Pregnancy Back Pain

A note to all the women out there who are pregnant or will become pregnant. Do not ever assume that something about your pregnancy is normal or expected just because it's in the books or because your friends had something similar.

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Yesterday, I got up from my desk at work to go get something from the printer and had a severe pain in my lower back. It basically hurt on my left side only when I stepped down with my left foot. When I sat back down, the pain subsided but was still there. At times, when I walked, my left leg felt like it might not hold because of the severity of the pain, but I made it to my car and sat down on the scalding hot leather (the outside temp according to my Highlander said 106). The heat did something good because by the time I got home and got some Tylenol in my system, I was already feeling better.

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Later in the evening, I did something to re-aggravate it and the pain came back with a vengeance. Brent was home and I seriously considered asking him to take me to the emergency room - it was horrible. I could not find any position that eased the pain, except standing with all my weight on my left leg (so the pain switched - still on the left side, but now it hurt when I would take the weight off that side).

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I'm getting long-winded - short version: major pain, like 10 on a scale of 1-10, but we finally found a comfortable position in bed, which I knew would not allow me to sleep, so I ended up sleeping in the media room. Every time I got up to hit the bathroom (and moms know that is VERY often when pregnant), I had to go through the pain again when I tried to get back into the recliner.

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When I woke up this morning, there was significant improvement, but still occasional excruciating pain with certain movements. I had emailed a few people and all seemed to think it was probably my sciatic nerve, so I called my OB nurse to see what she suggested. "Make an appointment with Texas Woman's Physical Therapy." I was thoroughly confused - no one had diagnosed me so how would a physical therapist know what to do? Silly me - the PT can diagnose me and treat me all at the same time. (By the way, I strongly recommend Texas Woman's Physical Therapy - they were WONDERFUL!!!)

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Diagnosis: Right Anterior or Left Posterior Rotation of my pelvis. Ouch! So the pain I was feeling was at my left sacroiliac joint because the loose pelvic ligaments of pregnancy allowed my pelvis to rotate too much and threw it out of whack (that's a medical term). :)

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Treatment: Another medical term for ya - she "straightened me out." She had to massage the muscles back there pretty hard to get the bones to allow her to shift them back in place, so I'll probably be pretty sore tomorrow, but as the day wore on after the appointment was over, the pain significantly improved. Now I just have to remember all the things she told me as far as getting in and out of the car and bed, walking with short, narrow strides, etc. and I'll have 2-3 follow up appointments to make sure everything stays in line. She's going to give me exercises to do at the next appointment but didn't want me doing them yet so that I could rest the area fully and get it back to normal.

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Lesson learned - listen to your instincts and your nurse, even if the nurse at first tells you she needs to check you and make sure you're not in labor ("labor pains can be in your back too, ya know" - of course I know, this is my second pregnancy and those were NOT labor pains. Can I talk to my real nurse now???)