Shabbir forwarded this link to me, where the very apt description of pregnancy back pain is described.
If she doesn't mind, I'll quote:
"Traveling by furniture dolly is sounding more and more like a solution for staying ambulatory lately, because over the last few days I've developed a worsening pain in the ass. No, really: it's a pain! In my ass! Technically, it's directly under my right butt cheek, and it zaps the living fuck out of me throughout the day when I stand up after sitting for a while, or sit down after standing for a while, or turn over in bed, or walk, or breathe, etfuckingcetera.
My doctor suspects that my ballooning uterus is pressing on the sciatic nerve in my lower back. Apparently, for some people this happy condition can last UNTIL YOU GIVE BIRTH. Someone, I won't say who (hint: a certain husband who should know better than to freak my shit out, even if I do post embarrassing videos of him on the internet), told me about his coworker's wife who had to sleep in a recliner chair for the last 2 months of her pregnancy because it was the only position that offered any pain relief. "
This is just a horrific and accurate description of the pain as well as the supposed cure, "Get over it - you're pregnant, you're supposed to suffer!!"
Well it's just not true.
I suffered identically to this poor woman, except it was my left butt cheek, and all of my movements were heavily impaired. Here I was, barely 15 lbs pregnant and I couldn't walk! How could this be a "ballooning uterus" or "the extra weight on my back" (as my chiropractor described, God bless him). Well his wife gained 70 lbs during pregnancy, so maybe she did have weight related back pain, but come on most people I know who are 15 lbs overweight don't suffer so badly or at all for that matter. Can you think of a better motivator to lose weight than excruciating sharp pain in your buttocks? There's an S&M weight loss clinic out there waiting to be franchised.
Thankfully I have a friend who is an excellent physical therapist and also an excellent listener. She told me after my very similar description of the pain that most physical therapists can fix it in three or four visits, and that most doctors don't know it can be fixed. She works at Harvard and says that the physical therapists have to go around and educate the doctors there on the cutting edge about the small amount of physical therapy needed to ameliorate and prevent this kind of pain. So don't expect your obstetrician who's been out of school for 20 years to know anything about it.
So here's the method for fixing it, but I recommend going to see that physical therapist. I can only describe things, not treat them.
The physical therapist should be one who knows what "Core Control" is. Per my PT's website, "Core Control (Trunk Control, Torso Control): strength, endurance, and control over abdominal, pelvic floor, and intrascapular muscles to ensure a solid foundation against which your arms and legs can move with more accuracy and less work."
Essentially the problem is that your abdominal muscles and pelvic floor are weak, while your hips are spread, spread, spreading with all of that lovely relaxin flowing through them. Your buttock and back muscles clench and work overtime to keep what they perceive as an overly unstable pelvis from collapsing and cause you exceptional bursts of pain. Probably your hips have gotten out of alignment as well, and the one that's off is the side that hurts. The exercises to restore alignment take about 10 minutes to do.
The exercise involves lying on the floor with your legs against a wall and your knees bent (like sitting in a chair, but with the back of the chair on the floor). Press your hands against the top of the knee of the hurt hip side and push that knee hard into your hand. Simultaneously, push the foot of your other leg away from you against the wall - so one leg goes towards your torso and the other away, and you want resistance for both legs. You'll be shocked at how easily this adjusts the problem.
The other way to do this is to have another person assist you. I'll post a video on youtube on how to do this tomorrow. It really takes about 10 minutes a day for just a few days to get your hips back in alignment. Any time the pain starts again, just do the alignment exercises some more.
Then, get a back brace. Here's a good one - it looks awful, but it will restore your ability to walk down the street in no time. I can't recommend it enough.
Apparently it's just people in my social circle who are uniformed about this, including medical personnel, while there's a support group and website devoted to it in Britian. This reference explains it better than I do - those Brits are just so advanced. And here's a non-profit devoted to it: the Pelvic Partnership.
