mrs.kidneyfailure is almost seven months pregnant at this point. We’re all pretty happy and excited and whatnot. Her morning sickness is long gone, but now she’s got pretty bad back pain and every morning when she wakes up she asks me to rub her back. Anyone (especially moms) have any advice about how she can feel better?
Try a heating pad on a low setting ( use caution though, some heating pad manufacturers recommend that a pregnant women not use heating pads, if you find this is the case, you can also make a ‘heat sock’. (fill a large clean spare sock with dry beans ( small pinto beans work well) then tie or sew up the top. You can then microwave it for soothing heat relief) Congrats to you both, and hope she feels better!
If she isn’t already, she can try sleeping on her side with a pillow between her legs. It helps keep the spine aligned and if she gets a body pillow (larger and longer than regular pillow), it can also support her belly.
I’m about 8 months pregnant myself (and it’s my 4th pregnancy)… so I can really sympathize with the back pain. It gets REALLY old. Here’s my secret trick for getting up in the morning with no back pain: Take a small, not very thick bath towel, and roll it up LENGTHWISE as tight as you can. Basically you get something that resembles a terrycloth pool noodle. Now, put your towel-noodle on a nice hard floor, and have your wife lay down on it so that the towel-noodle is snug down along her spine, from shoulders to butt. Now, she can do a few stretches, roll her shoulders and do some neck-rotating exercise, and it will go a long way towards getting rid of that morning back pain. Might as well do your Lamaze or Bradley exercises at the same time (if you’re into that).
She’s most likely exclusively sleeping on her side by now, but she might try giving preference to sleeping on the LEFT side as much as possible. It moves the ever-heavier baby off of the major blood vessels on the right side, and can help keep blood pressure down and prevent swelling. It helps to tuck a small, thin, pillow under the actual pregnant tummy to keep it from pulling the back muscles out of alignment too much.
I had back pains for years. A friend recommended a book by John Sarno, I read it, and I never missed another day of work or sports:
Supportive pillows, low heat, lots of loving hubby massages and tennis balls. Slightly squishy tennis balls make a wonderful lumbar massager, just put them between your back and a chair and wiggle as necessary.
These are all such good ideas!
My SIL liked the Boppy for moms she got. I think it was the Total Body pillow.
I actually slipped a disc in my fourth month, so YMMV. Here’s what helped:
If you sleep with a "leG’ pillow, make sure that the pillow between the legs goes all the way to her ankles. If it’s just between the thighs is actually twists the legs and puts more pressure on the hips and lower back once you relax and drift off.
I wish I had gotten one of these Bed Bath & Beyond | The Best Deals Online: Furniture, Bedding, Rugs, Kitchen Essentials & Moree sooner than I did. No one was willing to recommend it to me while I was prgnant. Turns out that’s not because thye know it could cause harm, but because they haven’t got proof it wouldn’t hurt. It;s the crazy overprotective ZOMG of trying to get information when you are pregnant.
Anyway, I finally got one after the Celtling was two years old, and finally had the first pain free day in three years. I still need to use it occaisionally, but my quality of life has improved dramatically. For, like $136.00 and very little effort. Putting it together was horrid, but I only have to use it for five minutes a couple of days per week.
For the ultimate massage effect for very little effort, use a rolling pin. Just gently roll up and down along the long muscles of the spine. I’ve spent fortunes on massage therapy, and none of them could provide even a tenth of the relief I got from a rank amateur rolling that up and down my spine.
HTH
and Congrats!