PGP — is an umbrella term for pain in the pelvic joints during pregnancy. It affects roughly 1 in 5 pregnant women, making it one of the most common pregnancy-related complaints. For some women, it's a manageable ache. For others, it becomes severe enough to affect walking, sleeping, and basic daily activities.
PGP is not a sign that something is wrong with your baby. It's a structural issue — your pelvic joints are under more stress than they can comfortably handle, usually because hormonal changes have loosened the surrounding ligaments and the joints have shifted out of their optimal alignment.
The good news is that when the root cause is structural, structural treatment works. Webster Technique chiropractic care is specifically designed to address exactly these kinds of pelvic alignment issues — safely and gently throughout pregnancy.
Relaxin is a hormone your body produces specifically to loosen the ligaments and joints of the pelvis in preparation for childbirth. While this process is necessary, it also reduces the stability of these joints throughout your entire pregnancy — creating the conditions for pelvic pain when alignment is off.
The two sacroiliac joints at the back of the pelvis are primary pain generators in PGP. When they move asymmetrically or become inflamed, the resulting pain can radiate across the buttocks, down the thighs, and deep into the pelvis — often feeling like a shooting or stabbing sensation.
As your belly grows, your center of gravity moves forward. Your pelvis compensates by tilting, which changes the loading on every pelvic joint. Over time this uneven loading creates chronic irritation and inflammation — especially in joints already loosened by relaxin.
The deep core and glute muscles that normally help stabilize the pelvis often weaken or become inhibited during pregnancy. Without that muscular support, the joints are left to bear more load than they were designed for — a cycle that chiropractic care can help interrupt.
PGP can show up in many ways, but these are the most common patterns:
The Webster Technique was developed specifically to address the sacral and pelvic misalignment that drives pelvic pain during pregnancy. Our certified providers use it as a first-line approach — it's not an adaptation of a general chiropractic technique, but a pregnancy-specific protocol.
We carefully evaluate how your sacrum is positioned and how it's moving. A specific, gentle adjustment corrects the misalignment — restoring more even loading across both SI joints and reducing the irritation that's generating your pain.
The Webster Technique also includes specific soft tissue release for the round ligaments and surrounding musculature. Releasing chronic tension in these structures takes additional stress off the pelvic joints and improves overall pelvic function.
You'll be positioned on a specially designed pregnancy table with a belly cutout — zero pressure on your abdomen at any point. The adjustments are gentle and precise. We regularly coordinate with OBs and midwives, and many providers actively send their patients to us for pelvic pain support.
"Many of our PGP patients come in having been told 'it's just part of pregnancy.' It doesn't have to be. A misaligned pelvis is a structural problem — and structural problems respond to structural solutions."
Pelvic girdle pain tends to worsen without treatment — and it can make the final weeks of pregnancy incredibly difficult. Early care makes a real difference. Start with a free 30-minute evaluation.