Really? Pelvis, I am disappoint. You spend your whole life knowing, theoretically, that you have joints in your pelvis. I mean, they use them to help identify bodies without skulls and stuff. But you never think about those joints any more than you think about your skull plates being fused together because they don’t move.
Until suddenly they do and every goddamned thing you do hurts like fucking hell, that is. WTF?
I’m 27 weeks pregnant and as of yesterday I can’t roll over, get up, sit down, bend over, or do a host of very specific movements without howling pain. I walk with a cringy little limp, and I haven’t really tried standing much. (I get dizzy anyway so, like, whatever.)
So evidently it’s symphysis pubic dysfunction, which my doctor didn’t call that (well, not MY doctor - THE doctor, you have to see all of them and this was the one I got today. I want MY doctor) but I could understand her grade school explanation and look it up. She said there’s nothing to be done about it except Tylenol and heating pads.
Anybody else have this? Because this sucks. I thought the sciatica was bad - the sciatica is amateur hour. I thought the dizziness and the rib pain were bad - dizziness ain’t shit. This SPD thing, like the Wu Tang Clan, that ain’t nothin’ to fuck with. I saw some claims online that these weird girdle chastity belt things help some people - thoughts?
More importantly, anybody else have this who can tell me it goes away after this baby comes out?! I need reassurance, because the idea of three months of this is bad enough.
No direct experience ( for obvious reasons ), but on a quick curiosity google I hit a site that claims it is all hormone-caused and says: But for most moms, once your baby is born and relaxin production ceases, your ligaments (and your dance moves) will return to normal.Link.
No direct experience, thanks heavens, but a friend of mine had this on her first pregnancy and it sucked tremendously. It went away within a few weeks after the baby was born. On her second pregnancy, she went to see a physiotherapist who gave her exercises to do, and she only got slight twinges of pelvic pain. I have no clue whether this was due to the physio or just pure luck, but it would definitely be worth checking out a physiotherapist, specially since you still have months to go.
I was kind of surprised that the doctor didn’t offer any exercises or stretches or anything at all. Just “sucks to be you” and Tylenol and heating pad.
Renee, just on “this really hurts but they expect that mortgage payment once a month”. I suppose if it gets unbearable I can ask my doctor to put me on disability (after I run through all my leave) but I’m sure that would affect how much time I get at home with the baby. Luckily I’m a librarian and not, like, a line cook. I don’t know how a lot of people manage to keep working through their pregnancies in much more active jobs - they’re a hell of a lot stronger than I am, I can tell you that. Before this happened I was already having a lot of trouble standing for extended periods.
I had this, bad enough that I needed to see a physio and wear a little stretchy hip belt for about 8 weeks post partum. Couldn’t even stand on one leg without enormous pain, despite having done full blood yoga throughout. But, cleared up like magic after a couple of months and now no problems at all to run, cycle, balance, lift etc. But see a physio specialising in post natal care, I think it sped up recover plus is good for abdominal strength. My muscles closed up for both kids within a week or so.
Yup, I made the mistake of playing bags at a picnic when I was about 7 months along. No immediate effects, but later that night, I moved and…then I couldn’t move, because it felt like I had a railroad spike jammed in my right hip/back. The only solution I found was to sit down immediately and stay that way for a few hours. Until it happens again…
The best was when I was at work, a desk job. I got up to use the restroom, and on the way my pelvis just locked. I couldn’t move without tremendous pain. So I just stood there in the hallway pressing my forehead up against the wall, breathing it out until Bob came along. It was so cute - he panicked and ran for Sheila and Carolyn, and they bustled around bring a rolling desk chair for me to get into, then rolled me to the bathroom. They told me to go home, so Bob moved my car to the nearby back entrance, and they rolled me to it, and I got in and drove away. Very sweet, particularly with Bob’s paternalistic concern.
The worst was one night when I got up to go to the bathroom, and my pelvis locked on me as I was getting out of bed. It hurt so bad, and I was just so exhausted by all of it, that I sat there and cried on my husband’s shoulder. It one of the only times in my whole life I told someone “I can’t do this” and meant it. It’s so painful it’s demoralizing.
Good news is, in all the gooey and hurty stuff that goes on after delivery, it went away and I didn’t even realize it. Never came back or caused me any problem.
My wife had huge problems with her pelvis with our first kid. I’m sure you know this already, but there are pregnancy hormones that loosen the ligaments holding your pelvis together, in preparation for having to, you know, shove a baby through there. Most of the time, when the pregnancy ends and the hormone production stops, everything goes back to normal.
However, my wife’s pelvis separated during birth, which was really painful. She was barely able to walk at all for several weeks, and it was close to two years before she stopped having painful twinges when she moved wrong.
But with our second child, there were no such problems at all. YMM, naturally, V.
I’ve learned to keep my knees together when moving around in bed, which, ironically, would have prevented the whole thing if I’d learned this lesson earlier.
Sorry to hear you’re experiencing this, I had a taste of it with my pregnancy. I read about it in my early pregnancy and assumed I would get it since my joints are loose enough without a baby pressing on them. Sure enough at some point when the baby was big enough (30 weeks?) I started getting that stabbing pain randomly. I talked to my OB about it and he basically shrugged, so I made an appointment with a physiotherapist.
The physiotherapist didn’t really give me any particular exercises to do, she evaluated that it almost certainly was symphysis pubic dysfunction and she explained to me how to tighten the muscles which hold the joint together. It’s very hard to explain what she told me to do, but try standing up and imagine you have a muscle which goes horizontally across the pelvis and try to flex that muscle. I don’t know if this muscle exists, or if I was just adjusting my posture so that I was using my abdominal muscles to take the pressure off my pelvis but it worked. I was doing a lot of walking each day, and while walking I tried to consider my posture and make sure that I was trying to keep my pubic bones together. I think the walking really helped.
It never really got bad for me, in fact it was basically gone by the time I gave birth. I haven’t had any issues since.
No experience with this level of pain, just here to offer sympathy …and a quirky little story. After each of my pregnancies, for maybe a year or two afterward, I was able to squeeze my legs/pelvis and make something down there go CRACK! just like cracking your knuckles. It was actually audible.
But alas, my circus freak talent always abated after all the ligaments and joints settled down and now I suppose it’s gone forever.
My God, I think I got off more lightly than I realised. I don’t have either of those.
During my first pregnancy, though, I did have this thing where occasionally if I tried to do anything dumb, like move, I would get a vicious shooting pain down the back of my left hip - sciatica, maybe? Everyone told me it would go as soon as I had the baby, but it took almost a year after the birth.
Basically, my point is that this stuff varies wildly from woman to woman. You could get lucky and be one of those women who bounce back instantly in every way. I know a woman who had *twins *, by C-section, and was totally back to her pre-pregnancy self (including the US size 2 jeans) six weeks after the birth.
You could ask your maternity hospital if they have a physio on their staff. The hospital where I had Thing 2 definitely had one - and she was a specialist in pregnancy/post-birth stuff, so she would’ve known what to do about symphisis pubis problems.
Yesterday evening I couldn’t even pick up my right foot to take my sandal off. Not because it hurt too much but because it just wouldn’t move.
If this continues like this and I don’t get any better at dealing with it, do you suppose it’s possible to get a handicap parking hang tag? Between the heat and parking at the end of the lot today I had a damned hard time at the grocery store.
