Shelby's Life and Whatnot

Physical therapy

I started physical therapy for my back problems, and I think it's helping. The final diagnosis turned out to be just what I suspected--sacroiliac joint pain. The SI joint is where your tailbone meets your pelvis:

The SI joint is normally very tight and has very little give. However, pregnancy hormones loosen all of your ligaments, and what happens is that the SI joint loosens up and everything there starts moving around. For some lucky women, the result is a great deal of pain.

So the good news is that now we know what the problem is. The less good news is that there just isn't a whole lot that can be done about it. My physical therapist is doing a lot of deep massage to try to get the muscles in the area to relax, and then we're doing stretching to try to minimize pulling on the joint. I'm also doing strengthening exercises to try to support the joint. And apparently my hips are out of alignment, so he's been readjusting my hips. That helped tremendously the first day, but since the ligaments are loose, it's likely to be an ongoing problem.

But I do think the physical therapy is helping, so that's a good thing.