Low Back Pain and SI Joint Pain in Pregnancy

Hi, guys. I wanted to make a quick little video to help a friend out who is having some pretty bad back pain. She's about 21 or 22 weeks pregnant, and her back is just flaring up for the last three days, and it's excruciating. She thinks maybe it was her sciatic nerve or maybe she bruised her back. And so, this is for those pregnant mamas out there who have that intense low back pain and just feel like maybe you can't make it through the end of this pregnancy.

So, first, I'm gonna say grab a lacrosse ball or grab a tennis ball. You're gonna work this, and you're gonna stick it behind your glutes either, you know, at a wall behind you. You're gonna rub the ball on the glute against the wall in multiple places along the muscle. And if you can find a sore spot, kind of hang out there, try and rub it out there, and that will help relieve some of the tension in the glutes.

The next stretch that I want you to follow up with is gonna be to grab a chair, and this can be done at an office desk. You're gonna grab a chair, cross your leg, sit up tall, and lean forward by hinging at the hips, keeping the back totally straight. You're gonna hold that between 30 and 60 seconds to get a nice stretch, and kind of just do it until it works itself out.

The next stretch that you're gonna do is a flat back stretch. So I like this to help elongate the hamstrings as they attach to the pelvis and they can be a reason why a lot of low back pain is occurring. So let me show you that stretch here. So you're gonna put your hands on a countertop supported surface, keeping the baby pulled in when you do that. Or if you're not pregnant and you're watching this, and you have back pain, just tighten your abs. So you're gonna walk your feet to the wall behind you, stick your tailbone to the wall behind you, and reach behind you, and feel a nice stretch through your upper back and through the back of your legs. And I call that one the flat back stretch. So go ahead and do that one as well. That's gonna help relieve a lot of the tension in the low back.

The final stretch that I'll leave you with in this quick little video is gonna be an adductor stretch. That's for the inner thigh. Same thing, on the counter, you're gonna support your body. You're gonna walk your tailbone back and then shift your hips, so one hip is facing the other wall. Keep your knees not locked but straight. And you should feel a stretch on the inner thigh. Again, hold 30 to 60 seconds. 

And if this isn't helping or it doesn't go away, you should definitely seek a therapist, a manual physical therapist, in order for them to help work these muscles out for you, because there's definitely no need to suffer from low back pain during a pregnancy. All right. Thank you.