Pelvic pain

One of the symptoms of being pregnant is pelvic girdle pain - it used to be known as SPD - it's very painful and unfortunately I have it.

Most nights it's painful but gets a little better during the day when I'm up and about, but last night was by far the worst as the pain felt somewhat crippling every time I needed to get up (which was about 5 times!).

It is effecting me in the groin area and across the pubic bone at the front, the only way to describe it is to say that if someone made me do the splits (which I've never been able to do!) then I'd imagine how painful that would be and think it might be similar - for men it's probably like being kicked in the genitals very hard!

SPD or Symphysis Pubis Dysfunction happens because:

The symphysis pubis is the name given to where two bones meet at the front of the pelvis. The pelvic bone is roughly in the shape of a heart, and is actually formed by three bones, which are held together by very strong ligaments.

The bones meet to form three 'fixed' joints - at the front (the symphysis pubis) and at each side of the bottom of the spine (the sacro-iliac joints).

Normally, these joints are not designed to allow movement. However, when a woman becomes pregnant, a hormone called relaxin is produced which loosens all the pelvic ligaments in order to allow the pelvis slight movement at the time of birth.

For some reason, the ligaments occasionally loosen too much and too early before birth. This means they can't keep the pelvic joints stable so the pelvis moves, especially on weight bearing. All this is made worse by the increased weight of the growing baby and sometimes the symphysis pubis joint actually separates slightly. The result is mild to severe pain, usually in the pubic area, and is called SPD.

What are the symptoms?
The most common is pain and difficulty when walking. Some women describe the feeling of their pelvis coming apart. The pain is made worse when turning in bed or doing something that involves standing on one leg, such as climbing up stairs, getting dressed and getting in and out of a car.

The pain is generally felt in the pubis and/or the sacro-iliac joints, but can also be experienced in the groin, the inner side of the thighs, the hips and in one or both buttocks.

As we are up at the hospital tomorrow, I'm actually considering getting some crutches for the night as walking to the bathroom is excruciatingly painful now and is helped if I can take some of the weight off when I walk.

However with 20cm of snow outside - we have to hope we can actually get to the hospital tomorrow!!