Back pain is the bane of many women's pregnancies. With weight gain, hormonal surges and a shifting centre of gravity, back pain is pretty inevitable.
If the pain is in your tailbone, it might help to sit on a donut pillow. This gives some space between your tailbone and the seat. Exercise might help, especially walking. Besides exercising, rest whenever you can. Often, prenatal massage can also ease the pain.
One particular type of back pain is especially troublesome. Sciatic nerve pain is an excruciating pain that you feel in your butt and radiating down the back of one or both legs. Sciatic pain might be caused by your uterus pressing on your sciatic nerve. The nerve can become inflamed, which causes pain; pins and needles; and even numbness.
You might try hot or cold compresses to manage the pain. But the good news is, it should go away after your baby is born. Trying to prevent back pain now can go a long way to keeping you comfortable later.
Here's what our Mommy M.D.s — doctors who are also mothers — do to prevent and treat pregnancy back pain.
"During my pregnancy, I was seeing 35 patients a day," says Mary Mason, M.D., a mom of two, an internist and the chief medical officer for a multi-state managed care company that coordinates care for about 70,000 pregnant moms on Medicaid a year. "I was having some troubles with back pain, and I found that swimming helped a lot."
"I'm 4 feet, 11 inches tall, and I was not one of those ideal weight gainers," says Kathie Bowling, M.D., a mom of three grown sons and an OB-GYN in private practice in Providence, Rhode Island. "I put on 40 pounds with each pregnancy. (The ideal is 25, and most women gain between 35 and 40 pounds.) That was a lot of weight to lug around on my frame. I had bad sciatic pain. One thing that helped was to rest lying on the side opposite of my pain."
"During the third trimester of one pregnancy, I had sciatica, which is pain in the lower back that runs down the leg. There's not much you can do for that when you're pregnant. I went to a massage therapist who specialized in treating pregnant women and had a massage. The massage did help a bit — temporarily. But better yet was the hour of relaxing and being pampered," says Lezli Braswell, M.D., a mom of one daughter and two sons and a family medicine physician in Columbus, Georgia
"The further along I got in my pregnancy, the more my back ached," says Rallie McAllister, M.D., MPH, mom of three, co-author of "The Mommy MD Guide to Your Baby's First Year," nationally recognized health expert and family physician in Lexington, Kentucky. "Placing a pillow in the small of my back while I was seated helped my lower back, but it didn't touch the muscle tension and aching that had settled in my neck and between my shoulders. It finally occurred to me that my growing breasts were responsible for much of the strain on my upper back, and my slightly flimsy pre-pregnancy bra just wasn't providing enough support."
"I wasn't quite ready to graduate to a nursing bra, but I did find that by wearing a sturdy sports bra most of the time, my heavier breasts didn't put such a big strain on my neck, shoulders, and upper back," McAllister adds. "I bought a few extra sports bras in my new size, and found that when I wore them at home and at work, I was a lot more comfortable, and my muscles weren't nearly as tired or as tense by the end of the day."
When to Call the Doctor
You should let your doctor or midwife know if you are experiencing back pain during pregnancy. If the back pain is severe or if you are feeling numbness, call your doctor or midwife right away. Back pain can be a signal of premature labour.
Other symptoms of premature labour include vaginal discharge, contractions, abdominal pain and menstrual-like cramps. You should call your doctor or midwife right away if you think you are having preterm labour.
Jennifer Bright is a mom of four sons, co-founder and CEO of family- and veteran- owned custom publisher Momosa Publishing, co-founder of the Mommy MD Guides team of 150+ mommy M.D.s, and co-author of "The Mommy MD Guide to the Toddler Years." She lives in Hellertown, Pennsylvania. To find out more about Jennifer Bright and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.
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