How to relieve hip and pelvic pain during pregnancy

Pregnancy is a lot of things. It’s a miracle, a joy, a blessing, and always very exciting. It can also be nauseating, exhausting and really painful for your hips.

It’s common for women to start experiencing some pain in the back, joints, and hips during their second trimester. As pregnancy progresses, this pain may become more pronounced, depending on your body and how you manage your pregnancy.

Why pregnancy leads to hip pain

During pregnancy, the change in hormones and posture work together to create stress on your pelvic joints.

Your hip has a ball-and-socket joint. The ball is at the end of the thigh bone while the socket is in the pelvis. The pelvis is attached to the tailbone, which is the base of the spine. This arrangement makes it easy for the hip to easily flex, rotate, extend, abduct and adduct. It also allows you to bend and stand up straight.

There’s also very little extra space. During pregnancy, your hip has to adjust to give enough room for the baby to grow and develop. And during delivery, the pelvis has to expand even further to create room for you to give birth. This expansion may result in hypo or hypermobility during and/or after pregnancy.

How do hormones contribute to hip pain?

Some of the hormones produced during pregnancy help the muscles and ligaments in your pelvic area stretch, which allows for the expansion of the bones to accommodate baby growth.

However, these hormones may also lead to stress on soft tissues. As some muscles are relaxing, others are tightening, which may cause changes in posture and soreness.

What’s the best way to manage hip pain?

• Massage: Prenatal and postnatal massage therapy can help relieve muscular pain during and after pregnancy. You can also try taking warm baths and showers.
• Proper sitting posture: To relieve sore muscles, try leaning back in a comfy chair. Support your lower back with a pillow.
• Proper sleeping position: Maintain proper body alignment when sleeping. Have a pillow or a towel between your knees. This helps reduce the pressure on your lower back and hips.
• Regular exercise after pregnancy: Regular exercise helps relieve pain and returns the body to a proper alignment after pregnancy. It will also keep your body strong, minimizing the risk of more aches and pains, and helps you shed the baby weight faster after giving birth. Recommended exercises include swimming, water aerobics, yoga, pilates and other low-impact or strengthening exercises.

• Low-heeled shoes. During pregnancy, wear low-heeled shoes––not flat or high-heeled––and use a maternity belt for some extra support.
• When lifting, bend at the knee rather than the waist. And use your legs, not your back. Don’t overdo it and make sure to ask for help if the object is too heavy.

How long is too long?

As mentioned, pain in the hip typically starts in the second trimester, which is perfectly normal. However, the moment you start feeling hip pain, it’s important to begin taking the necessary steps.

First, document it in a diary. When did it start? What kind of pain is it and where exactly are you feeling it? Talk to your doctor to know what exercises you need to start or what you should stop doing. Don’t try painkillers, unless recommended by your doctor.

During childbirth, it’s normal to experience pain. However, you should speak with your delivery room doctor immediately if you suffer severe pelvic pain. Sometimes when the pain is too severe, caesarean delivery may be a better option.

Hip pain should gradually go away shortly after birth. If you continuing to experience hip pain long after birth, this could be indicative of a much deeper problem. Mention it to your doctor.
Contact Pelvic Rehabilitation Medicine if you are suffering from similar symptoms. We develop individualized treatment plans for our patients always without surgical intervention. In the most severe cases a patient may go through a serious of ultrasound guided trigger point injections to help relieve severe nerve compression. Please contact our office today for an immediate consultation.

Once you hit your second trimester, you're probably sporting a tiny little bump, and should generally start feeling a lot better and more energetic than in your first trimester. But for some women, this is when hip pain begins to appear.

Some experts relate it to sciatica, which is a condition where your sciatic nerve gets pinched and radiates pain into the buttocks, thighs and hips, or round ligament pain in your groin area, which is a result of the ligaments stretching to accommodate for pregnancy and childbirth.

If you find yourself on the receiving end of this pregnancy ailment, here are eight exercises to help alleviate and stretch away the pain. As always, please check with your healthcare provider before trying any new exercises.

1. Fire log pose. Sit comfortably on the edge of a folded blanket and cross one ankle over the opposite knee. If you can stack the other ankle and knee too, do so or otherwise just relax the bottom leg out. From here, just sit or carefully and lean forward. You should feel a stretch in the outer hip right away.

2. Standing sideways stretch. Stand next to a doorway and align your shoulder with it. Then cross your inner leg over the outer leg and lean towards the door frame, holding onto it with both hands. If that is not enough of a stretch, then try and push into the hand which is on top.

3. Standing ankle to knee. If you have good balance, this pose is excellent to open the hips and create strength in the standing leg. Find a ledge at about hip height or higher and stand in front of it. Then place your ankle on the opposite knee and fold forward. Keep your standing leg bent softly -- the more you lean forward the more intense the stretch will be.

4. Lie on your side with a pillow between your knees. This is not technically an exercise, but it should relieve pain, particularly if it is associated with sciatic pain. Lie down on your side and stack your hips, knees and ankles in two 90 degree angles. Pull your knees up in front of you and keep space in the knee. Then place a pillow along your lower leg and relax. Lying like this for at least 15 minutes can do wonders for the spine.

5. Bridge pose. Lie down on your back (place a small blanket under your lower back if you are in your second trimester or further. Walk your heels in, until your hands can skim the back of them, and then lift your hips up to create a straight line from knee to hip. Now try and relax your buttocks and hamstrings and hold the hip up for about 30 seconds. After a short while, you will feel the supporting muscles in your lower back start to work and support your spine.

6. Happy baby pose. I want to believe that babies are happy because their bodies are so balanced. Lying down on your back with a blanket under your lower back like above, lift your legs up in the air and hold the outsides of your feet with your hands. Keep your feet flat as if you were standing on the ceiling, pull your knees towards your armpits and lengthen your tailbone.

7. Standing pelvic tilt. Stand with your feet hip width apart and your back against a wall. As you inhale, arch your back away from the wall and as you exhale try and flatten your lower back against the wall. Try and do this exercise slowly and mindfully, and work your way up to 15 repetitions.

8. Walk engaging your glute muscles. This piece of advice is really for paying more attention to your posture throughout the day. As your belly gets bigger, it's tempting to arch your back more and tilt your pelvis forward. Engaging your glute muscles with each step and lengthening your tailbone by tucking your pelvis in will help with pain and hopefully help you transition faster postpartum after you have had the baby.

We hope that these exercises can help you get through your pregnancy with as little pain and discomfort as possible. Let us know in the comments if you found something that worked for you that we didn't mention.