I had awful pregnancy back pain with my twins. It seemed like I was in constant, throbbing pain. Here’s what I did to help myself feel better.
I think the main cause of my pregnancy back pain was being on bed rest. There weren’t many options for pain relief while I followed doctor’s orders and tried to lie on my left side day after day with bathroom breaks being my only respite. The biggest thing that helped me was my daily shower. My shower is big, so there’s plenty of room to sit down in the bottom. I used to curl my back into a C shape, and let the hot water hit my lower back for as long as I could sit there. I’m not sure if it was the soothing water working out the knots, or just the change of scenery that helped, but it seemed to work.
Since I was only allowed to shower once a day for no longer than 20 minutes, I had to come up with other ways to relieve my pregnancy back pain. One afternoon, I asked my jailor, I mean mother-in-law, who helped around the house during the day for a tube sock, some rice and lavender oil. I made my own herbal heat pack. Though out the day my mother-in-law heated up my home made contraption in the microwave. I draped it across my back to lessen the pain. I didn’t want to use a heating pad, because I worried about falling asleep with it on and burning myself or getting tangled up in the cord. While my sock contraption was ugly, it sure got the job done.
Even though my doctor didn’t want me getting up for anything, I did cat stretches once a day to deal with my pregnancy back pain. I figured cat stretches were a small risk to take to get some much needed relief. Plus, guilt, and the certainty my mother-in-law would catch me, persuaded me to only do the stretches for a few minutes at a time. I certainly felt like a cow with my big belly hanging even lower when I arched my back!
I am glad I never dealt with pregnancy back pain with my younger children like I did with my twins. I wouldn’t wish that pain on anyone. I swear, sometimes it hurt as bad as actually being in labor. Maybe since us moms have to give birth, we could assign back pain to the dads?