If you have an injury and keep doing the same painful action over and over again, your injury is not going to heal. This is often the problem for mums working with their baby, the work is repetitive and also straining your back.

Ergonomics is the science of designing a task to meet the needs of the person performing the task (to maintain good health in work). In its entirety, ergonomic design takes into consideration a large range of disciplines: job description (include load characteristics, what the aim of the job is and duration and frequency of the tasks); biomechanics (understanding and managing weights/ forces on the body while performing the job); anatomy and physiology (structure and function of a body); physical and emotional health; lifestyle factors and environmental factors (work space, time of day, visual and sound encumbrances); then designing equipment to suit all these factors…. It’s big, but …actually it’s really an appropriate science to apply to pregnant and new mums because without these considerations in equipment design, women are at a higher risk of back injury using common nursery equipment

Much of the back pain associated with infant/childcare work is caused from moderate weight loads (infant/child …and all the other stuff). These frequent (lifting, lowering, carrying, pushing, pulling and awkward bent, stretching and twisting) postures and actions …often performed while carrying an unstable load (baby), put abnormal stress on the tissues that surround and connect the spinal joints of the lower back, causing discomfort and some dysfunction in movement.

Our studies showed that a little as 30 seconds of held forward bend resulted in weakening of lower back muscle strength and function…which isn’t great …especially if you are then standing up and lifting baby as well!! Before lifting the baby, gently straighten up your torso, then bend your knees and in one motion bend, grasp and lift the baby.

If a load heavier than 10kg (22 lb) is being lifted at waist height, and the reach to lift is further than 30cm (12 inches) from the lifter’s body, then it exceeds all safe lifting limits for the average healthy adult.

Choose your equipment cleverly: see relevant sections on this website. In short, if your back is breaking, change how you are doing the tasks.

Use your equipment with discipline.

Try and make decisions that will create an easier path during your work-day.

Position the baby as close as possible to your body when lifting.

Change how you are performing your tasks, when nappy changing and bathing try to use a surface height that allows you to stand upright and provides knee and foot space when working with baby.

Also from working with your upper body in a hunched over position, and your arms are reaching and lifting. Try to get as close as possible to the lifting point of your baby, check knee and foot space and hold baby into your body.

Frequently these therapies, including Swimming, Yoga and Pilates, may not be the answer to the problem. As the saying goes, prevention is better than cure. It could be that your abdominal and pelvic floor muscles are still weak, which means your lower back strength is also compromised. Working with baby and some equipment designs can strain muscles and connective tissue in the lower back, causing pain and potential injury.

Yes in theory your upper body should gain strength. However, if the strength and function in you lower back haven’t recovered, then lifting work and the use of poorly designed equipment may continue to place strain on the connecting tissues of spinal joints, causing weakness and laxity, and potential for back pain and disorder.